Production of Ulcers in the Prostomach of Rats by Protein Restriction

Abstract

Büchner, Siebert and Molloy 1 found that marked ulceration could be produced in the prostomach of rats by stimulating the gastric secretion with histamine on starvation days. Some ulceration also occurred in rats starved every other day during a period of 17 days, without histamine. Bürkle-de la Camp 2 confirmed these results with histamine but did not observe ulcers in the prostomach of rats after short periods of simple starvation. The question of ulceration following starvation was of particular interest because irritation of the parapyloric region by the gastric secretion was believed to explain a peculiar and intense hunger sensation that repeatedly developed with starvation or protein restriction in the senior author of the present report (Hoelzel and Kleitman 3 ). Moreover, the observation that protein restriction led to an increase in the fasting gastric acidity (Hoelzel 4 ) made it appear that, if ulcers would develop in the prostomach of rats with starvation, ulceration might also occur as a result of protein restriction alone.

We first starved 35 rats every other day or during alternate 2-day periods and gave diets differing in their protein content to the various rats on feeding days. As a result, some rats seemed to develop ulcers in the prostomach regardless of the type of diet, but practically all rats that were intermittently starved and were fed diets low in protein for more than 2 weeks developed ulcers. No ulcers were found in the prostomach of any of 175 control rats.

The experimentation was therefore extended to determine the effect of more prolonged starvation, of protein restriction without starvation, and of adding salt, spices, alcohol, HCl or ant-acid salts to various diets.