Serum Lipid Levels in Rats Fed Vegetable Oils with and without Cholesterol. ∗

Summary

1) In adult male albino rats tube feeding diets containing large quantities of vegetable fats of differing degrees of saturation and essential fatty acid content, suggests that serum cholesterol is elevated by increasing saturation and that dietary cholesterol augments this effect for the more saturated oils. Elevation appears transient for the less saturated oils but is more sustained for highly saturated fats. 2) Serum phospholipid values in general are parallel to serum cholesterol values. Only with feeding of fats with lowest I # was there an elevation of phospholipid levels to especially high values as compared with serum cholesterol. This effect is particularly striking for “lab. hardened” cottonseed oil fed with cholesterol. 3) Cholesterol/phospholipid ratio shows no difference between groups fed high I # oils with or without dietary cholesterol. The more saturated fats showed elevation of ratios in groups with added cholesterol above groups fed no cholesterol. Highly saturated fat fed alone had a lowering effect on the C/LP ratio.