Histidine as an Essential Nutrient for the Adult Rat

Abstract

Removal of histidine from the diets of adult albino rats resulted in a consistent loss of body nitrogen. The inclusion of non-essential amino acids in the diet, and the maintenance of nitrogen and caloric intakes by forcefeeding did not check this loss of nitrogen. The differences between these results and those of Burroughs, Burroughs and Mitchell ('40) may be due to differences in dietary vitamin or fat contents, dietary amino acid compositions or to differences in levels of nitrogen intake.