title: Body weight and food intake at early estrus of rats on a high-fat diet.
abstract: Body weight, food intake, and age at vaginal opening and estrus were studied for two groups of weanling rats (age 21 days), fed on high-fat (24.6% by weight) and low-fat (5.0%) diets. Fat was substituted isocalorically for carbohydrate in the high-fat diet. The high-fat rats had estrus at 33.3 +/- 0.8 days, significantly earlier (P less than 0.001) than the age at estrus, 37.4 +/- 0.7 days, of the low-fat rats. Estrus was simultaneous with vaginal opening in 81% of the high-fat rats, in comparison to 48% of the low-fat rats. The caloric intake per 100 g of body weight of the high-fat and low-fat rats did not differ at vaginal opening or at estrus, whereas the two groups differed significantly at both events in age, body weight, absolute food intake (g/day), and relative food intake (g/100 g of body weight per day) and absolute caloric intake (calories/day). Caloric intake/100 g of body weight as a function of chronological age first increased and then decreased steadily before estrus for both high-fat and low-fat rats. The findings support Kennedy's hypothesis that a food intake signal, now further defined as caloric intake/100 g of body weight, is a signal for puberty, and are in accord with the hypothesis that a critical body composition of fatness is essential for estrus in the rat, as in the human female.
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D000818:Animals; D001835:Body Weight; D002151:Calorimetry; D004041:Dietary Fats; D004971:Estrus / Q000187:drug effects*; D005247:Feeding Behavior / Q000187:drug effects*; D005260:Female; D008055:Lipids / Q000494:pharmacology; D011247:Pregnancy; D051381:Rats
chemical_list: D004041:Dietary Fats; D008055:Lipids