Congenital and Adult Intestinal Lactase Deficiency

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Although lactase was identified in mammalian small intestine more than 40 years ago,1 the enzyme was commonly believed to be secreted into intestinal fluid until Crane and his colleagues2 3 4 established that disaccharidases are constituents of the brush-border membrane at the surface of the intestinal cell. Predictably, this finding, coupled with the increasing simplicity of peroral intestinal biopsy technics, heralded the early reports of lactase deficiency in man in 1963.5 , 6 It is now accepted that dietary disaccharides are hydrolyzed efficiently on the luminal surface of intestinal cells to yield monosaccharide products such as glucose and galactose that are then transported across . . .