Immediate and late effects of premature weaning of rats to diets containing starch or low levels of sucrose.

Male, Sprague-Dawley rats were weaned prematurely (post-natal day 17) to a starch-based diet. Compared with normally-weaned rats, prematurely-weaned animals showed increases in the activities of hepatic glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) and malic enzyme (ME), and a fall in serum cholesterol level within 1 day. These enzymatic changes occurred sooner and were more pronounced when the diet of prematurely-weaned rats supplied 20% of the energy from sucrose, but the initial fall in serum cholesterol levels was smaller than in animals weaned prematurely to the control diet. Sucrose also led to an early rise in the activity of hepatic triokinase, but did not influence ketohexokinase or fructose-1-phosphate aldolase. Sucrose consumption resulted in an increase in lipogenesis in vivo in the liver and carcass and in serum cholesterol concentration on postnatal day 30, but animals weaned to the control diet were comparable with normally-weaned rats at the time. Early weaning led to elevation in the activities of hepatic G6PD and ME in 122-day-old rats, even though the control diet was fed from the age of 30 days. This response was not altered by the type of carbohydrate fed during the initial weaning period. Sucrose consumption during the weaning period did not exert long-term effects on the activities of hepatic fructolytic enzymes or in serum cholesterol levels.