Comparative Effects of Selected Underutilized Wild Beans on Plasma Lipid Profile and Liver Function of Rats Fed with High Fats Diet

Dietary fiber content of beans is known to be responsible in the management of metabolic syndrome by delaying the degree of glucose as fuels, changing fat utilization, and controlling appetite through increased satiety, thus lowering the risk of cardiovascular diseases. Hence some selected varieties of underutilized wild beans were evaluated to study their anti-lipidemic effects. Prior to this, attempts were made to ferment the non-digestible fractions of the beans with fermentable micro-organism and the respective gut metabolites were determined. Lipid profile result carried out in the blood showed high density lipoprotein to be significantly (p ≤ 0.05) high in Pakala group with a value of 2.2 ± 0.02 compared to other groups. While for low density lipoprotein (LDL); rats with Otili in their diet had the highest LDL with a value of 0.45 ± 0.01. However, the group of rats fed with Feregede had the least cholesterol level compared to other groups of rats fed with respective wild beans and the negative control group. Otili had the highest ALP with value of 89 ± 1.0. Otili group also had a significant lower value of both aspartate amino transferase and alanine amino transferase. The biochemical indices reported in this study vary from one type of wild bean to another.