Alcohol ingestion and levels of hepatic fatty acid synthetase and stearoyl-CoA desaturase activities in rats.

Male Sprague-Dawley rats were fed, ad libitum for 30 days, a fat-free (FF) liquid diet containing 34% of the calories as ethanol or a control FF diet in which alcohol was replaced by an isocaloric amount of dextrins. The cytosolic fatty acid synthetase and the microsomal stearoyl-CoA desaturase activities in the livers of rats fed the alcohol diet were about half of those observed in the livers of control rats. The conclusion is that chronic ethanol consumption depresses the activities of these lipogenic enzymes in the liver.