Effects of hyperlipidemia on the nursing ability of WHHL rabbits

The homozygous Watanabe heritable hyperlipidemic (WHHL) rabbit, an animal model for human familial hypercholesterolemia, which has been maintained in a closed colony, has a reproductive ability which is remarkably lower than that of normal rabbits. The present study was undertaken to determine whether this low reproductive ability was associated with hyperlipidemia, since it is not associated with inbreeding depression. WHHL dams with over 600 mg/dl of serum cholesterol level showed a weaning rate of only about 20%, while dams with about 300 mg/dl of cholesterol showed a 64% weaning rate. Both conception and weaning rate seemed to decrease with a rise in serum triglyceride. The weaning age of homozygous offspring from the homozygous WHHL dams was significantly higher than homozygous offspring from heterozygous WHHL dame. The rate of increase in body weight of the offspring from WHHL dams was significantly lower than that of the offspring from heterozygous dams under 24 days of age. We concluded that the low reproductive ability, especially low nursing ability, was associated with hyperlipidemia due to the deficiency of low density lipoprotein receptors.