An experimental study to evaluate the preventive effect of Zingiber officinale (ginger) on hypertension and hyperlipidaemia and its comparison with Allium sativum (garlic) in rats

摘要

Hypertension and hyperlipidemia are the two most important risk factors associated with high incidence of adverse coronary events and the incidence is increasing very rapidly specially in developing countries due to adoption of faulty eating habits and physical inactivity. In this study, we have focused mainly on two objectives. The first one is to provide safer, natural and effective alternative remedy against these risk factors because no drug in the modern medicine is devoid of the side effects and the second objective is to prevent the generation of risk factors rather than the treatment of the same because prevention is always better than cure. In this study, we have explored the preventive effect of ginger on blood pressure and lipid profile in rats fed on high fat diet (HFD) and comparison was done with the preventive effect of another natural herb garlic, which is a more studied and established herb against these risk factors. Total 18 rats were taken and divided equally into three (control, ginger and garlic) groups by random selection. Ginger and garlic (500 mg/kg orally) were given to two separate groups of rats fed on high fat diet for a period of 7 weeks. Blood pressure and lipid profile were measured on day 0 and after 7 weeks. Blood pressure was measured with the help of NIBP machine and the measurement of lipid profile blood sampling was done by intracardiac route. In this study, ginger have shown significant (p 0.05) increase in high density lipoprotein (HDL) level in comparison with control. Comparative study with garlic have shown that ginger has better although not significant preventive effect on systolic blood pressure and garlic has better preventive effect on lipid levels. On the basis of the aforementioned results, we can conclude that ginger like that of garlic may act as a better natural and safer alternative in the prevention of adverse coronary events and their risk factors like hypertension and hyperlipidemia.