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Relative Magnesium Deficiency in the Rat

Laboratory of Biomedical Sciences, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Bethesda, Maryland

In experiments originally designed to study vitamin E deficiency, pathological lesions consistent with magnesium deficiency were produced in male Fisher 344 rats and these were subsequently studied. The diet used contained, by chemical analysis, 1.16% calcium, 0.95% phosphorus, and 0.019% magnesium. Although the magnesium-deficient rats were asymptomatic and had normal weight gains, early in the experiment renal and cardiac calcification were produced. When the diet was supplemented to a magnesium level of 0.064%, no cardiac or renal lesions were found. The renal lesions, although comparable to previously described lesions of magnesium deficiency, had a more intense inflammatory reaction and abundant foreign body giant cells. Prominent noninflammatory proliferating lesions of the lining cells unaccompanied by inflammation were seen in the collecting tubules. The myocardial calcification was only rarely accompanied by an inflammatory reaction. No difference was seen between the cardiac and renal lesions found in magnesium-deficient and magnesium-deficient, vitamin E-deficient rats. The muscular degeneration of vitamin E deficiency was apparently intensified by magnesium deficiency. Depigmentation of the lower incisors beginning after 6 weeks occurred regularly in the vitamin E-deficient, magnesium-deficient animals.