Abstract
Background: The liver is a vital organ in the human body involved in the metabolic processes. The liver can be damaged due to factors such as protein deficiency, viral infection, as well as consumption of alcohol, chemical contaminants, and adulterated food. High blood cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, lack of exercise, poor diet, obesity and cigarette smoking are the major risk factors for stroke, heart attack and coronary heart disease (CHD). In medical science, several synthetic drugs have been discovered and used for the treatment of people suffering from liver injury and CHD, but these are not always effective and sometimes difficult to manage by medical therapies and also found to be accompanied by other side effects.
Objective: The study aimed to critically review the recent research and studies of epidemiological and randomized controlled trials to find out the effective cereal protein as an alternative preventive food to reduce the risk of CHD and protect the liver from viral hepatic diseases, focusing on daily food intake, body weight, liver weight, serum enzyme activities and cholesterols.
Methods: A few of the data from our experiment were used. A literature search was performed for a reliable source of published research articles, review papers, and epidemiological and randomized controlled trials on the effects of cereal protein on animals and human intervention on Google, Google scholar, Redcube, Endnote, Scopus, SpringerDirect.com, PubMed and Web of Science. Then, the data was organized, summarized and analyzed.
Results: In medical science, serum enzyme activities of aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) and lipid peroxidation stress malondialdehyde (MDA) are commonly used as biochemical markers of the liver-damaging agents. Blood cholesterols (total cholesterol-TC, triglyceride-TG, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol-LDLC and highdensity lipoprotein cholesterol-HDLC) are used as the markers of heart diseases. The review shows that daily food intake and body weight data are not significantly differed among normal diet, casein (CAS) and cereals protein. The millet and wheat protein increase the liver weight, whereas the rice protein lowers the liver weight. The intake of cereal protein significantly reduces the activities of serum AST, ALT, LDH, MDA, TC, TG and LDLC, whereas it increases the HDLC.
Conclusion: Experimental, review and randomized controlled trials (RCTs) data confirm that cereal protein appears to be beneficial in reducing the hepatic liver injury and CHD by maintaining body weight, liver weight, blood pressure, serum enzyme activities of AST, ALT and LDH, lipid peroxidation stress MDA and cholesterol concentrations both in plasma and liver.
Keywords: Blood pressure, body weight, cereals protein, cholesterol, liver weight, serum enzyme activities.
Graphical Abstract
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