Polyunsaturated fatty acid levels in rat tissues after chronic treatment with dietetic oils

The essential fatty acids can be helpful in the prevention of several pathologies. The purpose of this study was to quantify the major n-3 and n-6 fatty acids in tissues of rats fed with flaxseed oil and with a dietetic oil in order to evaluate how their chronic supplementation could influence the correspondent in vivo levels and to study the effectiveness of the dietetic oil compared to flaxseed oil.

Fatty acids were successfully extracted from biological samples, subjected to derivatization procedure and analysed by high-performance liquid chromatography with UV detection under gradient elution mode. The developed method showed good linearity, precision and accuracy, with recoveries ranging from 89% to 92%. Animals treated with flaxseed and dietetic oils showed enhanced levels of n-3 fatty acids compared to control groups, with significantly higher levels of eicosapentaenoic acid and docosahexaenoic acid in the brain and in the adipose tissue of the dietetic group compared to the flaxseed group.

The obtained data underline that the tested oils can effectively enhance the tissue levels of n-3 fatty acids and therefore they could be successfully used in the dietetic treatment of lipid-related diseases.