Effect of cigarette smoke on body weight, food intake and reproductive organs in adult albino rats.

One hour daily exposure to cigarette smoke for two months significantly decreased the body weight and food intake in male and female albino rats. The latency for conception increased significantly and the litter size decreased. Mortality rate per litter increased and grayish discoloration of the skin in the experimental group was the only congenital anomaly seen. Testes and ovaries showed a significant decrease in weight. The stroma of the ovaries were occupied by very few Graafian follicles. Testes showed disruption of the normal orderly progression of the spermatogonia. The tubules showed only one layer of spermatogonia and very few germinal cells. The number of sperms was less in the testes. The results show that exposure to cigarette smoke is detrimental to the reproductivity in both, male and female albino rats.

Influence of dietary fats on weight gain in albino rats.

Carbon-chain length and degree of saturation of dietary fat may influence weight gain. To examine this hypothesis we randomly allotted 100 male, 30-day old, albino rats to each of four groups. Each group was fed, ad libitum, a diet containing, as the only source of fat, either lard (L) or safflower oil (SO) (representing saturated and polyunsaturated fat respectively) or groundnut oil (GO) or coconut oil (CO) (representing long-chain and medium-chain triglycerides respectively). At the end of 90 days it was found that rats fed SO consumed more food than those fed L enriched diet (P < 0.001) but the weight gain was similar in the two groups. Similarly rats fed GO-containing diet ate more than those fed diet containing CO (P < 0.001), yet weight gain was similar. Thus it appears that carbon-chain length and degree of saturation of dietary fat does not influence weight gain in rats fed an ad libitum diet.