The Presence of Lactose in Intestinal Tissue

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Abstract
When lactose-1-C14 was injected into duodenal, jejunal, or ileal segments of the small intestine of rats, radioactivity was shown autoradiographically to be present in the mucosal and muscularis cells of all of the segments. The muscularis layer of all 3 segments appeared to contain similar amounts of the radiocarbon; the mucosal cells of the duodenum contained the least carbon-14, whereas those of the ileum contained the most. The goblet cells averaged more radioactivity than adjacent mucosal cells, but only in the jejunal region was this difference consistently significantly different. On the basis of relative accumulation of C14-labeled lactose in various segments of the gastrointestinal tract of rats, it appears unlikely that the action of lactose in causing increased calcium absorption is due to the formation of a lactose-calcium complex.