Mortality of Sprague Dawley (SD) Rat on Long Term High-Fat Diet (HFD)

Abstract

Background and Objective: Heart failure is linked with metabolic syndrome due to an unbalanced dietary intake. Previous studies suggest that cardiac dysfunction is related to chronic inflammation due to injury within the heart muscle. This study focused on the examination and sudden death of Sprague Dawley (SD) rat which was on long-term High-Fat Diet (HFD). The outcomes will potentially provide an insight into future research in sudden death due to HFD. Methods: Total of 15 SD rats grouped into ten HFD and five on normal diet (ND); Female SD rats on HFD underwent physical examination, tissue analysis 12 hours post-death using Hematoxylin & Eosin (H&E) followed by morphological assessment and SD rats from ND used as control. Microscopic images processed using ImageJ and data analysis performed in SPSS software. Results: No significant physical trauma prior to death, however on the 60th day SD rat suffered chronic inflammation to cardiac tissues with Lee Index (LI) of 0.30, indicated the occurrence of Myocardial infarction (MI). The average mean between the size area of inflammation and the region on cardiac tissue is (834.19 ± 103.41) and 94.2% of inflammation activities explained by the four random regions of cardiac tissue (R2= 0.942, F(1, 2)= 32.401, p< 0.05), with every one unit increase in the size area of inflammation, the infected region of cardiac tissue is estimated to increase at 0.970 (?= 0.970, p< 0.05). Conclusion: Chronic inflammation resulted in myocardial injuries led to mortality of SD rats largely due to HFD.