On the lipotropic action of lipocaic.

Abstract

Summary. Fatty livers were produced in albino rats by the procedure indicated by MCHENRY and coworkers. A casein level of 20% in the experimental diet given in the last week of the experiments instead of 10% was found to give a more marked and regular response of the lipotropic substances tested. A supplement of 2% lipocaic prepared according to DBAGSTEDT was lipotropically active against this type of fatty liver. The effect cannot be due to choline. A supplement of 2% AFL‐factor prepared according to CHAIKOFF was without any effect. The activity of lipocaic observed in our experiments is therefore not due to a proteolytic effect such as it was found by CHAIKOFF for the AFL‐factor in experiments with depancreatized dogs. Lipocaic preparations were stable to refluxing at pH 5 or 7 for 1 hour; the effect was slightly diminished by refluxing at pH 9 for 1 hour. A supplement of 0.25% inositol reduced the liver fat to the same degree as 2% lipocaic. An amount of inositol corresponding to that found in the lipocaic preparations did not seem to exert the full lipotropic effect of lipocaic. It is therefore probable that lipocaic contains an unknown substance, which exerts a lipotropic effect under the conditions of the experiment. Experiments with other tissue extracts such as meat and liver extracts demonstrated that they also had some lipotropic effect, although less marked than lipocaic.