i am planning to do some research work on malnutrition model of rat, so i want to create a general malnutrition model on rat. for this can i develop the malnutrition model of rat by providing half the amount of normal diet given to the normal group of animal ?
I hope special diets are available.. if you want you contact national institute of nutrition Hyderabad
i have come across different methods of developing malnutrition models but what i want to know is that, whether could i create it by restricting the amount of diet not the quality of diet.
Lai M, Lewis PD. Effects of undernutrition on myelination in rat corpus callosum. Journal of Comparative Neurology. 1980 Oct 15;193(4):973-82.
May be helpful.
Dear Laxman.
what kind of malnutrition you want to induce, is important. for instance energy, protein, vitamins or minerals deficiency diets can also be called as malnutiriton. in this case by providing the normal diet deficient in a particular nutrient can show you the impact.
by providing half the amount of diet there will be an induced malnutrition but effects due to a particular nutrient you cant make out.
again more importantly if you are keeping your animals in group/ pen then dominance can be seen. i.e. the animals which is strong will take more feed and those who are weak will be starving. so you have to maintain individual rats otherwise the level of malnutrition will be different for each animal.
one more important point is animal feed intake is different from animal to animal and also depends on the physiological state. then how you will fix the half of their normal diet.
so finally, you can induce malnutrition but it will be generalized. not specific. and you have to think about at least the above points for it.
so
rather i would suggest to go for the reduced nutrient level with adlib feeding or you may opt for individual rearing of the animals. but individual rearing is always space consuming and needs more equipment. according to your facilities you can frame the project
Cellular Response in Rats during Malnutrition at Various Ages
J. Nutr. 1966 89: 3 300-306
Rao G , Xia E , Nadakavukaren MJ , Richardson A
Department of Biological Sciences, Illinois State University, Normal 61761.
The Journal of Nutrition [1990, 120(6):602-609]
Dear Partha
i am really thankful to you for your suggestions. could you please suggest me how can i get low nutrient diet with specific nutrient value and another query is that whether it is possible to make such low nutrient value diet by myself without much workout or not.
Dear Laxman,
yes you can prepare the specific diet of your interest depending your study. there are some recommendations for rat feed. LIKE NRC for lab anmals. in india ICAR 2013 provides details of the diet composition of synthetic rat diet. and you can synthesize in your lab it self by using hand pelletizer or you can order some privet company to provide diet of your interest.
regarding diet composition, if you want to see the effect of protein malnutrition for an instance, the requirement of rat is almost 20%. then you can provide 15%, 10% or even 5% level and thus you can see the effect at different levels.
yes, thank you.
and one more thing can i use pearson square method (see attached PDF) to make low protein diet by myself? i need 20 % and 5% protein diet to feed rats.
I guess 5 % will be very less. And using excel for preparation of desire ration may solve ur problem. Pearson sq is easy but people use excel so that more no of ingredients can be used simultaneously.
Again in order to get low protein diet we hv to change the proteinaceous ingredient in the diet and we hv to replace with some low calorie and protein ingredient. Otherwise ur energy content will be very high while reducing the protein which can attract criticism
So plan accordingly
Regards
Partha
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