Effect of High Methionine and Folic Acid Diet on the Level of Homocysteine and Lipid Profile in Experimental Rats

Abstract

The aim of this study was to reduce the level of homocysteine (Hcy) by high-methionine dietary supplementation of folic acid and to evaluate changes in lipid parameters in blood serum of experimental rats. The animals were randomly divided into seven groups (n=6, male), and were fed seven different diets for 52 days. The rodents were fed with the AIN-93G semi-synthetic diet (group I), supplemented with 32 g of methionine/kg diet (group II), whereas groups III-VII were fed with AIN-93G semi-synthetic diet supplemented with 32 g of methionine/kg diet and 2, 4, 8, 18 and 28 g of folic acid/kg diet, respectively. Contents of of homocysteine, total cholesterol level, HDL fraction and triacylglycerols were assessed enzymatically in rats serum. In addition, the LDL+VLDL cholesterol content was calculated. Folic acid content in the diet was found to be highly negatively correlated with homocysteine content (r=-0.95) and negatively correlated with triacylglycerols content (r=-0.94) in the serum of rats. In the serum of rats which were fed the methionine diet with the highest-folic acid supplementation (28 mg folic acid/kg diet), homocysteine and triglyceride contents were significantly lower, compared to animals fed other types of experimental diets.