2000 Volume 46 Issue 6 Pages 316-320
To clarify the relationship between coffee and fitness, we investigated the ef-fect of coffee on weight gain and total cholesterol as well as production of cytokines and ac-tivities of GOT (aspartate aminotransferase; EC 2.6.1.1.) and GPT (alanine aminotrans-ferase; EC 2.6.1.2.) as injected lipopolysaccharides. Forty-eight male Wistar rats were di-vided into three dietary groups (n=16), which were fed a stock diet (control group), the diet supplemented with freeze-dried coffee of 6.2 g/kg (0.62% coffee group), and the diet supple-mented with freeze-dried coffee of 13.6 g/kg (1.36% coffee group). It was confirmed by HPLC analysis that the serum caffeine concentrations in both coffee groups became signifi-cantly higher in 140 days after the start of feeding. No significant differences in body weight and serum cholesterol were found between the coffee groups and control group, though the coffee groups tended to be somewhat high at cholesterol level. Activities of serum GOT and GPT increased at 2 h after LPS injection, but in the coffee groups were significantly sup-pressed (p<0.05). However, the coffee feeding could not suppress the increases of serum cy-tokine (TNF-α and IL-6) levels. These results suggest that coffee may serve as a preventive against liver injury.
