Protective role of soybean lecithin in reducing hypercholesterolemia and DNA fragmentation inducing by high cholesterol in adult male rats

Abstract

The present experiment was investigated to study the ameliorative role of soybean lecithin specially phosphatidylcholin on some lipid profiles, glycemic index and DNA damage in intact and hypercholesterolemic infected rats.Thirty two adult male rats have been used in this study, were randomly selected and equally divided in to four groups as follows C, T1 , T2, T3.They were treated orally (daily) for 42 days as follows; C:control group, were given distilled water by gavage needle, rats of this group were given soybean lecithin only (430mgkgday) orally; T2:rats of this groups were given only cholesterol (10gmday) orally; T3: rats of this groups were given soybean lecithin (430mgkgday) orally, and high cholesterol (10gmday) orally.The daily supplementation of soybean lecithin induces a significant decrease (p > 0.05) in total cholesterol (TC) and triglyceride (TG) in both intact and hypercholesterolemic infected rats respectively.Moreover,the glycemic index reveals a significant decrease in both glucose concentration and insulin resistance, whereas elevation in the concentration of insulin hormone significantly was noticed.In T3 group the results of Agarose Gel Electrophoresis showed that animals given Cholesterol plus soybean lecithin showing improvement in DNA damage by decreasing the fragmentation and increasing the condensation and concentration.In conclusion, the results from this experiment confirm that soybean lecithin supplementation to rats has an important protective role on cardiovascular system and liver in hypercholesterolemic infected rats.This supplementation can overcome the deleterious effect of hypercholesterolemia on heart and liver basically.