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Omega-3 fatty acids did not show an effect on extending the remission in Crohn's disease. For the diet patients the question remains whether the noncompliant patients dropped out early because they sensed a relapse approaching or whether their condition deteriorated because they failed to comply with the diet.

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SUMMARY The present study was undertaken to determine the influence of hyperphagia on the adaptive changes occurring in the rat jejunal mucosa as a result of intestinal resection. One group of resected rats was subjected to pair feeding with a sham-operated population, whilst another group was nourished ad libitum.The animals which ate ad libitum developed hypertrophy of the mucosa which was accompanied by increased glucose absorption in vivo without changes in enzyme levels. These alterations were much less pronounced in the pair-fed group of resected animals, a finding that indicates that the adaptive changes are at least partially influenced by increased luminal nutrition.Resection of a proximal or distal part of the small bowel provokes a marked hypertrophy of the mucosa of the remaining intestinal segment, which is accompanied by an increase in its absorptive capacity in vivo. Much attention has been directed to the role played by the increased intraluminal nutrition, accentuated by the onset of hyperphagia in such animals, in the development of this adaptation (Booth, Evans, Menzies, and Street, 1959;Dowling, 1974). In addition to much indirect evidence in favour of the hypothesis that luminal nutrition is essential for the maintenance of mucosal structure and function, we have recently provided a direct indication of the importance of the intestinal contents, when we demonstrated that the introduction of glucose into an excluded self-emptying blind. loop partially reversed the atrophy provoked by the process of exclusion from continuity (Menge, Werner, Lorenz-Meyer, and Riecken, 1975). The present study was undertaken to explore under pair-fed and free-fed conditions the behaviour of the intestinal mucosa following resection so that the influence of food consumption, and hence of the luminal nutrition, on the adaptive changes in the mucosa could be directly investigated. ' MethodsFemale Wistar rats weighing 170-190 g were employed. They were initially fed ad libitum with ground Altromin rat chow and tap water. OPERATIVE TECHNIQUEA resection of approximately 60 % of the distal small intestine (IR) was performed under ether anaesthesia on 14 rats, and continuity of the gut was restored by end-to-end anastomosis. A further nine rats underwent a sham operation, whereby the intestine was cut and re-anastomosed without resection. POSTOPERATIVE PROCEDURESFollowing the operation, the rats were transferred to metabolic cages which permitted an exact evaluation of the daily food consumption. For the first three days after the operation, the animals were nourished simply with a sugared salt solution. Thereafter, nine of the ileal resected animals were provided only with the quantity of solid food that the paired controls had consumed on the preceding day. The food intake and the body weight of each animal of these two groups were measured daily. The remaining five ileal resected animals received their food ad libitum. On the 32nd postoperative day the intestines were examined. LABORATORY INVESTIGATIONSDetermination...