Use of oral tolerance tests to investigate disaccharide digestion in neonatal foals.
Oral tolerance tests were performed on 13 neonatal foals to determine their ability to digest disaccharides on d 1, 3 and 5 postpartum. Foals were assigned randomly to treatments consisting of 20% (wt/vol) solutions of either maltose, lactose, or sucrose, dosed at 1 g/kg of BW, or glucose, dosed at .5 g/kg of BW. After a 2-h fast, an initial blood sample was collected via jugular catheter. Foals were administered the appropriate solution orally, and blood was collected every 15 min for 1 h and then every 30 min for 3 h. Plasma glucose increased after dosing with lactose or glucose but not with sucrose. Plasma glucose concentrations increased slightly on d 3 and 5 in foals dosed with maltose. These findings suggest that although lactose is well digested by neonatal foals, maltose is digested only slightly, and sucrose is not digested by d 5. Results of this experiment indicate that maltose and sucrose would not be suitable for inclusion in artificial diets for foals less than 1 wk old. Oral tolerance tests could be useful for determining the ability of premature or sick foals with lactose intolerance to digest alternate carbohydrate sources.
Rice
L
L
Department of Biochemistry, University of Florida, Gainesville 32611.
Ott
E A
EA
Beede
D K
DK
Wilcox
C J
CJ
Johnson
E L
EL
Lieb
S
S
Borum
P
P
D000821:Animal Feed; D000818:Animals; D000831:Animals, Newborn / Q000502:physiology*; D001786:Blood Glucose / Q000032:analysis; D004063:Digestion; D004187:Disaccharides / Q000378:metabolism*; D005260:Female; D005951:Glucose Tolerance Test / Q000662:veterinary; D006736:Horses / Q000502:physiology*; D007785:Lactose / Q000378:metabolism; D008297:Male; D008320:Maltose / Q000378:metabolism; D011897:Random Allocation; D013395:Sucrose / Q000378:metabolism
D001786:Blood Glucose; D004187:Disaccharides; D013395:Sucrose; D008320:Maltose; D007785:Lactose