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The Role of Vitamin E in the Production of Nutritional Liver Injury in Rats on Low Casein Diets^{1, 2,}

Department of Biochemistry and Nutrition, School of Medicine, School of Tropical Medicine, University of Puerto Rico, San Juan

1. With low casein diets, massive hepatic necrosis appears rapidly in young rats deprived of vitamin E. Early lesions of chronic muscular dystrophy may occur.

2. Alterations in the lard content of isocaloric diets are without effect.

3. An increase in available protein by the addition of casein or of the sulfur-containing amino acids methionine or cystine, decreases the incidence of massive hepatic necrosis and permits the rat to survive for a long period of time. These rats then acquire the sterility and chronic muscular dystrophy typical of vitamin E deprivation, but at death there are no lesions in the liver.

4. The addition of adequate amounts of -tocopherol invariably prevents massive hepatic necrosis, enabling the rat to survive for a long period of time and to reproduce under conditions that are associated with fatty deposition in the liver and diffuse hepatic fibrosis.

5. Confirmatory evidence is given that methionine prevents, and cystine intensifies, fatty infiltration of the liver and diffuse hepatic fibrosis.

² A preliminary report was presented at the XVIII International Physiological Congress, Copenhagen, August 15–18, 1950.

Manuscript received 24 January 1951.