Pioglitazone, a thiazolidinedione (TZD), is widely used as an insulin sensitizer in the treatment of type 2 diabetes. However, body weight gain is frequently observed in TZD-treated patients. Fish oil improves lipid metabolism dysfunction and obesity. In this study, we demonstrated suppression of body weight gain in response to pioglitazone administration by combination therapy of pioglitazone ...

The influence of fish oil and safflower oil contained in the common Japanese diet as the main dietary polyunsaturated fatty acid source on plasma fatty acids in ten female student volunteers (21-22 years old) was investigated. The subjects were divided into two groups and fed the experimental diets for five days. The total daily fat intake in the fish diet and safflower oil diet was 54.4 g and ...

Uncoupling protein 2 (UCP2) is a possible target molecule for energy dissipation. Many dietary fats, including safflower oil and lard, induce obesity in C57BL/6 mice, whereas fish oil does not. Fish oil increases UCP2 expression in hepatocytes and may enhance UCP2 activity by activating the UCP2 molecule or altering the lipid bilayer environment. To examine the role of liver UCP2 in obesity, we...

The effects of dietary phytol and the type of dietary fat on hepatic fatty acid oxidation were examined in male ICR mice. Mice were fed diets containing 0 or 5 g/kg phytol and 100 g/kg palm, safflower, or fish oil for 21 d. Among the groups fed phytol-free diets, the activities and mRNA abundance of various enzymes involved in fatty acid oxidation were greater in mice fed fish oil than in those...

Leaf spot of safflower caused by Alternaria carthami Chowdhury is common in all the safflower growing regions of the world. The disease was reported from India by Chowdhury (1944) and subsequently from erstwhile USSR (Nelen and Vasileva, 1960), United States (United States Department of Agriculture, 1961), Ethiopia and Kenya (Ellis and Holliday, 1970), Africa (Weiss, 1971), Australia (Irwin, 19...

Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.) is a multipurpose crop that can grow in arid and semi-arid environments because of its tolerance to drought stress, salinity, lower higher temperatures. Despite safflower’s characteristic, stress negatively impact growth development. Drought reduces plant height biomass, leaf chlorophyll content area, photosynthesis rate, yield components, oil yield, fatty ac...

The dye used on the silk textiles in an as yet undated relic shrine in a church in Antwerp was analysed by reflectance UV-Vis spectrometry. The natural dyestuff carthamin from safflower (Carthamus tinctorius) was detected; because of its very poor light fastness this does not allow the shrine to be exhibited. Neither does it allow dating of the silk, since safflower has been used over a period ...

Previous studies in man have indicated that administration of either plant sterols or unsaturated dietary fats causes decreases in certain serum lipids. This report presents the results of a long-term 7-phase study of the comparative effects of the single and combined administration of plant sterols (p-sitosterol) and a highly unsaturated vegetable oil (safflower oil) in 15 ambulatory subjects....

Effects of dietary oils on aging were investigated in senescence-accelerated mice. For 26 weeks, mice were fed purified diets containing 4% olive oil, safflower oil, perilla oil, or fish oil. Serum total, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and apolipoprotein A-II (ApoA-II) were significantly lower in the fish oil group than in the perilla oil group, and these were significantly lower than in...

Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.) is one of the most extensively used oil crops in the world. However, little is known about how its compounds are synthesized at the genetic level. In this study, Solexa-based deep sequencing on seed, leaf and petal of safflower produced a de novo transcriptome consisting of 153,769 unigenes. We annotated 82,916 of the unigenes with gene annotation and assigne...