FUNCTIONAL AND HISTOLOGIC STUDIES OF THE EFFECT OF FAT INGESTION UPON THE NORMAL AND DAMAGED LIVER

Abstract

Experiments on 13 dogs show that lipemia (spontaneous or experimental) causes a slight impairment of liver activity as shown by a retention of bromsulphalein in the blood. This amounts to 5-11% 15 min. after injection of the dye. There is no increase in urobilinogen excretion in the urine and no elevation of bilirubin in the blood. If lipemia is produced in a dog whose liver has been previously damaged with chloroform or CCl4, the retention of bromsulphalein amounts to 20-40%. Splenectomy and reticulo-endothelial cell blockade produce negligible disturbances in the removal of bromsulphalein from the blood. This is further evidence that this dye is removed from the blood almost entirely by the liver. Varying degrees of sustained lipemia were produced by feeding large amounts of cream to 8 dogs for 1-20 days; no appreciable amount of fat was taken up by the Kupffer cells. There are normally present in dogs considprable accumulations of fat in the biliary epithelium, both in the intrahepatic ducts and in the gall bladder. No correlation could be made between the quantity of fat in the bile duct epithelium and diet, in dogs on a high fat diet, dogs on a low fat diet, or dogs starved for 1-4 days.