Effect of an herbal extract Number Ten (NT) on body weight in rats

York, Thomas Sonyja, Greenway, Liu Zhijun, Rood

Description

Chinese herbal extract Number Ten (NT) is a dietary herbal formulation prepared from rhubarb, ginger, astragalus, red sage and tumeric. This study tested the effectiveness of NT in reducing body weight gain in rats. Methods Sixty female Wistar rats were fed a high fat diet and acclimated to gavage feeding. The rats were divided into five treatment groups: (1) Control (n = 15); (2) NT-H (n = 15), 1.5 g/day; (3) NT-L (n = 10), 0.75 g/day; (4) Pr-fed (n = 10), pair fed to NT-H; (5) d-FF (n = 10), d-fenfluramine 2 mg/kg. Ten rats per group were sacrificed on day 56. Weight, food intake, clinical chemistry and body composition were evaluated. Five animals in the control and 1.5 g/day NT groups were left untreated during a two week recovery period. Results The 0.75 g/day NT, 1.5 g/day NT, d-fenfluramine and pair fed groups gained 24.6%, 33.3%, 12.3% and 33.3% less than the control respectively (P < 0.0006). Leptin decreased 27.5% to 46.2% in the treatment groups vs. control (P < 0.009). Parametrial fat decreased 14.1% to 55.5% in the NT and pair fed groups vs. control (P < 0.006). The NT groups had soft stools, loss of hair around the mouth and coloration to the urine and stool without evidence of blood or bilirubin (attributed to chromogens in NT). There were no differences between groups in the clinical chemistry. Conclusion This study demonstrated the efficacy of NT in reducing weight gain in rodents.

Informations

• Publié par: biomed
• Publié le: 01 janvier 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• Langue: English

Extrait

Chinese Medicine

BioMedCentral

Open Access Research Effect of an herbal extract Number Ten (NT) on body weight in rats 1,3 1 1 2 David A York* , Sonyja Thomas , Frank L Greenway , Zhijun Liu and 1 Jennifer C Rood

1 2 Address: Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Louisiana State University System, Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70808, USA, Louisiana State 3 University Agricultural Center, Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70803, USA and Center for Advanced Nutrition, Utah State University, 4715 Old Main Hill, Logan, Utah 84322, USA Email: David A York*  [e-mail]; Sonyja Thomas  [e-mail]; Frank L Greenway  [e-mail]; Zhijun Liu  [e-mail]; Jennifer C Rood  [e-mail] * Corresponding author

Published: 14 September 2007 Received: 24 July 2006 Accepted: 14 September 2007 Chinese Medicine2007,2:10 doi:10.1186/1749-8546-2-10 This article is available from: http://www.cmjournal.org/content/2/1/10 © 2007 York et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract Background:Chinese herbal extract Number Ten (NT) is a dietary herbal formulation prepared from rhubarb, ginger, astragalus, red sage and tumeric. This study tested the effectiveness of NT in reducing body weight gain in rats.

Methods:Sixty female Wistar rats were fed a high fat diet and acclimated to gavage feeding. The rats were divided into five treatment groups: (1) Control (n = 15); (2) NT-H (n = 15), 1.5 g/day; (3) NT-L (n = 10), 0.75 g/day; (4) Pr-fed (n = 10), pair fed to NT-H; (5) d-FF (n = 10), d-fenfluramine 2 mg/kg. Ten rats per group were sacrificed on day 56. Weight, food intake, clinical chemistry and body composition were evaluated. Five animals in the control and 1.5 g/day NT groups were left untreated during a two week recovery period.

Results:The 0.75 g/day NT, 1.5 g/day NT, d-fenfluramine and pair fed groups gained 24.6%, 33.3%, 12.3% and 33.3% less than the control respectively (P < 0.0006). Leptin decreased 27.5% to 46.2% in the treatment groups vs. control (P < 0.009). Parametrial fat decreased 14.1% to 55.5% in the NT and pair fed groups vs. control (P < 0.006). The NT groups had soft stools, loss of hair around the mouth and coloration to the urine and stool without evidence of blood or bilirubin (attributed to chromogens in NT). There were no differences between groups in the clinical chemistry.

Conclusion:This study demonstrated the efficacy of NT in reducing weight gain in rodents.

Background Herbal treatments have been found effective for major diseases such as cancer, diabetes mellitus, and cardiovas cular disease [14]. We are looking for effective herbal treatments for obesity. Obesity has a major influence on the morbidity and life expectancy of people. Increasing incidence of obesity suggests this epidemic of overweight will only worsen in the future [57]. The absence of effec tive treatments for the grossly overweight, other than bar

iatric surgery, has encouraged the search for new drugs and drug targets that might be more effective in inducing weight loss and/or preventing weight gain [8,9].

Traditional Chinese herbal products were reported to be effective for the treatment of obesity [10,11]. One such, an herbal decoction known as Number Ten (NT, which is not a trade name) was reported in a published patent specifi cation to be effective in preventing obesity in rats when it

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