Clinical and nutritional study on gallstone disease in Japan

The dietary factors, as a cause on increasing incidence of gallstones in Japan, were studied. The increase in the incidence of gallstones at autopsy was nearly paralleled with that of fat intake on a line graph and reversely the carbohydrate intake including crude fiber showed a decreasing trend. In the nutritional survey of patients with gallstone, the fat intake was 22% higher than that of the control group, and the crude fiber intake was 18% lower. Comparing the incidence of cholesterol stones during each 10 years of 1953-1962 and 1969-1980 with the nutritional intake, the incidence of gallstones increased by 25% and the fat intake by 120%, but the carbohydrate intake including crude fiber decreased by 14%. From the above, it was considered that the increase of the incidence of cholesterol gallstones was related to the increase of the fat intake and the decrease of the crude fiber intake. A study on black stone was carried out with an infrared spectroscopic analysis and scanning electron microscopic observation, and we now proposed a new classification of this type of stones.