Amino Acid Mixtures in the Treatment of Experimental Dietary Cirrhosis in the Rat

Abstract

It has been demonstrated that cirrhosis of the liver can be produced regularly in the growing rat by diets low in protein and also deficient in choline or methionine.1-5The addition of choline or methionine to these experimental diets retards the development of the disease. However, once the disease is fully established the addition of these lipotropic factors (choline or methionine) to the low-casein diet fails to bring about adequate repair and regeneration of the liver.5,6In earlier studies7it was shown that after producing cirrhosis in rats with a diet containing 4% casein, supplementation of this diet with relatively high concentrations of choline or methionine for four months induced partial clearing of fat from the cirrhotic livers and caused the death rate to decrease but failed to promote repair and regeneration of the liver. The animals remained stunted and feeble. By contrast, in rats fed a