Radiographic analysis of the effect of dietary fibers on rat colonic transit time.

The effect of different fiber sources on colonic transit time was charted using serial radiographs. Sixty male Sprague-Dawley rats, 10 rats per group, were provided with either a fiber-free control diet or the control diet uniformly diluted to provide 8% dietary fiber from guar, pectin, cellulose, wheat bran, or oat bran. At surgery, radiopaque markers were inserted at defined distances in the mesentary closest to the large bowel. Three weeks postsurgery, the animals were intubated with 0.5 ml of a radiopaque marker, and radiographs were taken at 15-min intervals. Of the two poorly fermented fibers, cellulose was as slow as and wheat bran was faster than the fiber-free controls at five out of the six bowel segments measured. The fermentable fibers (pectin, guar, and oat bran) were fast through some bowel segments and slow through others. This study provides in vivo data on colonic transit time and shows that neither 24-h fecal weight nor total transit time is a good predictor of the rate of transit through particular gut segments.