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Medical Research Council, Dunn Human Nutrition Unit, Wellcome Trust/MRC Building, Cambridge CB2 2XY [A. J. C., S. A. B.], and Pollock and Pool Ltd., Reading RG5 4DX [J. R. A. P.], United Kingdom
| ABSTRACT |
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| Introduction |
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| Materials and Methods |
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To determine the effects of protein in Protocol 1, 12 healthy male volunteers (age range of 2574 years) were studied over three 15-day periods. A 60-gram red meat, 420-gram red meat, and vegetarian diet containing the same amount of protein as the 420-gram red meat diet were studied. The vegetarian diet had the meat substituted with egg, peanuts, low fat cheese, kidney beans, and green lentils. The rest of the diet was balanced to match the energy, fat, and fiber content of the other two diets; in particular, white bread was used instead of wholemeal bread. Each diet was constant in fat (30% total energy) and fiber (as nonstarch polysaccharides 2326 grams). The 60-gram meat diet contained 65-gram protein, and the high meat and vegetarian diets contained 143150-gram protein. A glucose polymer drink and cream were substitutes for meat during the low meat diets to equalize the energy content. To determine the effects of haem and inorganic iron in Protocol 2, 9 healthy male volunteers (age range of 2474 years) were studied, also over three 15-day periods. A 60-gram red meat diet (containing 9.9 mg/day iron) was used throughout. A supplement of 7.8-mg haem iron, as 50-gram liver pate and 70-gram blood sausage, to match the iron content of the 420-gram red meat diet (17.7 mg/day) was given in a second dietary period. A daily 300-mg ferrous gluconate tablet (35 mg of ferrous iron) supplement was given in a third. Protein contents of the three diets were 66, 76, and 66 grams, respectively, per day.
Fecal samples were collected daily, weighed, X-rayed, and stored at -20°C. Recovery of radio-opaque fecal markers was noted and used to monitor compliance and calculate Mean Transit Time (5) . Mean fecal weights were determined during the final 4 days of each diet and corrected for fecal marker output by multiplication of mean daily weight by the ratio of marker output to marker input. Previous studies have shown that increases in fecal NOC occur within 5 days of dietary change (4) , and to allow for adaptation after dietary cross-overs, samples from the first 10 days (equivalent to three to five transits through the gut) of each dietary arm were not analyzed for NOC. Fecal samples collected on days 10, 13, and 15 were immediately frozen on dry ice and processed within 48 h. Samples were diluted 4-fold with ultra-pure deionized water, homogenized in a stomacher (Colworth 3500, Seward), and centrifuged at 4500 rpm for 10 min. Each supernatant was filtered and stored at -20°C before being analyzed for NOC and nitrite by the release of NO after chemical denitrosation of each compound via Thermal Energy Analysis (6) . Results for NOC are presented as ATNC expressed as the concentration of the common unit of structure, NNO, as µg/kg. The sample was then treated with sulfamic acid to remove nitrite and reinjected into the refluxing solvent to determine NO released from NOC only. Nitrite was calculated by the difference between the two results. During each analysis, 160 ng of N-nitroso dipropylamine was injected into the system as an internal standard to check recovery. Acidified supernatants were stored at -20°C and analyzed for ammonia (Ammonia diagnostic kit 171; Sigma, Poole, United Kingdom).
Statistical analysis was carried out using Excel for Microsoft Office 2001 and SPSS version 10.0. Two-way ANOVA was used to determine the effects of diet and differences between individual responses. When an effect of diet was apparent by two-way ANOVA, paired Students t tests were carried out. Pearsons product moment correlation coefficient was used to detect relationships between variables. We also analyzed the data treating "volunteer" as a random effect. There were no differences in the effect of diet between these two statistical models. Two-tailed probability results < 0.05 significance level were regarded as significant. From repeat analyses on subjects on high (420 grams) meat diets, the within-person SD was 56 µg/day, and setting
= 0.05 and ß as 0.2, the study had sufficient power to detect 65- and 75-µg differences in ATNC between study periods with 12 and 9 subjects, respectively.
The recoveries of fecal markers (97.9 and 97.7% for Protocols 1 and 2, respectively) and correlation between dietary nitrogen and 24-h urinary nitrogen (r = 0.986 and 0.709 for Protocols 1 and 2, respectively), from samples collected on days 10, 13, and 15, suggest a high degree of dietary compliance.
Three volunteers did not wish to take part in the full protocol, so these individuals were randomized to the low meat and low meat supplemented with haem dietary periods. Therefore, results for inorganic iron are only available for 6 subjects.
| Results and Discussion |
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Taking account of five previous studies from our laboratory, the influence of red meat on fecal ATNC excretion has now been shown in >60 healthy male volunteers, all of whom were studied in a metabolic suite where diet could be carefully controlled (2, 3, 4 , 7 , 8) . The direction of an increase with increasing red meat is consistent in nearly all individuals. Furthermore, there is a dose response, which occurs at normal levels of 120-, 240-, and 420-gram red meat/day (2 , 3) . At the higher levels of red meat consumption, concentrations of ATNC are as the same order as the concentration of tobacco-specific NOC in cigarette smoke (4) . We have shown previously that fermentable carbohydrate does not change fecal ATNC output (4 , 7 , 8) and that it is red, not white, meat which is responsible for the effect (2) . It has been established that ATNC levels arise endogenously, because high red meat diets containing 600-gram meat per day provide only 13 µg of preformed ATNC per day (7) .
We postulated that an increase in meat consumption would increase the amount of nitrogen residue reaching the large intestine, so that the substrates for nitrosating agents from protein metabolism and bacterial dissimilatory nitrate metabolism, and hence NOC levels, would increase (9) . Fecal ammonia, also implicated in carcinogenesis, increased in this study in response to increased meat, as expected (9) . To determine whether the reason for the increase in endogenous N-nitrosation arising from increased meat consumption was attributable to protein, we fed 143150 grams of protein from mainly red meat or vegetarian sources in Protocol 1. However, endogenous NOC production increased when subjects were on the red meat diet, but the protein from vegetarian sources had no effect.
Our previous work was based on the supposition that N-nitrosation was brought about by bacteria colonizing the large intestine, because a study with germ-free rats showed that a normal microbial flora was required for endogenous N-nitrosation to occur (10)
. A number of facultative and anaerobic bacteria from healthy humans, including those from feces, are able to catalyze the formation of NOCs at neutral pH via nitrate reductase (11
, 12) . The activity of this enzyme has been positively correlated with nitrosating ability (13)
, shown to vary
8-fold among individuals (14)
, and could thus explain individual variability in fecal ATNC levels. In this study, ATNC levels in some people were increased by as much as seven times over baseline values, whereas other levels only increased by
1.5 times (Figs. 1
and 2)
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Red meat also contains iron, which is an integral part of bacterial nitrate reductase and could also explain the effect of red meat. Rats harboring a human fecal flora in the intestine and fed human diets showed a 3-fold increase in fecal nitrate reductase activity with a 3-fold increase in meat consumption (15)
. However, in Protocol 2, supplements of either haem iron or inorganic ferrous iron showed that only haem iron increased endogenous N-nitrosation. N-nitrosohaemoglobin and N-nitrosomyoglobin can be formed from the reaction of nitrite with hemoglobin and myoglobin (16)
. NO has also been shown to react directly with hemoglobin and myoglobin to produce NOCs (17)
. More specifically, the reaction of a haem containing mutant cytochrome-c-peroxidase with peroxide gave a product capable of oxidizing N-hydroxyguanidine or N
-hydroxyarginine, resulting in the NOC N-nitrosoarginine (18)
. The finding that haem has an independent effect suggests that chemical catalysis, in addition to bacterial N-nitrosation, is responsible for the dose-dependent effect of red meat on increasing endogenous intestinal N-nitrosation. Should the NOCs formed endogenously in the intestine as a result of haem consumption be shown to be mutagenic or carcinogenic, this might explain the association between red meat consumption and large bowel cancer risk.
| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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| FOOTNOTES |
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1 To whom requests for reprints should be addressed, at Medical Research Council, Dunn Human Nutrition Unit, Wellcome Trust/MRC Building, Cambridge CB2 2XY. Phone: (44) 1223 252760; Fax: (44) 1223 252765; E-mail: sheila.bingham{at}mrc-dunn.cam.ac.uk ![]()
2 The abbreviations used are: NOC, N-nitroso compound; NO, nitric oxide; ATNC, apparent total N-nitroso compounds. ![]()
Received 12/ 2/02. Accepted 3/26/03.
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