Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2015:7:77-85.
doi: 10.2147/NDS.S88888. Epub 2015 Oct 20.

Taurine and vitamin E supplementations have minimal effects on body composition, hepatic lipids, and blood hormone and metabolite concentrations in healthy Sprague Dawley rats

Portia S Allen  1 , Andrew W Brown  2 , Michelle M Bohan Brown  3 , Walter H Hsu  4 , Donald C Beitz  1
Affiliations

Taurine and vitamin E supplementations have minimal effects on body composition, hepatic lipids, and blood hormone and metabolite concentrations in healthy Sprague Dawley rats

Portia S Allen et al. Nutr Diet Suppl. 2015.

Abstract

Background: As prescriptions for off-label pharmaceutical use and autonomous administration of over-the-counter nutraceuticals become mainstream, thorough assessments of these compounds are warranted.

Objective: To determine the effects of gemfibrozil, rosiglitazone, metformin, taurine, and vitamin E on body composition, hepatic lipids, and metabolic hormone and blood metabolite concentrations in a healthy, outbred rat cohort.

Methods: Male Sprague Dawley rats were fed a purified 10 kcal% from fat diet for 56 days and assigned to diet alone (control) or diet plus oral administration of gemfibrozil (34 mg/kg), metformin (500 mg/kg), rosiglitazone (3 mg/kg), taurine (520 mg/kg), or vitamin E (200 mg/kg).

Results: Rosiglitazone administration resulted in a 56% increase in carcass adiposity, cautioning potential prescriptive off-label use. Taurine supplementation had no adverse effects on evaluated parameters. A modest but significant increase in liver triacylglycerol content was observed with vitamin E supplementation compared with control (Δ 17.2 g triacylglycerol/100 g liver lipid).

Conclusions: The evaluated pharmaceuticals had effects in a healthy population similar to the reported effects in their target population and the nutraceuticals had minimal effects on the measured physiological parameters.

Keywords: animal model; gemfibrozil; metformin; thiazolidinedione.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Disclosure: The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Pharmaceutical and nutraceutical effects on plasma insulin (A) and adiponectin (B) concentrations. Values are expressed as means ± pooled SEM; n=10 for all treatments except for control (n=11). Data points within the same day without common letters are significantly different (adj. p<0.05) by repeated measures ANOVA, correcting for multiple comparisons. Asterisks denote a significant difference from day 0 values.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Pharmaceutical and nutraceutical effects on serum non-esterified fatty acid (NEFA) (A) and total cholesterol (B) concentrations. Values are expressed as means ± pooled SEM; n=10 for all treatments except for control (n=11). Data points within the same day without common letters are significantly different (adj. p<0.05) by repeated measures ANOVA, correcting for multiple comparisons. Asterisks denote a significant difference from day 0 values.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Pharmaceutical and nutraceutical effects on rat growth curves. Rats were weighed daily during the 56 day treatment period and the values are means; n=10 for all treatments except for control (n=11). The line of fit coefficients are displayed in Table 3.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Beltrán-Sánchez H, Harhay MO, Harhay MM, McElligott S. Prevalence and Trends of Metabolic Syndrome in the Adult U.S. Population, 1999–2010. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2013;62(8):697–703. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bailey RL, Gahche JJ, Lentino CV, et al. Dietary supplement use in the United States, 2003-2006. J Nutr. 2011;141(2):261–266. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Radley DC, Finkelstein SN, Stafford RS. Off-label prescribing among office-based physicians. Arch Intern Med. 2006;166(9):1021–1026. - PubMed
    1. Yao ZM, Vance DE. The active synthesis of phosphatidylcholine is required for very low density lipoprotein secretion from rat hepatocytes. J Biol Chem. 1988;263(6):2998–3004. - PubMed
    1. Kolovou GD, Mikhailidis DP, Kafaltis N, et al. The effect of alcohol and gemfibrozil co-administration in Wistar rats. In Vivo. 2004;18(1):49–53. - PubMed