Abstract
It has been generally known that feeding rats the low protein diet results in an accumulation of lipids in the liver. Fatty livers of rats caused by the imbalance of amino acids in the body were reported to be produced by excessive or deficient sulfur-containing amino acids (1, 2) as well as by deficient lysine and threonine in the diet (3). It was reported by Ashida that the extent of lipid accumulation in the liver of rats was more marked with albumin than with casein as a dietary source of protein, and that the increase of sulfur-containing amino acids content in the low protein diet activates the development of fatty liver (2). Moreover, he showed that the variation in the mixing ratio of methionine and cystine in the artificial low protein diet did not significantly affect the extent of the hepatic neutral fat.
Methionine and cysteine are precursor amino acids for the physiological synthesis of coenzyme A in the mammalian species.
Since coenzyme A correlates essentially the metabolic process of carbohydrates, protein, fat and steroid substances as well as the detoxication mechanism including the acetylation, effects of the agents relating to the endogenous formation of coenzyme A on the hepatic lipids accumulation were studied in this experiment.
In the present experiments a fatty liver was produced by feeding rats the low protein diet in an attempts to know the possible development of fatty livers caused by the imbalance of amino acids, to compare the prophylactic and therapeutic effects of pantethine, calcium pantothenate, methionine and cysteine on the fatty liver and to establish some correlation, if possible, between the activity of coenzyme A and the level of lipid in the liver.
