Cardiovascular actions of chicken-meat extract in normo- and hypertensive rats

The cardiovascular actions of a commercial chicken-meat extract known as Brand's Essence of Chicken (Cerebos Pacific Ltd, Singapore; BEC) were investigated in normo- and hypertensive rats. The spontaneously-hypertensive rat (SHR), Wistar Kyoto rat (WKY) and Sprague Dawley rat (SD) were used. The effect of oral feeding of BEC on hypertension, cardiac hypertrophy and arteriosclerosis in these animals was studied. The data showed the following effects of oral feeding of BEC: (1) feeding for 30 d did not affect the blood pressure and heart rate (determined telemetrically) of adult SHR and WKY; (2) feeding for 90 d did not affect the development of hypertension in 1-month-old prehypertensive SHR; (3) feeding for 4 d dose-dependently (0.2-3.2 ml/kg per d) attenuated cardiac hypertrophy in experimentally-induced (coarctation of the abdominal aorta) cardiac hypertrophic SD; (4) feeding to 1-month-old prehypertensive SHR for 11 months did not affect the age-related development of hypertension in this animal; (5) there was significant attenuation of the age-related development of hypertension (determined by tail-cuff plethysmography) in the WKY (P=0.011) when the animals drank an average of 7.5 ml BEC/kg body weight per d, measured during the last 2 months of the 11-month treatment period; (6) there was chronic, as in the previous treatment, attenuation of the age-related development of cardiac hypertrophy and arteriosclerosis (quantified morphometrically) in the SHR when the animals drank an average of 2.4 ml BEC/kg per d, measured during the last 2 months of the 11-month treatment period. A parallel study using laboratory-prepared chicken-meat and pork extracts showed that the former, but not the latter, attenuated cardiac hypertrophy in experimentally-induced cardiac hypertrophic SD. These findings, showing that chicken-meat extract (both BEC and laboratory prepared) could have anti-cardiac hypertrophic, anti-hypertensive and anti-arteriosclerotic actions, were unexpected and provoking, and would challenge nutritional scientists with an interest in meat consumption and cardiovascular diseases.