The Effectiveness of Dried Chard (Beta vulgaris var. cicla) Leaves Consumption on Obese Diabetic Rats

Overweight and obesity are one of the main lifestyle illnesses that lead to further health concerns and contribute to numerous chronic diseases. Diabetes mellitus is the collective term for heterogeneous metabolic disorders whose main finding is chronic hyperglycemia. The present study was carried out to investigate the effects of chard leaves on controlling body weight and hypoglycemia in obese-diabetic rats. Thirty-five male albino rats were used. Obesity was induced by feeding 28 rats a high-fat caloric diet (HFCD) for 4 weeks. Then, obese rats were injected with were subcutaneously injected by streptozotocin (STZ) at the dose of 60 mg/kg of b wt to induce-diabetes in rats. Healthy rats (7 rats) were injected with an equivalent amount of saline solution and kept as a negative control group. Obese-diabetic rats were divided into 4 groups. Group 2, the untreated obesity-diabetic group (ODRs), was kept as a positive control group. While the other 3 obesity-diabetic groups were treated by feeding on the supplemented HFCD with 5, 7.5, and 10% of chard leaves powdered in proportion to the diet. The quantitative estimate revealed that TPs and TFs content of chard leaves were 41.00±2.01mg GAE/g and 3.26±1.05 QE/g, respectively. The results discovered that untreated obese-diabetic rats had a significant decline in the mean values of FI, serum levels of HDL-c, and serum activity of SOD and GSH enzymes. While there is a significant rise in the mean values of FBW, BWG, BWG %, VFW, and AI, and levels of blood glucose, serum insulin, leptin, TC, TG, TL, LDL-c, VLDL-c, MDA, and   activities of AST, ALT and ALP enzymes, compared to healthy control rats. Further, histopathological examination of pancreases of obese-diabetic rats from the positive control group showed hypertrophy and hyperplasia of β-cells of islets of langerhans associated with pyknosis of their nuclei. As well, liver sections have fatty changes of hepatocytes and congestion of hepatic sinusoids, vacuolization of hepatocytes, and necrosis of sporadic hepatocytes. Interestingly, obese-diabetic rats from treated groups fed on the supplemented diet with chard leaves at levels of 5, 7.5, and 10% had improvement in all the tested biological and biochemical parameters, as well as histological study of pancreas and liver. The efficiency of chard leaves in the treating of obese-diabetic rats was significantly augmented as the supplemental levels of chard leaves to HFCD were increasing. Finally, it was concluded that chard leaves have beneficial effects on obese-diabetic rats fed HFCD through the reduction of relative body weight gain, fat deposit tissue and serum lipids, liver function, and lipid peroxidation.