Neonatal Piglet Tissue Compositional Dose Response to Dietary Docosahexaenoic And Arachidonic Acids.

The long chain polyunsaturats (LCP), docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), and arachidonic acid (ARA) are associated with perinatal neural development; however, optimal dietary levels are not established. Tissue responses in newborn piglets after a 28-day feeding with supplemental DHA and ARA were examined. Supplemental DHA/ARA (mg/mg) were 0, 1, 2, and 5 times those used in U.S. infant formulas respectively (Control Diet: 0/0 ; Diet 1: 17/34, Diet 2: 34/68, Diet 5: 85/170 per 100 kcal formula). Dietary DHA/ARA resulted in 1.1-25.8 fold increases in DHA in brain, retina, liver, adipose tissue, plasma and erythrocyte than the control (p for trend <0.01). Tissue ARA responded positively (1.1-6.0 fold) to dietary ARA only in liver, adipose tissue, plasma and erythrocyte (p for trend <0.05), ARA in brain and retina was unresponsive to dietary supplementation. Plasma/erythrocyte DHA was linearly associated with DHA in neural (brain and retina) and visceral (liver and adipose) tissues. Plasma/erythrocyte ARA did not correlate to neural ARA. Only plasma ARA was linearly associated with liver ARA (p=0.02) and adipose ARA (p<0.01), and erythrocyte correlated with adipose ARA (p<0.01). In conclusion, dietary DHA supplementation affords an effective strategy for enhancing tissue DHA, ARA in visceral but not neural tissues was sensitive to dietary ARA. This project was partially supported by a grant from Mead-Johnson Nutritionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]