Incidence of Renal Necrosis in Weanling Rats following Short Term Ingestion of Alcohol by Gerald

In the accompanying paper (1) it is reported that rats maintained on a diet rnargiI~ in lipotropic activity developed fatty infiltration and fibrosis of the liver when given 15 per cent alcohol in lieu of drinking water or an isocaloric equivalent of sucrose over a period of 7 months. Since the hepatic changes could be prevented by supplementing the diet with choline or methionine, the possibility was considered that both alcohol and sucrose had induced a relative choline deficiency by increasing the number of calories consumed. However, it was found that restricting the caloric intake at the expense of sucrose in the basal diet did not abolish the effects of alcohol, although it did in the case of sucrose supplements. This suggested that (1) if alcohol increased the choline requirement it did not do so by augmenting the caloric intake, and (2) the modes of action of alcohol and sucrose were probably different, despite the similaxity of the hepatic lesions they produced. I t was pointed out that the effectiveness of lipotropic substances in preventing fatty infiltration and fibrosis of the liver did not conclusively establish the validity of the hypothesis that alcohol had created a relative choline deficiency. In particular the possibility was not excluded that alcohol had exerted a direct toxic action and that choline and methionine had merely hastened the removal of hepatic fat, as in the case of carbon tetrachloride poisoning (2).