Short-term feeding of unsaturated versus saturated fat in the production of atherosclerosis in the rat

Abstract

Complex diets containing either 40% peanut oil, corn oil, or butter were fed to weanling rats for 3 months. The rats fed the peanut oil-containing diets developed intimal spindle cell lesions similar in many respects to early human atherosclerotic lesions. Rats receiving the butter-containing diets developed foam cell lesions which do not resemble human atherosclerosis. Under electron microscopy the spindle cells were of the smooth muscle type. They appeared more undifferentiated than the smooth muscle cells seen in aortic lesions in rats fed butter-containing diets for 12 months in a previous experiment. The primitive nature of the cells in the present experiment may have been due to their age, their unsaturated fatty acid environment, or other factors. The difference in serum fatty acids was possibly an important factor determining the type of lesion produced, since both the peanut oil- and butter-fed rats had much the same degree of hyperlipemia as shown by similar serum cholesterol and triglyceride levels. Both the peanut oil- and butter-fed rats showed a sharp drop in the relative percentage of serum arachidonic acid, even though the peanut oil-fed group had excessively high levels of serum linoleates. The absolute level of serum arachidonic acid, however, changed very little.