Dietary Mineral Interrelations as a Cause of Soft Tissue Calcification in Guinea Pigs

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Abstract
In contrast to the satisfactory results obtained in guinea pigs with the Reid-Briggs purified diet, lowering the magnesium content of this diet by approximately 70% resulted in poor growth, greatly enlarged and damaged kidneys, decreased serum magnesium, elevated serum phosphorus, a very large increase in the calcium content of the kidney and a lesser increase in the liver. When the calcium and phosphorus contents of the purified diet were lowered along with the magnesium and to the same extent, these deleterious effects did not occur. Neither lowering both magnesium and phosphorus, thus keeping calcium relatively high, nor lowering magnesium and calcium but keeping phosphorus high, produced nearly as marked effects on the average as in the case where magnesium alone was decreased. The high phosphorus diet did result, however, in marked kidney damage in some of the animals.