Effects of various dietary animal and vegetable proteins on serum and biliary lipids and on gallstone formation in the hamster

The objective of this study was to determine the effects of various dietary animal (casein, bovine albumin and egg albumin) and vegetable (soy, cottonseed and peanut) proteins on serum and biliary constitutents and gallstone formation in the hamster. Eighty-four hamsters (60±5g) were assigned to either a control group (Purina rat chow) or to one of the 6 experimental groups. Experimental diets contained 20.0% protein. With the exception of hamsters fed egg albumin, gallstone incidence was greater among hamsters fed animal proteins. Hamsters fed egg albumin exhibited a lower concentration of total serum cholesterol and HDL-cholesterol than most of the other experimental groups. There were no significant differences between experimental groups for either HDL₃-cholesterol concentration or VLDL-LDL-cholesterol concentration. Bile acid concentrations within the vegetable protein-fed groups were significantly higher than within the animal protein-fed groups. Casein- and bovine albumin-fed hamsters showed a significantly higher percentage of biliary cholesterol in the bile fluid. As the percentage of biliary cholesterol increased, the percentage of bile acids was found to decrease. Preliminary reports of portions of this work were presented at the 74th Annual Meeting of the American Oil Chemist’s Society in May 1983 in Chicago.