Skip to main content
ARS Home » Plains Area » Houston, Texas » Children's Nutrition Research Center » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #81310
Title: EFFECT OF NEONATAL DIETARY CHOLESTEROL DEPRIVATION IN PIGS WITH GENETICALLYHIGH OR LOW PLASMA CHOLESTEROL ON PLASMA LIPIDS AND EARLY ATHEROGENESIS

Author
item GRAF, TANYA - TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY
item BOLEMAN, SCOTT - TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY
item KROOK, LENNART - CORNELL UNIVERSITY
item SU, DAI-RONG - BAYLOR COLL OF MEDICINE
item Mersmann, Harry
item SAVELL, JEFF - TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY
item POND, WILSON - USDA ARS CNRC

Submitted to: Nutrition Research
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 9/1/1998
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary: The concept of whether to feed newborn infants a high- or low-cholesterol diet is still controversial. Some suggest that a high-cholesterol, high- fat diet will provide a later-life benefit, in that when the infant grows up, he will have lower blood cholesterol levels in response to high cholesterol and fat in his diet than if he had been deprived of cholesterol lin the newborn period. We decided to test the hypothesis that depriving newborn piglets (a laboratory model for the human infant) of cholesterol and fat would result in higher blood cholesterol and more artery plaque (which can lead to heart attacks) in response to consuming a high- cholesterol, high-fat diet after weaning. We tested this theory in pigs genetically bred for both high and low cholesterol. We found that total cholesterol was higher in older pigs that had been deprived of cholesterol as newborns for the first 28 days of life, compared to pigs who had consumed high cholesterol during that time. However, the early deprivatio period did not increase the incidence or severity of artery plaque later in life. The incidence of plaque-related problems was not affected by genetic background.

Technical Abstract: Sixty-eight neonatal female pigs from populations selected for high (HG) or low (LG) plasma total cholesterol (TC) were used in two experiments to test the hypothesis that dietary cholesterol deprivation during the first 4 or 8 weeks of postnatal life increases plasma TC and exacerbates early aortic atherogenic lesions following free access to a high fat (15%)-high cholesterol (0.5%) diet from 4 or 8 weeks to 5 or 6 mo of age. Pigs were removed from their dam at one d of age and given free access to a modified sow-milk replacer diet containing 0 or 0.5% crystalline cholesterol. Pigs were deprived of cholesterol to d 28 or 56 and half were fed 0.5% cholesterol to d 28, then deprived of cholesterol to d 56. All pigs were fed a 15% fat-0.5% cholesterol diet from 57 d to 6 mo (experiment 1) or 5 mo (experiment 2) of age. Overall TC and HDL-C were greater in HG than in LG pigs (P<0.01) and less in pigs deprived of cholesterol from d 1 to 56 than in those fed cholesterol from d 1 to 28 (P<0.05). Dietary cholestero deprivation for 28 or 56 d neonatally, did not affect the incidence of aortic atherogenic lesions. Fourteen of 44 pigs deprived of cholesterol vs 8 of 24 pigs fed 0.5% cholesterol had myogenic fiber degeneration in the aorta. The incidence of aortic myogenic fiber degeneration was similar in HG and LG pigs. It is concluded that early aortic atherogenic lesions induced in young adult female HG and LG pigs by a high dietary cholesterol challenge during the postweaning period are not exacerbated by dietary cholesterol deprivation in neonatal life.