Prolonged feeding of ethanol to the young growing guinea pig: 1. The effect on protein synthesis in the afterloaded right ventricle measured in vitro.

Newly weaned guinea pigs weighing approximately 300 g were fed normal laboratory diets with drinking water containing 5.5% ethanol as the sole source of liquid for periods of 8-11 weeks. Growth was continuous with this diet. After this period, hearts were removed from anesthetized animals and perfused for 3 hr in a perfusion system in which pressure may be induced in the right ventricle in the face of constant coronary flow. Protein synthesis, assayed from the incorporation of labeled lysine and phenylalanine, was compared to that in hearts from identically treated weight-matched control animals who had been drinking water without ethanol. Protein synthesis in hearts from ethanol-drinking animals was decreased in the right ventricles exposed to normal pulmonary pressure, but was unchanged in the contracting but not working left ventricles. The data suggest that prolonged exposure even to low levels of ethanol in the growing animal may interfere with the cardiac protein synthetic response to the normal work stress.