512 V. BLOOD LIPIDS 



of vitamin E in the newborn rat cannot be appreciably altered by the 

 intake of vitamin E by the mother, although the length of time required to 

 produce vitamin E-deficiency symptoms was prolonged when the mother's 

 diet included 2000 to 3000 times the minimum daily requirement of vitamin 

 E throughout pregnancy and during the first two weeks of lactation. 

 Evidence that some maternal-fetal transfer of tocopherol occurs in rats and 

 mice is to be found in the fact that the young of vitamin E-deficient mothers 

 develop symptoms of vitamin E deficiency during the first two weeks of 

 life, 963-965 while the young of normally fed females show no such symptoms. 



In the case of ewes, Willman et a/. 966 - 967 also showed that a vitamin E 

 deficiency, the so-called "stiff-lamb disease" occurred in a high percentage 

 of cases when the mothers were fed alfalfa hay and cull beans during gesta- 

 tion and lactation. A diet of this type is extremely low in vitamin E. 

 Whiting and Loosli 968 demonstrated a marked increase in the tocopherol 

 content of the blood plasma of lambs and kids whose parent had been 

 supplemented prepartum with mixed tocopherols, as compared with those 

 from mothers who had been given alfalfa and clover hay and red kidney 

 beans, and who had received no added tocopherol during the gestation 

 period. However, the tocopherol feeding of the mothers was without ef- 

 fect on the tocopherol level of newborn pigs. On the other hand, to- 

 copherol feeding produced a two-fold increase in the colostrum content in all 

 species. It was also shown by Whiting and Loosli 968 that colostrum nor- 

 mally contains as much as four times the vitamin E which is present in the 

 normal milk secreted as early as four days after parturition. A summary of 

 these data is included in Table 24. 



In the case of dairy cows, wide discrepancies exist in the tocopherol 

 level of the dams and of their calves. The effect of the administration of 

 relatively large doses of mixed tocopherols on maternal-placental transfer 

 was shown to be minimal, by Parrish et a/., 969 whose results are summarized 

 in Table 25. When the serum tocopherol of the dam was increased four- 

 fold by the administration of large doses of tocopherols, that of the new- 

 born calf was only slightly augmented, with the result that the ratio of 



963 H. M. Evans and G. O. Burr, J. Biol. Chem., 76, 273-297 (1928). 



964 H. S. Olcott, J. Nutrition, 15, 221-225 (1938). 



965 A. M. Pappenheimer, Am. J. Pathol, 18, 169-175 (1942). 



966 J. P. Willman, J. K. Loosli, S. A. Asdell, F. B. Morrison, and P. Olafson, J. Animal 

 Sci., 4, 128-132 (1945). 



967 J. P. Willman, J. K. Loosli, S. A. Asdell, F. B. Morrison, and P. Olafson, Cornell 

 Vet., 86, 200-204 (1946). 



968 F. Whiting and J. K. Loosli, J. Nutrition, 36, 721-726 (1948). 



969 D. B. Parrish, G. H. Wise, C. E. Latschar, and J. S. Hughes, /. Nutrition, Jfi, 

 193-202(1950). 



