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Nutrient Physiology, Metabolism, and Nutrient-Nutrient Interactions

Lung Retinyl Ester Is Low in Young Adult Rats Fed a Vitamin A–Deficient Diet after Weaning, despite Neonatal Vitamin A Supplementation and Maintenance of Normal Plasma Retinol^1,2

³ Department of Nutritional Sciences and ⁴ Huck Institute for the Life Sciences, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: acr6{at}psu.edu.

Although it is understood that plasma retinol concentration is not proportional to the concentration of vitamin A stored in liver, plasma retinol still is often used as an indicator of vitamin A status. An aim of vitamin A supplementation strategies is to maintain plasma retinol concentration in a range considered adequate, generally >1.05 µmol/L in humans, with some adjustment for age. In the present study in rats, we addressed the following question: Does lung vitamin A increase postnatally, as is observed in rats fed a vitamin A–adequate diet, if plasma retinol is maintained at 1 µmol/L by supplementation at neonatal age, but the weaning diet is deficient in vitamin A? We treated rats on postnatal d 6, 7, and 8 with placebo (oil), vitamin A, retinoic acid (RA), and a nutrient-metabolite combination of vitamin A and RA, VARA, after which tissues were analyzed on d 9. Other rats treated identically as neonates were fed a vitamin A–deficient diet from 3–9 wk of age, and in parallel, another group of rats was fed a vitamin A–adequate diet. Although supplementation with vitamin A or VARA elevated liver and lung retinyl esters (RE) on d 9 (P < 0.0001), and prevented the fall in plasma retinol to <1 µmol/L by 9 wk of age, when the diet was vitamin A–deficient, lung RE fell to 28% of the concentration present in the lungs of rats fed the vitamin A–adequate diet (P < 0.0001). We infer that the lungs depend, at least in part, on the uptake of dietary vitamin A, probably from chylomicrons, to develop RE stores in the postweaning growth period.

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