Variations in Cardiovascular Sudanophilia With Changes in the Dietary Level of Protein

¹ From the Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health and the Department of Pathology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts

Previous reports indicate that both dietary protein and carbohydrate influence cholesteremia in rats. Therefore, experimentally induced incipient atherosclerosis was studied in rats offered diets containing five different levels of dietary protein. The protein level was altered at the expense of either sucrose or starch. Although there was a greater hypercholesteremia in rats fed sucrose as compared to starch with each level of protein at the end of 3 weeks, this difference was not maintained during the 17-week study. However, inadequate or excessive levels of dietary protein were found to contribute to an increased degree of cardiovascular sudanophilia in both males and females, irrespective of the kind of carbohydrate in the diet.