Carnitine in the perinatal period of mammals

Our present day knowledge on the role of carnitine may be summarized as follows: (1) carnitine is essential for fatty acid oxidation and ketone formation, (2) carnitine is essential for heat production in brown adipose tissue of suckling rats (see also 42), (3) the newborn rat and probably man require carnitine in their food since they cannot make it in sufficient amounts. This is probably not the case in the adult, since surgical patients fed intravenously maintain normal plasma levels of carnitine for at least 20 days.