Nutritional Effects on the Gastric Mucosa of the Rat

Abstract

While fundic lesions can be produced on deficient diets, their cause probably lies in inanition rather than any specific relation of a food factor to the structure of the fundic mucosa. Since the maintenance of fundic mucosa is thus removed from the narrower field of nutrition, other mechanisms involving other fields of physiology seem indicated (vascular, neurological, etc.). The rat's rumen responds to some deficient diets with a quite reproducible reaction of hyperplasia and hyperkeratosis. While these lesions have been ascribed to deficiencies of both vitamin A and members of the B complex, it is shown that they can be produced in the presence of ample vitamin A in the diet, and prevented on a totally B-deficient diet by increasing the (purified) casein content to 27%. The data suggest the possibility of a specific factor important for the prevention of lesions of the rumen which may be either an amino acid labile to commonly employed methods of purifying casein, or an unknown factor associated with crude casein. To clarify the nature of the postulated specific deficiency the role of both food intake and diet composition will have to be subjected to more exacting study.