Effects of Long-Continued Cholesterol Feeding in Rats

Abstract

Long-continued ingestion of cholesterol at a high level has been studied in relation to growthefficiency of food utilizationresistance to infection, and deposition of cholesterol in tissues. Cholesterol-fed rats grew less well, ate less foodand utilized their food less efficiently than controls receiving the same synthetic diet without cholesterol. These effects are most probably related to the large deposits of cholesterol esters found in the livers of the cholesterol-fed rats, since they were not observed in a group of rats (receiving a naturalfood diet plus cholesterol) in which the deposits of cholesterol were relatively small. Except in a small series complicated by a probable vitamin G deficiency rats fed diets high in cholesterol for long periods of time showed no more resistance to the paratyphoid organism Salmonella dansyz than controls fed exactly the same diet without cholesterol. Freetotal and combined cholesterol have been determined in various tissues of the rats used in the foregoing studies. Decreases in the cholesterol of liver, adrenal and lung and increases in the cholesterol of the entire carcass (except for liver and intestinal tract) accompanied the paratyphoid infection. No changes were observed in kidney cholesterol. Increases in all cholesterol fractions of all tissues studied followed cholesterol feeding, but the increase was large only in the combined cholesterol of the liver.