Biliary manganese excretion in conscious rats is affected by acute and chronic manganese intake but not by dietary fat.

We hypothesized that biliary excretion of manganese would be sensitive to acute and chronic variations in manganese and fat intakes. In the acute study, we gavaged rats with solutions containing 54Mn with either 0, 0.2, 1 or 10 mg Mn as MnCl2. We collected bile from unanesthesized rats that were simultaneously reinfused with bile acids. Total manganese excretion (from 0.5 to 6.5 h after dosing) was proportional to the acute doses (approximately 3.4% of doses). In the chronic study, weanling rats were fed diets containing 5 or 20 g corn oil/g diet and 0.49 or 72 micrograms Mn/g diet for 8 wk and then deprived of food for 12 h before bile collection. Manganese-deficient animals excreted only 0.7% as much manganese in bile as manganese-replete animals, but this reduction was not sufficient to prevent 50-80% reduction of tissue manganese concentrations. Moreover, biliary manganese excretion (calculated for 24 h) by both manganese-deficient and manganese-replete rats (deprived of food for previous 12 h) accounted for only 1% of their manganese intake on the previous day. Dietary fat and manganese concentrations had few effects on excretion of total or individual bile acids. Ours is the first report of biliary excretion of orally administered manganese by conscious rats.