Estimation of influence of high doses of cholecalciferol on thyroid parafollicular and respiratory tract neuroendocrine cells; preliminary investigations.

The aim of this study was to compare what changes are caused by high doses of cholecalciferol (100,000 UI vD3) and CaCl2 on thyroid parafollicular (C) cells and airways neuroendocrine (NE) cells in rat. Overdosage of vD3 and CaCl2 causes hypocalcaemia and strong hypercalcitoninemia in blood; C cells showed mainly signs of hypertrophy; simultaneously, the number of strong calcitoninpositive cells decreased significantly (statistically significant changes). Immunohistochemical reactions, detecting CGRP, somatostatin, synaptophysin and neuronspecific enolase did not fall under statistic analysis. Airways NE cells re-acted to hypercalcemia differently than C cells--they probably respond to different regulatory mechanisms.

The evaluation of total dietary fibre content in standard hospital diets during the winter and summer seasons.

The main aim of the study was to determine the total dietary fiber in standard diets for hospitalized patients in winter and summer. In the randomized trial performed in the winter of 1995/1996 and summer 1997, we assessed the dietary fiber content in 12 standard diets with AOAC method. The dietary fiber in the tested hospital diets was derived mainly from grains--average value 12.2 g/day in winter and 15.8 g/day in summer. The second group of plant products to supply fiber in the diet were vegetables. Food portions covered an average of 11.5 g dietary fiber per day in winter and 8.5 g in summer. In spite of the variety of cheap vegetables on sale, a significantly lower content of fiber was observed in summer (p < 0.05). Fruits and fruit products in hospital food contained 1.4 g/day of fiber in winter and 1.7 g/day in summer respectively. We also made a simulation, where white bread, present in every diet, was replaced by dark bread. This let us determine the degree to which the alternative food product influences the diet's composition. The results demonstrate that the replacement everyday of eaten food products may evoke significant changes in dietary fiber contents. The change induced statistically significant differences between diets containing white bread and dark bread (p < 0.001).