Heart Care Info - Heart Disease Prevention & Treatment

Echium Oil Reduces Atherosclerosis in apoB100-only LDLrKO Mice

LM Forrest, E Boudyguina, MD Wilson... - Atherosclerosis, 2011 - Elsevier Methods Mice were fed palm, echium, or fish oil-containing diets for 16 weeks and plasma lipids, lipoproteins, and atherosclerosis were measured. Results Compared to palm oil, echium oil feeding resulted in significantly less plasma triglyceride and cholesterol levels, ...

Fig. 2. Echium oil reduces atherosclerosis. Mice were sacrificed and aortas were removed for atherosclerosis quantification (n = 12 16 mice per group). (A) Representative aorta from each diet group with atherosclerotic lesions identified by white arrows. (B) Quantification of aortic surface lesion area. (C) Aortic total cholesterol (TC), free cholesterol (FC) and cholesteryl ester (CE), measured by gas liquid chromatography. Values are mean SEM. Bars with different letters denote significant differences among diet groups (p < 0.05). (D) Aortic root intimal area. Frozen sections (8 μm) of the aortic root were stained with Oil Red O and intimal area was quantified using Image Pro software in three sections from each mouse. Each point denotes the average intimal area (n = 3 sections) per mouse, whereas the horizontal lines indicate the group mean SEM.