Impact of Dietary Protein on Growth and Digestive Enzyme Activity in  Adults Laboratory Mice

The present study was conducted to determine the effects of different protein diets on growth parameters (body weight, length and growth rate), activities of digestive enzymes (pepsin, trypsin, chymotrypsin and amylase) in laboratory mice; also to monitor the relationship between dietary protein intake-somatic growth-digestive enzyme efficiency for highlighting physiological importance of protein nutrition in animal models. Forty-eight male BALB/c mice were randomly placed into four dietary groups fed on 8%, 14%, 18% or 24% protein diet respectively for eight weeks as per experimental design. Growth parameters were recorded weekly throughout the experiment until samples from digestive tissues together with blood samples for biochemical indicators plus enzyme activities analysis at endline collection time point .Data analyses involved one way ANOVA besides Pearson correlation test using SPSS. Statistically, increasing dietary protein significantly improved body weight, weekly weight gain, and body length in mice (P < 0.01) (Table 1). The difference in groups’ digestive enzyme activities between HP and LP was also statistically significant, with a higher value recorded from the HP group. Very high positive correlations were noted between dietary protein level and body weight (r = 0.92, P < 0.001), as well as pepsin activity (r = 0.90, P < 0.001). Both food and water consumption increased under the low-protein diet condition while decreasing with an increase in dietary protein content.Apart from making them grow better and appear healthier when fed higher laboratory mice on physical health manifested by growth; it enhances their digestive enzymatic activity effectively evidenced by substantial experimental results establishing minimum effects due to lack or insufficiency..