Pathophysiology of high fat diet induced obesity: impact of probiotic banana juice on obesity associated complications and hepatosteatosis.

The high fat diet alters intestinal microbiota due to increased intestinal permeability and susceptibility to microbial antigens leads to metabolic endotoxemia. But probiotic juices reported for various health benefits. In this background we hypothesized that pectinase treated probiotic banana juice has diverse effects on HFD induced obesity and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis. 20 weeks fed HFD successfully induced obesity and its associated complications in experimental rats. The supplementation of probiotic banana juice for 5 months at a dose of 5 mL/kg bw/day resulted significant decrease (p < 0.05) in body weight (380 ± 0.34), total fat (72 ± 0.8), fat percentage (17 ± 0.07) and fat free mass (165 ± 0.02). Reduction (p < 0.05) in insulin resistance (5.20 ± 0.03), lipid profile (TC 120 ± 0.05; TG 160 ± 0.24; HDL 38 ± 0.03), liver lipid peroxidation (0.7 ± 0.01), hepatic enzyme markers (AST 82 ± 0.06; ALT 78 ± 0.34; ALP 42 ± 0.22), and hepatic steatosis by increasing liver antioxidant potential (CAT 1.4 ± 0.30; GSH 1.04 ± 0.04; SOD 0.82 ± 0.22) with normal hepatic triglycerides (15 ± 0.02) and glycogen (0.022 ± 0.15) contents and also showed normal liver size, less accumulation of lipid droplets with only a few congestion. It is concluded that the increased intestinal S. cerevisiae yeast can switch anti-obesity, antidiabetic, antioxidative stress, antioxidant and anti-hepatosteatosis effect. This study results will have significant implications for treatment of NAFLD.

Plasmid profiles of mercuric chloride tolerant rhizobia from horse gram (Macrotyloma uniflorum).

Thirty two rhizobia were isolated from the fresh healthy root nodules of horse gram. They were found to be highly salt tolerant. They were identified as rhizobia by cultural, biochemical and 16S rRNA sequence. The sequences of the four selected isolates were deposited in the NCBI GenBank. The obtained accession numbers were GQ483457, GQ483458, GQ483459 and GQ483460. All the rhizobia were able to grow at 10 ppm mercuric chloride concentration. Four isolates HGR-11, 16, 30 and 31 were used to study the effect of different concentrations of mercuric chloride on the growth of rhizobia. These isolates were able to grow at 30 ppm concentration also. In these isolates, HGR-11 and HGR-30 showed maximum growth at 20 ppm than at control. These isolates contained one mega plasmid (-22 kb) at 20 ppm mercuric chloride concentration.

The effect of investment materials on the surface of cast fluorcanasite glasses and glass-ceramics.

Modified fluorcanasite glass-ceramics were produced by controlled two stage heat-treatment of as-cast glasses. Castability was determined using a spiral castability test and the lost-wax method. Specimens were cast into moulds formed from gypsum and phosphate bonded investments to observe their effect on the casting process, surface roughness, surface composition and biocompatibility. Both gypsum and phosphate bonded investments could be successfully used for the lost-wax casting of fluorcanasite glasses. Although the stoichiometric glass composition had the highest castability, all modified compositions showed good relative castability. X-ray diffraction showed similar bulk crystallisation for each glass, irrespective of the investment material. However, differences in surface crystallisation were detected when different investment materials were used. Gypsum bonded investment discs showed slightly improved in vitro biocompatibility than equivalent phosphate bonded investment discs under the conditions used.