Abstract
The gallstone formation has been studied from the view point of the reverse process which is solubilization mechanism of gallstones in bile. We employed two bile salts (chenodeoxycholate, ursodeoxycholate) in our experiments, because chenodeoxycholate can solubilize cholesterol well and in contrast, ursodeoxycholate poorly in their micellar solutions. The studies lead us to conclude that bile salt micelles play the major role in chenodeoxy-cholate-rich bile, while lecithin (PC) bilayer vesicles are instrumental in ursodeoxycholate-rich bile, in dissolving processes of cholesterol. When the cholesterol concentration exceeded its solubility limit in the bile salts and PC mixed micellar solution, cholesterol were solubilized by the following mechanisms in bile. a) Excess PC is arranged in an orderly fashion in the aqueous solution since the surrounding of surfactants is bile salts.
