High‐fat diet based on trienantin has no adverse metabolic effects in rats

Abstract

The present study was designed to evaluate the metabolic effects of a high-fat diet based on trienantin, an uncommon medium-odd-chain triacylglycerol. Male Wistar rats (33.37 6 5.69 g) (n = 3610) were maintained for 6 weeks on a control diet (7 g soya oil/100 g) or a high-fat diet based on trienantin (40 g margarine, 4 g soya oil and 25.79 g trienantin/100 g), or a high-fat diet based on soya oil (40 g margarine and 29.79 g soya oil/100 g). The serum lipid profile, hepatic function and injury markers, and renal function and injury markers were determined. Samples of liver, stomach, kidney and small intestine were collected for histological analysis. The animals fed the high-fat diet based on trienantin exhibited a lower body weight gain in relation to the control group, between the second and fifth week of the experiment. There were no differences amongst the biochemical markers of the three groups (p !0.05). Lipid infiltration of the hepatocytes was detected in a similar manner in all groups (p !0.05). These data demonstrate that the high-fat diet based on trienantin did not promote adverse metabolic effects under the conditions of this study. This could serve as a reference parameter in the evaluation of the safety of its therapeutic application.