OBJECTIVES: Pre-pregnancy obesity is a serious epidemics concern that negatively affects the neurodevelopmental of the offspring. Elateriospermum tapos (E. tapos) commonly used to enhance weight loss in obesity treatment. This study was aimed to investigate the influence of E. tapos supplement in obese maternal prior pregnancy on the offspring's bodyweight, lipid metabolism and memory function.
METHODS: Thirty female Sprague Dawley rats were used. Six rats were assigned to the normal diet group (DND). The remaining rats were fed with a high-fat and cafeteria diet (HFCD) to generate obesity for 5 weeks. Obese rats were further divided into four groups: Negative Control (DNC; HFCD), Positive Control (DPC; Orlistat 200 mg/kg), treatment 1 (DTX1; E. tapos seed 200 mg/kg) and treatment 2 (DTX2, E. tapos shell 200 mg/kg) were given daily, for 6 weeks prior to mating. At weaning, offspring of both genders were designated into six groups according to their dam's group (n=6/group). All groups were fed with a cafeteria diet except for the control group. Memory tasks for object and place recognition were conducted on offspring at eighth weeks of age. The offspring were cull at the 12th week of age for their blood sample.
RESULTS: Both offspring genders from DTX2 significantly reduce bodyweight, calorie intake and triglyceride level. In memory tasks, offspring from DTX2 showed a significant increase in exploration rate in place test as compared to offspring from the DNC group.
CONCLUSIONS: This study highlights E. tapos shell as an anti-obesity agent and protecting memory deficit in obese dam's offspring.
* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.