Influência do consumo de diferentes níveis de Spirulina no desenvolvimento e perfil lipídico de ratos

Abstract

Spirulina is a cyanobacterium that has been produced and studied because of their nutritional properties and health benefits. This study evaluated the influence of diets added with different concentrations of Spirulina on body development and lipid profiles in Wistar rats. The experiment used twenty-four Wistar rats. The animals were fed for 40 days with four different isoprotein diets (10%), with 6 animals per group: 1) control diet (adapted AIN93G), 2) Diet S1 - (8.8% Spirulina), 3) S2 diet (17.6% Spirulina) 4) Diet S3 (26.4% Spirulina). The study evaluated nutritional parameters and lipid profile of the animals, whose data were statistically compared by analysis of variance, followed by Tukey's test, at significance level of 5% (p d" 0.05). Treatment with 8.8% of Spirulina was equivalent to control, presenting the most appropriate responses to CEA, growth measures and serum lipids. In adicionacontrast, S2 was not able to promote good body development, compared to the control, in addition to increasing the levels of total cholesterol and LDL-c. Treatment S3 showed only statistically different values of HDL-C compared to control (p < 0.05). It was concluded that during the time and conditions of the study, treatment S3, the only one with Spirulina as the sole source of protein, was able to replace the standard source of protein - casein - in the diet of rodents, promoting the adequate development of body and lipids in the animals.