Hypocholesterolemic and hypotensive effects of a fruit-based functional beverage in spontaneously hypertensive rats fed with cholesterol-rich diet

This study was designed to evaluate a polyphenols-rich fruit-based functional beverage on blood pressure, serum and liver lipid profiles in vivo. Sixty spontaneously hypertensive rats were divided into five groups and were fed with a AIN-93G-diet as the normal control (NC), high cholesterol diet as atherogenic control (AC), and the AC diet with three different beverage dosages (0.5X, 1X, 2X), where X is the equivalence of two portion sizes for an adult (X = 10 mL/kg BW/day) after dose translation. Blood pressure was measured during weeks 2 and 4 using a tail-cuff method. Systolic blood pressures were lowered by the beverage at the supplementation of 1X/2X after 2 week but not after 4 week. The oral administration of the beverage at 1X/2X significantly lowered liver cholesterol and total and non-HDL-cholesterol levels in the serum. Thus, the newly formulated beverage possessed hypolipidaemic effects while showing inconsistent effect in lowering the blood pressure.