Production and Apparent Prevention of a Dietary Liver Cirrhosis in Rats

Abstract

Lillie, Daft and Sebrell, 1 among others in the past few years, have reported liver cirrhosis in animals given special diets. György and Goldblatt 2 reported liver injury as a regular complication in rats on a diet containing 10% casein and 22% fat. Necrosis or cirrhosis or both was observed from the 100th to 150th experimental days. They state “Addition of from 10 to 20 mg of choline daily reduced the incidence and severity of the liver injury but not to a great extent.” In a later paper György, Poling, and Goldblatt 3 refer to this work and state “These changes can be prevented to a large extent by the addition of casein to the diet, but this is accomplished more effectively by the combined oral administration of cystine and choline.” Blumberg and McCollum 4 reported that liver cirrhosis in rats on a diet containing 10% casein and 55 or 70% fat, occurring in 125 to 150 days on the lower fat intake and in 100 to 140 days on the higher, could be prevented by including 10 mg per gram of choline in the diet and could be slowed but not prevented by methionine at 25 mg per rat per day. Earle and Victor 5 reported liver cirrhosis in 14 to 27 days in rats given a diet containing 10% cystine. They also reported cirrhosis in one of a number of rats given a diet containing 5% cystine.

We wish to report at this time the consistent and fairly rapid production of liver cirrhosis in rats on a low protein, low fat diet with added cystine and the apparent prevention of the cirrhosis by choline, methionine and casein, singly or in combination.