Abstract:
Hyperlipidemia is a metabolic disease that groups quantitative increases in one or more lipoproteins in the blood plasma. Hypercholesterolemia is closely related to dyslipidemia consisting of a considerable increase in cholesterol in the blood. Lipid-lowering treatments have proven their effectiveness in preventing cardiovascular disease but they are not without side effects. The objective of our work was to evaluate the antihyperlipidemic effect of Crataegus azarolus, Crataegus monogyna and Citrullus lanatus seed oils on mouse weight and food consumption. Hyperlipidemia was induced by the administration of 400 mg/kg body weight /day of cholesterol for 21 days. Biochemical parameters (total cholesterol, triglycerides, HDLC, LDL-C, AST, ALT and CRP) were determined followed by histological analysis of the liver, heart and aorta. In addition, in our research, we measured reduced glutathione and catalase in liver tissue. In vitro, we studied the antiproliferative activity of seed oils of Crataegus azarolus and Crataegus monogyna on liver (HepG2) and breast (MCF7) cell lines, also catalase and glutathione activity in cell lines (HepG2) and (MCF7) after testing the H2O2 radical trapping activity in vitro. The results obtained in the present study clearly showed that the hyperlipidemic diet induces obesity in mice characterized by serum and tissue hyperlipidemia, inflammation, hepatopathy, cardiopahy, and oxidative stress at the tissue level. However, oral administration of seed oils of Crataegus azarolus, Crataegus monogyna and Citrullus lanatus (120 mg / kg body weight / day) caused a very highly significant decrease in body weight gain, transaminase activity (AST, ALT), plasma concentration of cholesterol, triglycerides, and LDL-C (p = 0.000) and highly significant CRP values (p≤0.01). Also, a highly significant increase in HDL-C concentration in obese mice compared to control mice, (p≤0.01). Evaluation of oxidative stress status shows that the three oils also resulted in a clear improvement in antioxidant status in liver tissue by an increase in GSH and hepatic CAT levels in obese mice compared to control mice. These beneficial effects were evident in histological sections. These activities were expressed very significantly in the groups of mice treated with Crataegus monogyna seed oil (120 mg/kg body weight /day) compared to the other groups, (P = 0.000). Our results highlight that the seed oils of Crataegus azarolus, Crataegus monogyna and Citrullus lanatus show no toxic effects at a dose of 2000 mg / kg. In addition, the in vitro study showed that treatment with the four different concentrations (1.2 µg/100µl, 2.4 µg/100µl, 4.8 µg/100µl and 9.6 µg/100µl) inhibited tumor cell growth in a dose-dependent manner, but had no toxicity on healthy cells. Finally, our results revealed that seed oils of Crataegus azarolus, Crataegus monogyna increased intracellular CAT and GSH activity very highly significantly in cells (HepG2) and (MCF7), (P = 0.000). In conclusion, the results obtained in this study show that the seed oils of Crataegus azarolus, Crataegus monogyna and Citrullus lanatus can be considered as natural sources to
prevent and treat cardiovascular diseases.
