American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol 29, 1196-1203, Copyright © 1976 by The American Society for Clinical Nutrition, Inc

ORIGINAL RESEARCH COMMUNICATIONS

Comparison of patterns of fecal bile acid and neutral sterol between children and adults

CT Huang, JT Rodriguez, WE Woodward and BL Nichols

The patterns of bile acids and neutral sterols in the feces of five infants under 1 1/2 years of age, five children 4 years of age, and nine adult subjects without histroy of gastrointestinal diseases were studied by gas-liquid chromatography. Progressive changes in both bile acid and neutral sterol profiles were observed with maturation in infants and children. The patterns in the 4 year olds appraoched those observed in adults. In the infants under 1 1/2 years, cholic and chenodeoxycholic acids constituted 20.7 +/- 4.8% and 7.5 +/- 2.3% of the total bile acid in the stool, respectively. Deoxycholic and lithocholic acids made up only 4.4 +/- 1.7% and 2.9 +/- 1.0%, respectively. In the 4 year olds, the corresponding primary bile acids decreased to 3.9 +/- 1.9% and 5.6 +/- 4.3%, whereas secondary bile acids increased to 21.3 +/- 5.4% and 33.2 +/- 2.2%. Normal adults on regular mixed diets had only small amounts of primary bile acids (2.4 +/- 0.5% and 3.4 +/- 0.6% for cholic and chenodeoxycholic acids). The secondary bile acids in their feces were 34.3 +/- 2.2% and 38.9 +/- 2.0%, respectively. In the neutral sterol fraction, unmodified cholesterol decreased with age: 94.7 +/- 3.7%, 27.0 +/- 1.5% and 25.0 +/- 4.8% of the total neutral sterols in the feces for infants, children, and adults, respectively. On the other hand, coprostanol, the principal metabolite of cholesterol in humans, increased with age: 3.8 +/- 3.4%, 62.6 +/- 3.5% and 65.8 +/- 4.7% for the respective groups. Total bile acid excretion expressed as mg/day, also increased with age: 34 +/- 17, 47 +/- 17 and 293 +/- 69 (for five adult subjects only) for the respective groups. These differences disappeared, however, when the data were expressed as mg/kg of body weight per day: 3.8 +/- 2.0, 3.0 +/- 1.1, and 4.1 +/- 1.0 for the respective groups. Daily excretion of cholesterol metabolites, when expressed as mg/day increased with age: 139 +/- 38, 278 +/- 54 and 719 +/- 211 (for five adult subjects only) for the respective groups. The corresponding values after correction by body weight were 15.4 +/- 4.5, 17.9 +/- 3.0 and 10.3 +/- 3.0 mg/kg per day for the respective groups. The production of coprostanol was correlated with 7 alpha-dehydroxylation of cholic acid and chenodeoxycholic acid.

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