Z-Guggulsterone is a major ingredient in the Indian traditional hypolipidemic remedy guggul. A study in mice has established that its hypolipidemic effect involves the farnesoid X receptor (FXR), presumably by acting as an antagonist of this receptor. It is generally assumed that the antagonism leads to induction of cytochrome P450 ...

ABSTRACT: Background Studies using laboratory animals under what are considered to be "standard" conditions normally offer unrestricted amounts of food to the animals, which can lead to metabolic disorders. Moreover, standard diets have different compositions. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to assess the effects of two non-isocaloric ...

This study was designed to assess the effects of dietary fat levels on glucose homeostasis in rainbow trout under prolonged hyperglycaemia induced by high carbohydrate intake. Trout were fed identical amounts of one of two iso-energetic diets containing either a low (LFD, 3%) or a high fat level (HFD, 20%) ...

In the last decades there have been several evidences that traditionally used live preys like rotifers and Artemia salina have nutritional deficiencies that result in a general decrease of fish health, causing anomalies in the development, in growth and in pigmentation. In this study a partial of total replacement of ...

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: We previously reported that fenugreek (Trigonella foenum-graecum L.) improved diet-induced metabolic disorders in rats. The purpose of the present study was to examine the dose-dependent effects, safety and tolerability of fenugreek. METHODS: The diets used in this study were the high-fat high-sucrose diet (HFS; lard 50 %kcal, sucrose ...

Health benefits of resistant starch (RS), a dietary fermentable fiber, have been well documented in young, but not in old populations. As the essential step of more comprehensive evaluations of RS on healthy aging, we examined the effects of dietary RS on tolerance, colonic fermentation, and cytokine expression in aged ...

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES:In studies performed in mice, rose hip powder has been shown to both prevent and reverse high-fat diet-induced obesity and glucose intolerance as well as reduce plasma levels of cholesterol. The aim of this study was to investigate whether daily intake of rose hip powder over 6 weeks exerts beneficial ...

Secondary metabolites produced by plants for herbivore defence are often found in floral nectar, but their effect on the foraging behaviour and physiological performance of pollinators is largely unknown. Nicotine is highly toxic to most herbivores, and nicotine-based insecticides may contribute to current pollinator declines. We examined the effects of ...

We have previously demonstrated that coffee and caffeine ameliorated hyperglycemia in spontaneously diabetic KK-A(y) mice. This present study evaluates the antidiabetic effects of coffee and caffeine on high-fat-diet-induced impaired glucose tolerance in C57BL/6J mice. C57BL/6J mice fed a high-fat diet were given regular drinking water (control group), or a 2.5-fold-diluted ...

  In this study, we examined whether melatonin improves metabolic syndrome induced by high fructose intake in male Wistar rats. Feeding of a diet containing 60% fructose (HFD) for 4 or 6 wk caused increased serum insulin, triglyceride, total cholesterol, free fatty acids, uric acid, leptin, and lipid peroxide concentrations as ...

Hypothalamic inflammation has been demonstrated to be an important mechanism in the pathogenesis of obesity-induced type 2 diabetes mellitus. Feeding pregnant and lactating rodents a diet rich in saturated fatty acids has consistently been shown to predispose the offspring for the development of obesity and impaired glucose metabolism. However, hypothalamic ...

To investigate the effects of Chang-Chul-Eui-Ee-In-Tang (, CCEET), modififi ed CCEET (MCCEET), and Semen Coicis (SC, a major component of CCEET) on energy and glucose homeostasis. The possible mechanism of action of CCEET was also determined. A total of 100 Sprague Dawley female rats were randomly assigned to 5 groups, ...

Many mycophagous species of Drosophila can tolerate the mushroom poison α-amanitin in wild mushrooms and in artificial diet. We conducted feeding assays with sixteen Drosophila species and α-amanitin in artificial diet to better determine the phylogenetic distribution of this tolerance. For eight tolerant and one related susceptible species, we sequenced ...

The daily intakes of arsenic (As), beryllium, cadmium (Cd), cobalt, chromium, copper, mercury (Hg), manganese, nickel, lead (Pb), antimony, tin, thallium, uranium, vanadium, and zinc by an adult population living in Tarragona County (Catalonia, Spain) were determined by the duplicate diet method with a 10-day sampling period. Duplicate diet samples, ...

Sparing of marine resources in aquafeeds can be environmentally and economically advantageous; however, fish meal (FM) replacement can affect the production performance and physiological competence. Phospholipids are increasingly understood to be involved in maintaining growth and vigour in fish and may be deficient in reduced FM formulations. Accordingly, we evaluated ...

Previous studies suggest that the age-related decline in circulating growth hormone (GH) and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) levels significantly contribute to vascular dysfunction in aging by impairing cellular oxidative stress resistance pathways. Obesity in elderly individuals is increasing at alarming rates, and there is evidence suggesting that elderly individuals are ...

N-glycan processing and assembly defects have been demonstrated in untreated and partially treated patients with Classical Galactosaemia. These defects may contribute to the ongoing pathophysiology of this disease. The aim of this study was to develop an informative method of studying differential galactose tolerance levels and diet control in individuals ...

Black pepper is used worldwide to enhance food flavor. We investigated dietary supplementation with piperine, the active principle of black pepper, to high carbohydrate, high fat (HCHF) diet-fed rats as a model of human metabolic syndrome. Rats were fed with either HCHF diet (carbohydrate, 52%; fat, 24%; 25% fructose in ...

The protection of the developing organism from oxidative damage is ensured by antioxidant defense systems to cope with reactive oxygen species (ROS), which in turn can be influenced by dietary polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs). PUFAs in membrane phospholipids are substrates for ROS-induced peroxidation reactions. We investigated the effects of dietary ...

Consumption of a high-fat (HF) diet results in insulin resistance and glucose intolerance. Weight loss is often recommended to reverse these metabolic alterations and the use of a high-protein (HP), low-carbohydrate diet is encouraged. In lean rats, consumption of a HP diet improves glycemic control. However, it is unknown whether ...

Objective:  Previous studies have highlighted the associations between abdominal, cardiac or total fat accumulation and cardiovascular disease. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of different ectopic fat depots on measurements of metabolic dysfunction and cardiovascular disease risk. Methods:  Using magnetic resonance imaging in 113 subjects, we ...

Metabolic syndrome has deleterious effects on the CNS, and recent evidence suggests that obesity rates are higher at presentation in children who develop epilepsy. Adiponectin is secreted by adipose tissue and acts in the brain and peripheral organs to regulate glucose and lipid metabolism. Adiponectin deficiency predisposes toward metabolic syndrome, ...

Decursin (De), an active component of Angelica gigas, is known to exert anticancer and neuroprotective effects. However, its antiobesity and antidiabetic potential has not yet been investigated. This study evaluated the antiobesity effect of decursin, particularly focusing on its ability to inhibit adipocyte differentiation in 3 T3-L1 cells. Decursin treatment resulted ...

OBJECTIVE: To test the hypotheses that obesity due to a very high fat diet induces knee osteoarthritis, and that short-term wheel running exercise protects against obesity-induced knee osteoarthritis by reducing systemic inflammation and metabolic dysregulation. METHODS: Male C57BL/6J mice were fed either a control (13.5% kcal fat) or very high ...

The objective was to examine the effects of diet macronutrient composition on insulin sensitivity, fasting glucose, and β-cell response to glucose. Participants were 42 normal glucose-tolerant (NGT; fasting glucose <100 mg/dL) and 27 impaired fasting glucose (IFG), healthy, overweight/obese (body mass index, 32.5 ± 4.2 kg/m(2)) men and women. For ...

Women are exposed to sex steroids in several formulations such as oral contraceptives (OCs) and hormone replacement therapies. Estrogen is believed to have cardiometabolic protection effect; but its beneficial effects have recently been queried. The aim of the present study was to clarify whether or not the altered glucose tolerance ...

N, N-dimethylglycine (DMG) is a tertiary amino acid that naturally occurs as an intermediate metabolite in choline-to-glycine metabolism. The objective of the present trial was to evaluate tolerance, safety and bioaccumulation of dietary DMG in broilers when supplemented at 1 g and 10 g Na-DMG/kg. A feeding trial was conducted using 480 ...

Rivina humilis L. (Phytolaccaceae) accumulates vacuolar pigments betalains. These pigments are synthesized by plants of 11 families in the order caryophyllales. Red beet is the only industrial source of these hydrophilic and low acidic pigments. Betalains rich R. humilis berry juice (RBJ) could be used as alternative source of these ...

Although a high-fat diet (HFD) is recognized as an important contributor to obesity, human research is limited by confounders such as income, whereas animal research has typically examined diet during specific developmental periods rather than throughout the lifespan. We hypothesized that the use of an HFD in short-term studies as ...

Microvascular dysfunction is an early finding in obesity possibly related to co-morbidities like diabetes and hypertension. Therefore we have investigated changes on microvascular function, body composition, glucose and insulin tolerance tests (GTT and ITT) on male hamsters fed either with high fat (HFD, n=20) or standard (Control, n=21) diet during ...

In addition to being a risk factor for adverse outcomes of pregnancy, maternal obesity may play a role in determining the long-term disease patterns observed in the resulting offspring, with metabolic and dietary factors directly programming fetal development. The present study evaluated the potential for feeding rats an obesogenic cafeteria ...

The present series of experiments aim mainly at investigating the possible influence of changes in the com-position of dietary lipids (sunflower oil, salmon oil, safflower oil) upon the metabolic syndrome found in rats exposed to a fructose-rich diet. For purpose of comparison, a control group of rats received the sunflower ...

BACKGROUND: Abnormal fatty acid metabolism is an important feature in the mechanisms of insulin resistance and beta-cell dysfunction. Carnitine palmitoyltransferase-1a (CPT-1a, liver isoform) plays a pivotal role in the regulation of mitochondrial fatty acid oxidation. We investigated the role of CPT-1a in the development of impaired glucose tolerance using a ...

Consumption of energy-dense/high-fat diets is strongly and positively associated with overweight and obesity, which are associated with increase in the prevalence of certain chronic diseases. We evaluated the effect of hypercaloric/fat or normocaloric diets on some biochemical parameters in rats. Seventy-two rats were divided into four groups that were fed ...

Background  The metabolic syndrome is common in populations exposed to a typical Western diet. There is a lack of an animal model that mimics this condition. Methods  We fed 15 cynomolgus monkeys ad libitum a high-sugar high-fat (HSHF) diet for 33 weeks. Body weight, body composition, serum lipids, and insulin were ...

It has been suggested that antioxidants attenuate oxidative stress and prevent oxidative stress-related diseases. Paradoxically, randomised controlled trials (RCT) using pharmacological doses of antioxidant supplements have demonstrated harmful effects in smokers. The aim of the present study was to test the compliance, tolerability and safety of two food-based antioxidant-rich diets ...

High-fat or high-carbohydrate food consumption contributes to changes in myocardial tolerance to ischemia. However, with respect to experimental models, most studies used diets with very high doses of cholesterol, saturated fatty acids, or fructose. In our study, we fed rats a high-fat diet based on lard in combination with administration ...

This randomized, controlled, 2-week intervention study in 24 obese subjects tested the effect on body weight loss and gastrointestinal tolerance of consuming low viscous alginate fibre-based preloads of 3% concentration (500ml volume) three times a day as an adjuvant to a calorie-restricted diet. The pilot study showed that intake of ...

We tested the hypothesis that long-term caffeine intake prevents the development of insulin resistance and hypertension in two pathological animal models: the high-fat (HF) and the high-sucrose (HSu) diet rat. We used six groups of animals: control; caffeine-treated (Caff; 1 g/l in drinking water during 15 d); HF; caffeine-treated HF (HFCaff); HSu; ...

The ketogenic diet (KD) is a treatment of infantile spasms (IS). Here, we examine the efficacy of KD in medically refractory IS, examine its impact on growth in infants, and explore its mechanism of action. At 1-3 months after the initiation of the KD, 46% of twenty-six patients had a ...

Few studies have focused on the toxicological risks of dairy fat intake. A standard dairy fat (SDF) with a 70% SFA content and a naturally enriched dairy fat (EDF) in vaccenic, rumenic and α-linolenic acids and low in SFA (54%) have been examined in a 4-week repeated dose oral toxicity ...

The atypical antipsychotic drug olanzapine induces weight gain and defects in glucose metabolism in patients. Using a rat model we investigated the effects of acute and long term olanzapine treatment on weight gain, food preference and glucose metabolism. Olanzapine treated rats fed a chow diet grew more slowly than vehicle ...

Epidemiological studies have demonstrated a strong link between increased visceral fat and metabolic syndrome. In rodents, removal of intra-abdominal but non-visceral fat improves insulin sensitivity and glucose homeostasis, though previous studies make an imprecise comparison to human physiology because actual visceral fat was not removed. We hypothesize that nutrient release ...

Soybean meal (SBM) is perhaps the most common fish meal (FM) alternative used in aquafeeds; however, SBM cannot fully replace FM in sunshine bass Morone chrysops × M. saxatilis feeds without impacting growth. Reduced production performance may be the result of subtle changes in morphology and/or physiological status. Accordingly, our objective was to ...

Broiler chickens are a fast growing monogastric animal commonly used to evaluate the equivalence between transgenic and non-transgenic grains as part of the human safety assessment process.  While commonly viewed like other livestock feeding trials, such studies are carried out with transgenic crops with input traits (that are not designed ...

BACKGROUND: Altering dietary carbohydrate or fat content may have chronic effects on insulin secretion and sensitivity, which may vary with individual metabolic phenotype. OBJECTIVE: The objective was to evaluate the contribution of tightly controlled diets differing in carbohydrate and fat content for 8 wk to insulin sensitivity and β cell ...

Bisphenol A (BPA), a widely used environmental endocrine disruptor, has been reported to disrupt glucose homeostasis. BPA exposure may be a risk factor for type 2 diabetes. In this study, we investigated the effects of early-life BPA exposure on metabolic syndrome in rat offspring fed a normal diet and a ...

Mucosal tolerance to E-selectin prevents stroke and protects against ischemic brain damage in experimental models of stroke studying healthy animals or spontaneously hypertensive stroke-prone rats. A reduction in inflammation and neural damage was associated with immunomodulatory or "tolerogenic" responses to E-selectin. The purpose of the current study on ApoE deficient ...

Functional feed supplemented with alternative-economic nutrient sources (protein, carbohydrates, lipids) and probiotics are being considered in shrimp/fish aquaculture production systems as an option to increase yield and profits and to reduce water pollution. In this study the probiotic potential to formulate functional feeds have been evaluated using four dietary treatments: ...

Low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) has been clearly associated with the risk of developing coronary heart disease. The best and most convenient method for determining LDL-C has come under increased scrutiny in recent years. We present comparisons of the Friedewald calculated LDL-C (C-LDL-C) and direct LDL-C (D-LDL-C) using 3 different homogenous ...