Choosing hamsters but not rats as a model for studying plasma cholesterol‐lowering activity of functional foods |
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Authors: | Zesheng Zhang Hao Wang Rui Jiao Cheng Peng Yin Mei Wong Venus Sai Ying Yeung Yu Huang Zhen‐Yu Chen |
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Affiliation: | 1. Key Laboratory of Food Nutrition and Safety, Ministry of Education, Tianjin University of Science and Technology, Tianjin, China;2. Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, NT, Hong Kong, China. Fax: +852‐2603‐7246;3. Department of Physiology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, NT, Hong Kong, China |
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Abstract: | Rats and hamsters are commonly used rodents to test the efficacy of cholesterol‐lowering functional foods. In general, a diet containing 1% cholesterol for rats whereas a diet containing 0.1% cholesterol for hamsters is used to induce the hypercholesterolemia. The present study was carried out to compare hamsters with rats as a hypercholesterolemia model. Golden Syrian hamsters and Sprague Dawley rats were randomly divided into four groups and fed one of the four diets containing 0–0.9% cholesterol. Results demonstrated that serum total cholesterol (TC) in hamsters was raised 73–81% higher than that in rats fed the same cholesterol diets. Unlike rats in which HDL‐C accounted very little for serum TC, the lipoprotein profile in hamsters was closer to that in humans. We investigated interaction of higher cholesterol diets with 3‐hydroxy‐3‐methylglutary‐CoA (HMG‐CoA) reductase, low‐density lipoprotein receptor (LDL‐R) and cholesterol‐7α‐hydroxylase (CYP7A1), sterol regulatory element binding protein‐2 (SREBP‐2), and liver X receptor (LXR‐α). Results showed hamsters and rats metabolized cholesterol differently. In view that hamsters synthesize and excrete cholesterol and bile acids in a manner similar to that in humans, it is concluded that hamsters but not rats shall be chosen as a model to study efficacy of cholesterol‐lowering functional foods. |
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Keywords: | ACAT CYP7A1 Hamsters LDL receptor Rats |
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