Abstract:

Acrylamide (AA) has neurotoxic, mutagenic, and genotoxic effects in humans and experimental animals. Fruit consumption is important for human health, because fruits are the source of many nutrients such as vitamins, minerals, carotenoids, dietary fiber, and phytonutrients. Many agricultural products provide natural melatonin in the diet. At the onset of the study, rats were weighted and randomly divided into four groups each containing 10 rats as follows: group 1: control (fed with normal diet and normal drinking water); group 2: apricot (fed with a daily diet with 5% apricot and normal drinking water); group 3: AA (administered daily acrylamide at 500 μg/kg b.w. Via drinking water and fed a normal diet); group 4: apricot-AA (administered daily acrylamide at 500 μg/kg b.w. Via drinking water and fed with a diet with 5% apricot). The diet schedule was continued for 12 weeks. At the end of the study, samples of large intestine were collected for biochemical analyses. The highest lipid peroxidation (as malondialdehyde, MDA) levels were observed in the AA groups, but MDA levels decreased significantly (P < 0.05) with apricot intake. Glutathione peroxidase activity in the apricot-AA group was higher than in the other three groups (P < 0.05). Glutathione S-transferase (GST) enzyme activity increased significantly in the AA group as compared with the other groups (P < 0.05). However, GST activity was significantly (P < 0.05) decreased by the apricot-supplemented diet. GST-Pi mRNA levels in the AA group increased significantly (P < 0.05) as compared with the other groups. In conclusion, the results of the current study demonstrated that AA caused large intestine damage and showed the efficiency of apricot in preventing this damage by inhibiting lipid peroxidation and improving antioxidant enzyme activities.

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