Carotenoids 식이와 알코올이 혈중 지질 성분에 미치는 영향에 관한 연구 = Studies on the Serum Lipid's Components of Carotenoids Diet and Ethanol-Administrated in Rats

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Increasingly, humans are subjected to exposure to various foreign chemicals including drugs, food additives, pollutants. Some of them may be harmful and especially give rise to free radicals during metabolism in the tissues. These radicals such as superoxide, hydroxyl radical and hydrogen peroxide, induce oxidation of the macromolecules, resulting in a variety of damages in the body. However, humans have anti-oxidative mechanisms well developed against these damage. Anti-oxidants such as β-carotene and vitamin A, C, and E, are believed to play a major role in these mechanisms by acting as cofactors.
On the basis that alcohol, among human's favorite foods, is one of the most common oxidative chemical, this study was carried out to elucidate biochemical changes in the lipid components of the blood after alcohol administration on Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats. Also, we investigated the effects of carotenoid and β-carotene diets on the alcohol-injected rats.
At first, the concentrations of serum lipids were highly increased at alcohol-injected rats for one week (AL-1W), but significantly decreased at those dieted with β-carotene for one week (BC-1W). Second, after 2 weeks, the concentrations of serum lipids were exclusive decreased at alcohol-administrated rats. Third, the lipid concentration was increasing in β-carotene-dieted rats throughout the experiments for 3 weeks. These results may suggest that alcohol can cause damages in the liver, resulting in inflammation and increase of the concentration of serum lipids. Also, β-carotene and carotenoid diets are believed to protect the liver against the oxidative damages by alcohol administration.