Turnover of chylomicrons in the rat

Sammanfattning: Mechanisms involved in the clearance of chylomicrons and aspects of the interactions at the vascular endothelium were studied in the rat.The poly-anion heparin, known to release lipoprotein lipase (LPL) from the vascular endothelium, enhanced the clearance of chylomicrons. Five minutes after heparin injection, the clearance of chylomicron triglycerides and retinyl esters was markedly accelerated. The rapid initial clearance was followed by a slower clearance of heavily lipolyzed chylomicrons. In contrast, one hour after heparin the clearance of both triglycerides and retinyl esters was retarded. This decreased removal of chylomicrons coincided with a decrease in the heparin releasable LPL activity, indicating that the previous release to plasma by heparin had resulted in net loss of functional LPL in the tissues.The poly-cation protamine released hepatic lipase and some LPL from their binding sites to plasma. One hour after protamine, plasma triglyceride levels were increased, indicating that chylomicron removal was impeded. It has been speculated that protamine inactivates LPL in vivo, but this was not the case. Ten minutes after injection of protamine normal amounts of LPL could be released by heparin. Thus, the accumulation of plasma triglycerides was not due to a rapid inactivation of LPL by protamine.LPL has specificity for sn-1,3-ester bonds. To investigate if this specificity is important in vivo, a lipid emulsion containing medium-chain fatty acids (MCFA) in the sn-1,3-position and long-chain fatty acids (LCFA) in the sn-2-position was synthesized, as well as an emulsion containing MCFA-TG mixed with LCFA-TGs (MMM/LLL). In vitro experiments showed large differences in the hydrolysis of the emulsions, but in vivo there were only small differences in the metabolism.To further study if lipid emulsions are cleared by the same mechanisms as chylomicrons, an emulsion was made by the same formulation as Intralipid® with addition of 3H-triolein and ,4C-cholesteryl ester. As measured by the removal of cholesteryl esters, the emulsion was cleared at the same rate as was chylomicrons. The triglyceride label was, however, removed more slowly from the emulsion droplets than from chylomicrons. Together with the lower recirculation of labeled free fatty acids (FFA) in plasma, this suggests that there was less lipolysis of the emulsion. The current view that removal of lipid emulsions in vivo is mainly dependent on LPL-mediated hydrolysis might thus not be correct.To further analyze the metabolism of chylomicrons, a compartmental model was developed. In this process, the distribution volume for chylomicrons was shown to be larger than the blood volume, a model for the metabolism of FFA in the rat was validated, and the full tissue distribution of injected chylomicrons was determined. According to the model, about half of the triglyceride label was removed from the circulation together with the core label while for the emulsion this number was about 80 %. In fasted rats all labeled fatty acids appeared to mix with the plasma FFA pool, while in fed rats about one-fifth of the fatty acids did not mix with the FFA but was apparently channeled directly to tissue metabolism.