Influence of Dietary Carbohydrate on Duodenal Lesions in the Mouse

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
A complete purified diet which promotes normal growth in rats and mice, and in which glucose is the only carbohydrate, increases the incidence and severity of avillous hyperplasia, a lesion of the duodenal mucosa occasionally encountered in stock-fed mice. The lesion is a focal thickening, composed of tubules derived from the crypts of Lieberkühn, and villi are absent. A further increase in incidence and severity of the lesion occurs in pantothenic acid deficiency, and chronic ulceration may then be superimposed upon it. Sucrose, substituted for glucose in the complete purified diet, causes a moderate decrease in incidence of the lesion. Cornstarch substituted for glucose causes a marked decrease in incidence. In neither case is severity significantly affected. In the pantothenate-deficient diet, cornstarch substituted for glucose reduces incidence of the lesion to approximately that produced by the glucose-containing complete diet. Severity, though markedly reduced by cornstarch in the pantothenate-deficient diet, still remains well above levels for the complete diet. The incidence of chronic ulcer in the starch-containing pantothenate-deficient diet fell from 30% to 18%, but this was not statistically significant.