Alteration of Lipid Profile and Serum Electrolytes Following Chronic Consumption of Periwinkle Extract in Rats

Abstract

Periwinkles are important edible seafood essential to life. They are cheap and easily affordable sources of protein, although they are harvested from river waters that are made of variety of pollutants. This research therefore sought to investigate any possible alterations in some biochemical parameters of albino Wistar rats by periwinkle intake. Fifteen albino Wistar rats weighing between 200-250 g were assigned into 3 groups of 5 rats each and housed singly in metabolic cages. The rats took normal rat pellets and drinking water ad libitum. The 2 test groups received different doses (low dose -7.0 mg mLG 1 and high dose -52 mg mLG 1 ) of periwinkle extract orally, once daily. The control group received a daily oral administration of 0.6 mL of normal saline as vehicle. The feeding regimens lasted for 6 weeks, after which blood samples were collected for estimation of some biochemical parameters. Results showed that mean values of the lipid profile in control group were: TC (1.44±0.05 mg dLG when compared with control group. The periwinkle extract fed rats also had significant reduction in Na + (p<0.001) and ClG (p<0.001) concentrations compared with the control. Total cholesterol, triglyceride, LDL-c and VLDL-c concentrations were also significantly (p<0.001) reduced in the periwinkle extract fed groups compared with control. Previous study had shown that periwinkle (T. fuscatus) contains omega 3 fatty acid, which could be attributed to the beneficial effect of the extract on lipid profile and serum electrolytes observed in this study. Hence, chronic consumption of periwinkle could help alleviate dyslipidemia and other conditions associated with deleterious alterations in electrolyte concentrations. This beneficial effect of the extract on lipid profile and serum electrolytes was supported by multivariate analysis, which showed that statistically there was a significant difference in lipid profile among the different groups, F (10, 16) = 15.578, p<0.0001; Will's Lambda = 0.009, partial Eta Sq. = 0.907 and in serum electrolyte concentrations among the different groups, F (10, 16) = 222.958, p<0.0001; Wilk's Lambda = 0.000, partial Eta Sq. = 0.993.