Cooked Rice and Oat Meal Similarly Reduce Hypercholesterolemia in Rats

Five groups of rats were given five different diets for 4 weeks after one week adaptation with standard casein. These diets include: casein diet as a control group (C), cooked rice ( R), cooked rice with 1% exogenous cholesterol (RC), oat meal (O), and oat meal with 1% exogenous cholesterol (OC) (Different analysis was determined on animals of these groups at the end of the experiment). The rats weights at the end of experiment showed that weight gain of control group rats was significantly higher (p.0.01) than other groups but there were no differences among other groups. The concentration of serum total cholesterol for (O) group (64.6 mg/100 ml) and that of (R) group (67.7 mg/100 ml) were significantly lower (p.0.01) than those of other groups and the control group was the highest one in all groups (112.42 mg/100 ml). The results also showed significant differences among mean relative weights of Liver, spleen and heart of different groups. The highest and lowest values of mean relative weight of rat's liver, spleen and heart in experimental groups were : (O) group (3.87) and R group (3.29) for liver, (R) group (0.48) and (O) group (0.38) for spleen, both RC and R groups (0.37) and (O) group (0.33) for heart respectively. The (R) and (O) diets significantly lowered the total fat content (24.0, 26.16 mg/kg respectively) while (O) diet lowered the cholesterol content (1.36 mg/kg) of the liver compared to the control diet (51.9 and 2.47 mg/kg for total fat and cholesterol respectively). For bile acid content in the feces, there were significant differences (p.0.01) among the different groups; (OC) group showed the highest (10.4 mg/gm of feces) and the control group showed the lowes