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Nutritional Studies with the Guinea Pig

V. Effects of Deficiency of Fat or Unsaturated Fatty Acids

Laboratory of Nutrition and Endocrinology, National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases, Public Health Service, U. S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Bethesda, Maryland

Purified diets containing all of the nutrients known to be required by the guinea pig except fat were fed to guinea pigs placed on the diet at two to 5 days of age. Comparable animals were given the same type of diet to which 7.3% of corn oil had been added. As previously found in this laboratory, lack of dietary fat caused retarded growth, dermatitis, skin ulcers, loss of fur, and some mortality. The following additional effects were also observed: priapism, reddening of the muscles, underdevelopment of the spleen, testes, and gall bladders, and, in relation to body weight, enlargment of the kidneys, liver, adrenals, and heart. There was also a lowering of the dry matter content of the blood, an apparent loss of blood viscosity, marked lowering of the dienoic acid content of the lipids of both the serum and erythrocytes. Deprivation of dietary fat produced, on an average, a mild microcytic anemia in the guinea pig; some animals, however, developed a marked anemia while some showed no alteration in the blood picture. No definite change was observed in the number of erythrocytes per unit of blood volume but an increase occurred in the number of granulocytes.

Skin changes in the guinea pig as a result of fat deficiency were found to be less extensive and were confined more to the surface layers than are those which occur in the rat. Fat deprivation caused little, if any, increase in water consumption in the guinea pig. Food intake, per unit of body weight, was higher in the deprived animals but the amount consumed per individual became less than that of the control animals as the deficiency became severe.