The energy constituents and lipidaemic effects of various formulations of cocoyam-Bambara groundnut-soya bean flour blends fed on streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats

Background: Diabetes mellitus is a chronic disease affecting a reasonable percentage of people globally, recording high incidence, chronicity and mortality. There are challenges in curbing the burden due to high care cost resulting in adopting cost-saving strategies through use of plant foods. High calorie diets and legumes including culturally acceptable staple foods like cocoyam, soya bean and Bambara groundnut are undergoing experimental studies for their clinical application in the management of T2DM. This study is focusing on understanding the relationship between high calorie diets and hyperlipidaemia, due to the relevance of such knowledge in cardiovascular diseases.

Methodology: Three commonly consumed plant foods: Cocoyam (CY), Bambara groundnut (BGN) and Soya bean (SB) were obtained, processed, and pelletized after samples of the flour were subjected to proximate analysis and energy content calculation. The intervention feeds were given for 28 days to the seven groups of male albino rats that were induced with diabetes using Streptozotocin, Blood specimen was collected, from the intervention groups and controls for lipid profile determination.

Results & Discussion: SPSS and one-way ANOVA were used to analyze the generated data, while the Turkey`s post-hoc test, was applied to detect the difference in mean, with the significant difference pegged at p<0.05 value. Group A treated with Formulation 1 (16.6%CY: 16.6%SB: 16.6%BGN: 50%RF), which in comparison to the diabetic control, reduced the Total cholesterol (TC) level by 12.53% and the Low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDLc) levels by 24.71%. Formulations 1`s 16.3kJ/g and commercial rat feed (RF)`s 16.7kJ/g energy values were comparable and with 65.7% higher fibre content compared to RF, might have contributed to its hypocholesterolaemic potency. Formulation 7, a binary blend (50%SB + 50% RF), with the highest fat content (19.55%) and highest energy value (23.8kJ/g), had comparatively lower potency than formulation 1 and RF.

Conclusion: CY-BGN-SB flour blend formulations contained caloric values that approximated that of commercial rat foods and despite the higher fat content in some of the formulations they all exerted hypolipidaemic effects possibly due to reasonable number of dietary fibres and hypoglycemic-bioactive constituents, and hence can be recommended for nutritional management of diabetes especially if human studies are conducted.