Characterising cardiovascular disease in a high-carbohydrate / high-fat diet-induced rat model of human disease

Cardiovascular changes in a high-carbohydrate/high-fat diet in rats 



Funding year: 2009



Amount funded: $15,356



Lead researcher:
Associate Professor Lindsay Brown PhD, Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, University of Queensland



Research team:
Dr Darryl Burstow, Senior Staff Cardiologist, The Prince Charles Hospital
Ms Kathleen Wilson, Manager Biological Research Facilities, The Prince Charles Hospital



Location of research:
The Prince Charles Hospital & The University of Queensland, St Lucia Campus



Project description:
The metabolic syndrome, an important cardiovascular risk factor in Australians, includes hypertension, glucose intolerance, insulin resistance and obesity. This syndrome is considered to be diet-induced, especially with a diet rich in carbohydrates and saturated fats.

Animal models are widely used to understand human cardiovascular disease. Understanding the metabolic syndrome, and providing better therapeutic alternatives, requires adequate animal models to test proposed interventions. This project will firstly define the cardiovascular changes resulting from a high-carbohydrate/ high-fat diet in male adult Wistar rats. We will then define whether replacement of saturated with unsaturated fats reduces the cardiovascular symptoms, mimicking the well-known changes in humans.

Then, we will determine whether aerobic exercise reverses the cardiovascular changes. This will define, both by the symptoms produced by the diet as well as the effects of accepted interventions in patients, whether this rat model adequately mimics the cardiovascular changes in the human metabolic syndrome.