HIGH FAT DIETS TO OBTAIN AN EXPERIMENTAL MODEL OF OBESITY IN RAT

ALFONSO JO; NAVIGATORE FONZO LS; LOPEZ M; CARGNELLUTTI E; ANZULOVICH AC

Merlo, San Luis

Congreso; XXXV Reunión Anual de la Sociedad de Biología de Cuyo; 2017

Obesity is one of the major risk factors for diabetes, hypertension and atherosclerosis. In order to design a diet on a chronobiologicalbasis for obesity treatment in the future, we first worked on obtaining an animal experimental model of obesity, as a consequence of ahigh-fat diet exposure. The objective of this work was to investigate the effects of high unsaturated and saturated fat diets on differentanthropometric parameters in Holtzman rats. The animals weaned at 21d of age were randomly separated and fed two types of diet for 4weeks: one group was fed with a normocaloric diet (ND group) and another group with a high unsaturated fat diet (F1D group). From thefifth week, the F1D group received a diet based on high saturated fats (F2D group) for 4 more weeks. Rats were maintained under 12hlight:12h-darkconditions. The anthropometric profile was evaluated according to the following parameters: food intake, body and fatweight, size and body mass index, final weight/initial weight and weight gain/dietary consumption indexes. Food intake, body weightand height were measured daily. Our results show that ND and F1D groups did not present significant differences in any of the studiedparameters. However, modification of the F1D to the F2D diet resulted in significant differences in the final weight/initial weight indexas well as in the weight gain/dietary consumption index, in comparison to the ND. Thus, a diet based on saturated fats is more effectivefor the development of obesity in this animal model.