Lipid Metabolism in Equines Fed a Fat-Rich Diet

The hypothesis tested was that dietary fat, when compared with an isoenergetic amount of non-structural carbohydrates, stimulates lipolysis in adipose tissue and also stimulates the fatty-acid oxidative capacity in skeletal muscle from horses. Six adult horses were fed a high-fat, glucose or starch containing diet according to a 3 × 3 Latin square design with feeding periods of three weeks. The diets were formulated so that the intake of soybean oil versus either glucose or corn starch were the only variables. In accordance with previous work, whole plasma triacylglycerol (TAG) concentration decreased significantly by 58% following fat supplementation. This fat effect was accompanied by a 247% increase in lipoprotein lipase (LPL) activity in post-heparin plasma. The dietary variables did neither significantly affect the basal in vitro lipolytic rate nor the lipolytic rate after adding noradrenaline. There was no significant diet effect on the activities of hexokinase and phosphofructokinase as indicators of glycolytic flux and citrate synthase and 3-hydroxy-acyl-CoA dehydrogenase as indicators of fatty-acid oxidative capacity. The concentrations of muscle glycogen and TAG were not affected by fat supplementation. It is concluded that our hypothesis is not supported by the present results.