Effect of Probiotic Hummus on Blood Lipids of Rats

The present study investigates the synbiotic effect of probiotic bacteria and hummus as a prebiotic on blood lipids in Sprague-Dawley rats. A developed probiotic hummus that contained Lactobacillus acidophilus NCFM and Bifidobacterium lactis Bb-12 was added to a previously heated hummus at 75ºC/5 min., followed by an anaerobic incubation at 37ºC/8 h. The experimental diets included cholesterol diet, probiotic + cholesterol diet, hummus + cholesterol diet and probiotic hummus + cholesterol diet. Animals were divided randomly, according to their weights, into four groups (8 rats/group). Each group of the rats was fed one of the four diets for 8 weeks. Inclusion of probiotics to the cholesterol diet showed hypocholesterolemic effect, since it significantly (p 0.05) decreased TC and LDL-C by 14.5% (from 73.38 to 62.75) and 28.5% (from 19.70P Pto 14.08), respectively, as compared with the control group. No significant effects (p 0.05) in HDL-C and TG were shown due to this inclusion. The hummus addition to the cholesterol diet caused a significant (p 0.05) reduction of 9.0% (from 73.38 to 66.75), 22.1% (from 19.70P Pto 15.35) and 14.0% (from 93.88 to 80.75) in TC, LDL-C and TG, respectively. The combined effects of probiotics and prebiotics in probiotic hummus + cholesterol diet caused significant (p 0.05) reductions of 14.1% (from 73.38 to 63.00), 27.5% (from 19.70P Pto 14.29) and 24.4% (from 93.88 to 71.00) in TC, LDL-C and TG, respectively. It could be concluded that the addition of probiotic hummus to the cholesterol-rich diet caused significant reductions in TC, LDL-C and TG. However, these reductions were not significantly different from those reductions caused by the addition of probiotic or hummus alone except for TG.