The Effect of Low Fat Diets on Serum Lipids of Rats

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Abstract
The serum lipids of rats reared on a fat-free diet have a lower degree of unsaturation than do the serum lipids of rats on stock diet. Young animals tend to have a lower iodine number of the serum lipids than do normal adult animals on the same diet. When the food intake of the animals on stock diet was so restricted as to hold their weight to the level of the average of the fat-free group, it was found that the degree of unsaturation of the total lipids of the serum was greater than in the normal animals on the same diet unrestricted. Animals given small quantities of the methyl esters of linolic acid sufficient to effect a clinical cure of the unsaturated fatty acid deficiency disease were found to have a slight but definite increase in the iodine number of the total lipids. Esters of oleic acid given in fairly large quantities to animals on the fat deficient diet were able to cause a definite increase in the iodine values of the total lipids, even though they effected only a partial clinical cure.