Meal-feeding promotes skeletal growth by ghrelin-dependent enhancement of growth hormone rhythmicity.

ABSTRACT: The physiological effect of ultradian temporal feeding patterns remains a major unanswered question in nutritional science. We have used automated and nasogastric feeding to address this question in male rodents and human volunteers. While grazing and meal-feeding reduced food intake in parallel (compared with ad libitum-fed rodents), body length and tibial epiphysial plate width were maintained in meal-fed rodents via the action of ghrelin and its receptor, GHS-R. Grazing and meal-feeding initially suppressed elevated preprandial ghrelin levels in rats, followed by either a sustained elevation in ghrelin in grazing rats or preprandial ghrelin surges in meal-fed rats. Episodic growth hormone (GH) secretion was largely unaffected in grazing rats, but meal-feeding tripled GH secretion, with

SUBMITTER: Hornsby AK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12165789 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature