Six patients with carcinoma of the esophagus (proximal and middle one-third) underwent intravenous artificial nutrition (TPN) both during preoperative radiation therapy and during the periods preceding radical surgery. From admission on, their conditions were evaluated and followed according to an established pattern of assessment of the nutritional state. Besides a certain improvement of the nutritional state at the level both of the muscular and adipose tissues, the results showed the reliability and the reproducibility of the serial anthropometric indexes adopted. With regard to the biochemical indexes most commonly utilized for evaluating the nutritional state, the results confirmed the doubts already casted about the reliability of a great part of these indexes when applied to this specific kind of patients.
Two lots of weanling Sprague-Dawley rats were fed, for 30 days, diets at 10 and 14% protein content. Each lot consisted of 4 groups fed on: (a) a gluten diet; (b) a gluten diet continuously supplemented with casein; (c) a gluten diet on odd days, and a gluten diet supplemented with casein, ad libitum, on even days; (d) a gluten diet on odd days and a pair-fed gluten diet supplemented with casein on even days. Growth-curves, PER, NPU, NGI, and carcass and liver composition have been studied. The results show that the recovery rate in the days of supplementation is dependent on the level of nitrogen intake rather than on the balance occurring between non-supplemented and supplemented diets, according to whether the latter is offered ad libitum or pair-fed. At the cellular level, the count of nuclei and the DNA-P/nucleus content in liver cells show that in groups at lower protein intake, the different ways of supplementation affect cellular maturation, while in groups with higher protein intake it is cellular multiplication that is affected.
The effects of periodicity of eating on the acetyl-CoA carboxylase activity in the liver of meal-eating and nibbling rats have been studied. The meal-eater rats received the diet in 2 daily feedings via stomach tube. The results obtained have pointed out that in the meal-eaters, which show a higher fat content in the carcass, the liver acetyl-CoA carboxylase is already in its aggregate active form independently of the in vitro preincubation, differently from what happens in the nibblers.
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