Abstract
It was demonstrated that the toxicities of various drugs are often related to the rate of metabolism of the drugs and to the activity of drug-metabolizing enzymes of liver microsomes (1-6). In a previous paper, it was briefly reported that the oxidation of pentobarbital, strychnine and meprobamate was markedly decreased in the immature female rats by the feeding on low protein diet or non-protein diet (7). The purpose of present study is to investigate the effect of high and low protein diet on the toxicities of various drugs in relation to the drug-metabolizing activities of liver microsomes, and to investigate whether the alternation in the drug-metabolizing activities may be correlated to the activities of microsomal NADPH-linked electron transport system. Since there are marked sex differences in the alternations in the activities of drug-metabolizing enzymes in the rats under some unphysiological states, the effect of diets of different protein contents on the toxicity and metabolism of drugs was comparatively investigated in male and female rats (8-12).
