LIPID STORAGE UNDER ABNORMAL CONDITIONS 633 



(2) Abnormal Deposition of Triglycerides in the Liver 



Although fatty livers have long been recognized, it is only comparatively 

 recently that the factors related to the deposition of fat in this organ have 

 been understood. The condition has been referred to both as a fatty de- 

 generation and as a fatty infiltration. However, according to both view- 

 points, the production of fatty livers is caused by an abnormal accumula- 

 tion in this organ of lipids which have been transported there from other 

 tissues. For a review of the subject of fatty livers, the reader is referred to 

 the excellent treatises of McHenry and Patterson, 547 Frame, 548 and Peters 

 and Van Slyke. 549 Best and Lucas 550 reviewed the subject from the stand- 

 point of the importance of choline as a lipotropic agent. 



a. Classification of Fatty Livers. Two main types of fatty livers can be 

 differentiated, namely, physiologic and pathologic. In the case of the 

 physiologic fatty livers, which develop whenever large amounts of fat are 

 mobilized from fat depots to meet unusual requirements for fat combus- 

 tion, there is merely an increase in the normal physiologic action of this 

 organ. The proportion of the several lipid components is not altered, and 

 the liver maintains its ordinary biochemical reactions satisfactorily. 



On the other hand, the pathologic type of fatty livers occurs in the cases 

 in which the partition of lipids differs from the normal, and in which, from a 

 quantitative standpoint, the amounts of lipid are much higher than in the 

 physiologic type. Such pathologic fatty livers occur not only when an 

 animal receives an hepatotoxic agent such as chloroform, carbon tetra- 

 chloride, benzene, phosphorus, or phlorhizin, but also as a result of organic 

 toxic agents which are attributable to severe infectious processes such as 

 diphtheria, acute yellow atrophy, pernicious anemia, nephrosis, or diabetes 

 mellitus, and also to the toxemia of pregnancy. Dallemagne et a/. 551 re- 

 ported that fatty liver and fatty biliary ducts resulted in the case of dogs 

 subjected to chronic intoxication with 7-hexachlorocyclohexane. No nu- 

 clear or cellular destruction was observed as a result of this liver-fattening 

 agent. Moreover, an even larger group of pathologic fatty livers owe their 

 origin to the lack of some essential component such as choline, lipocaic, 

 inositol, or other related "lipotropic" agents in the diet. A lipotropic 

 agent or factor may be defined as "a substance which prevents or removes 



647 E. W. McHenry and J. M. Patterson, Physiol. Revs., 24, 128-167 (1944). 



548 E. G. Frame, Yale J. Biol. Med., 14, 229-255 (1942). 



549 J. P. Peters and D. D. Van Slyke, Quantitative Clinical Chemistry, 2nd ed., vol. I, 

 Williams & Wilkins, Baltimore, 1946. 



660 C. H. Best and C. C. Lucas, Vitamins and Hormones, 1, 1-58 (1943). 

 561 M. J. Dallemagne, M. A. Gerebtzoff, and E. Philippot, Compt. rend. soc. biol., 144, 

 457 (1950). 



