Food & Nutrition

Arab Journal of Food & Nutrition
72. Effect of Inclusion of Locally Isolated Probiotics Strains and Prebiotics to Rat
Diet on Their Blood Lipids (2004)
Narmeen J. AL-Awwad\ University of Jordan
Supervisor: Dr. Hamed R. Takruri
Co-Supervisor: Dr. Malik S. Hadaddin
Two strains of Lactobacilus acidophilus and Bifidobacterium infantis isolated
from breast-fed infants stool were tested to determine their suitability for use as
probiotics by performing testes for acid tolerance, cholesterol assimilation, adhension
to the digestive system test and by testing their viability in the feed. Both isolates
showed good acid resistance as low as pH 2. They could tolerate bile salt of 0.3%
concentration. Assimilated cholesterol was 57.7% and 76.0% for B. infantis and L.
acidophilus, respectively. Both could adhere to rat intestine and could stay viable in
the rat diet, with the minimum acceptable level, for 2-3 days.
The present study was conducted to investigate the combined effect of inclusion
of the probiotics (B. infantis and L. acidophilus) and the prebiotics (fructooligosaccharides
and lactulose in Sprague-Dawley rats on their serum lipids, namely
total cholesterol (TC), high density lipoprotein-cholesterol (HDL-C), low density
lipoprotein – cholesterol (LDL-C) and triglycerides (TG).
The experimental diets included basal diet (control 1 diet), basal + prebiotics
diet, basal + probiotics diet, basal + prebiotics + probiotics diet, cholesterol diet
(control 2 diet), cholesterol + prebiotics diet, cholesterol + probiotics diet and
cholesterol + prebiotics + probiotics diet. Animal were divided randomly, according to
their; weights, into eight groups (10 rats/group except for the two control groups 5
rats/group). Each group of the rats was fed one of the eight diets for 6 weeks
Rats fed 0.1% cholesterol-enriched diet (control 2 group) showed the highest
liver weight, weight gain, accumulative food consumption and feed eeffeciency ratio.
The addition of probiotics, prebiotics + probiotics to basal diet (chotesterol- free diet)
did not show any significant difference in serum TC, LDL-C, HDL-C and TG values
as compared with that of the control 1 values. However, the addition of prebiotics to
basal diet showed a 34.2% significant (p< 0.05) reduction in TG value, with no
significant effect ( p> 0 05) in TC, LDL-C and HDL-C values, as compared with the
control 1.
Inclusion of probiotics to the 0.1% cholesterol-enriched diet showed hypocholesterolemic
effect, since it significantly (p0.05) in HDL-C and TC were shown due to this inclusion. The prebiotics addition
to the 0.1% cholesterol-enriched diet caused significant (p 0.05) in TC, HDL-C and TG were obtained due
to this addition. A hypocholesterolemic effect was obtained for the combined effect of
238
Volume 11, No. 25, 2011
239