Effect of fat levels in the paired-fed diets on accumulation of hexachlorobenzene in dams and its transfer to pups through milk in rats

Abstract

It has been reported that the organochlorine environmental pollutants such as PCB and the dioxins transfer to infants through mother's milk and influence their status of health in the human. In the previous paper, we showed that the high-fat diet enhanced the accumulation of hexachlorobenzene (HCB) in the adipose tissues of dams and reduced the transfer to pups through the milk. As the dams were fed ad libitum in the experiment, the intakes of HCB, energy and nutrients were different among the control, high-fat and low-fat diet groups. In this paper, as the dams were fed the diet by paired feeding, the intakes of HCB, energy, and nutrients except lipid and carbohydrate were not different among the three diet groups. Even if energy intakes were the same among the diet groups, the high-fat diet enhanced the HCB accumulation in the dams’ body and reduced its transfer to the pups through the milk. In the infants of the dams fed the high-fat diet, their adipose tissues were growing and HCB accumulations in the tissues were increasing following the growth. As a result, the amounts of HCB in the tissues were not different among the three diet groups just before weaning. It was suggested that the high-fat diet inhibited the transfer of the organochlorine environmental pollutants accumulated in the dam's body to the suckling pups through the milk.