BUILDING AN EXPERIMENTAL NUTRITIONAL MODEL OF OBESITY. EVALUATION OF ANTHROPOMETRICAL AND NUTRITIONAL PARAMETERS

ALFONSO JO; LOPEZ M; DELGADO, S. M.; NAVIGATORE FONZO LS; ANZULOVICH AC

MODALIDAD VIRTUAL

Congreso; IV REUNIÓN CONJUNTA DE LAS SOCIEDADES DE BIOLOGIA DE ARGENTINA; 2020

The etiology of obesity is multifactorial, and includes genetic, environmental, and dietary factors, where hypercaloric diets play a central role in thedevelopment of the disease. It is known that obesity in adulthood can increase the risk of suffering neurodegenerative diseases. As a part of aninstitutional project that studies obesity as a base disease for the development of chronic age-associated diseases and the search for early biomarkerswith predictive potential, one of our general objectives is to establish a nutritional model of obesity in rat. Particularly, the objective of this work wasto evaluate the effects of a high saturated fat diet on different anthropometric and nutritional parameters. Male Wistar rats weaned at 21 days of agewere fed with a normocaloric diet (ND) containing 366 kcal from lipids/kg diet. At 2 months old, they were randomly separated and fed with the NCdiet (Control group) and a high saturated fat diet containing 1570.7 kcal from margarine/kg diet (HFD group) for the following 14 weeks. Animalswere maintained under 12 h light:12 h dark and 22–24°C conditions, with food and water ad libitum. The anthropometric profile included theevaluation of food intake, body weight, body mass index (BMI), weight gain, dietary consumption, and Lee index, throughout the entire treatmentperiod. The following nutritional parameters were also calculated: energy-intake, and feed efficiency. Statistical differences between groups andthroughout the treatment period were analyzed by two-way ANOVA, followed by Bonferroni post-hoc test, with P < 0.05 to confirm significantdifferences between groups and weeks. Our results show that feeding HFD resulted in significant increases in the following anthropometricparameters: body weight (P < 0.001 from the 9th to the 21st week), BMI (P < 0.05 from the 14th to the 22nd week), weight gain (P < 0.05 from the15th to the 22nd week) as well as in the nutritional parameter: energy-intake from lipids (P < 0.001 from the 9th to the 22nd week). We did not observesignificant changes in food intake, Lee index, feed efficiency nor in the total energy intake. Thus, we could conclude that a high saturated fat, frommargarine, diet modifies key anthropometrical and nutritional parameters, and it could be used to establish a nutritional model of obesity in rat.