Fig 1.
Effect of BCA mix on body weight (A), adiposity index (B), food intake (C) and water intake (D).
Data were expressed as mean ± SEM. A Mann-Whitney test or Two-way ANOVA test were used for statistical analysis. n = 8 for each group. * p<0.05; ** p<0.01 BCA-ObZ vs. U-ObZ. U-ObZ: Untreated Obese Zucker; BCA-ObZ: BCA-Treated Obese Zucker.
Table 1.
Effect of BCA supplementation on weight, abdominal circumference, fasting glycaemia, insulin, plasma lipids and hepatic transaminases.
Fig 2.
Effect of BCA blend on glucose and insulin metabolism.
Glucose metabolism was assessed by oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT), performed at the beginning and end of the protocol. After a glucose bolus, plasma glucose was measured at baseline (A) and at week 13 of the protocol (B). The area under the curve (AUC) of OGTT was calculated at baseline and at week 13of the protocol (C). Insulin metabolism was assessed by calculating the insulin resistance assessment model (HOMA-IR) (D). Data were expressed as mean ± SEM. A Mann-Whitney test or Unpaired t test were used for statistical analysis. n = 8 * p<0.05; *** p<0.001 BCA-ObZ vs. U-ObZ. U-ObZ: Untreated Obese Zucker; BCA-ObZ: BCA-Treated Obese Zucker.
Fig 3.
Effect of BCA treatment on aortic vasoreactivity.
CCRCs were constructed to assess aortic contractile responses using phenylephrine (Phe, 10−9 to 3.10−5 M (A) and relaxation responses using acetylcholine (Ach, 10−9 to 3.10−5 M) (B), insulin (Ins, 10−9 to 10−5 M) (C) and insulin (Ins, 10−9 to 10−5 M) with or not incubated BH4 (10−5 M) and L-Arg (10−3 M) (D). Percentages of contraction and relaxation calculated are relative to maximal changes from pre-contraction produced by KCl and Phe, respectively. Data are expressed as mean ± SEM and determined using NLME for Phe and Ach and LME for Ins. n = 6–8 each group. **p<0.01 BCA-ObZ vs. U-ObZ. ## p<0.01 U-ObZ+BH4+Larg vs. U-ObZ. U-ObZ: Untreated Obese Zucker; BCA-ObZ: BCA-Treated Obese Zucker; BH4: Tetrahydrobiopterin; L-Arg: L-arginine; NLME Non-linear Mixed Effect; LME: Linear Mixed effect.
Fig 4.
Effect of BCA mixture on carbachol-induced contraction in isolated segments of distal colon from control and BCA-treated groups.
The responses were obtained after pretreatment with sodium butyrate (A) or propionate (B). Data are expressed as mean ± SEM. LME was used for statistical analysis. n = 8 for each group. U-ObZ: Untreated Obese Zucker; BCA-ObZ: BCA-Treated Obese Zucker; LME: Linear Mixed effect.
Fig 5.
Permeability to fluorescein sulfonic acid was measured using Ussing chambers in the proximal colon (A) and in the distal colon (B).
Data are expressed as mean ± SEM. The Mann-Whitney test was used for statistical analysis. n = 8 for each group. ns: Not significant; * p<0.05 BCA-ObZ vs. U-ObZ. U-ObZ: Untreated Obese Zucker; BCA-ObZ: BCA-Treated Obese Zucker.
Fig 6.
The panels represent the alpha diversity measures where; A) presents the observed library (total number of AVS observed); B) presents Chao1 index is the richness estimators (estimate the total number of AVS present in a community); C) presents Simpson is microbial indexes of diversity.
Boxes span the first to third quartiles; the horizontal line inside the boxes represents the median. U-ObZ: Untreated Obese Zucker; BCA-ObZ: BCA-Treated Obese Zucker.
Fig 7.
The phylum composition of microbiome after the 13th week of experimentation.
U-ObZ: Untreated Obese Zucker; BCA-ObZ: BCA-Treated Obese Zucker.