Blood pressure in spontaneously hypertensive rats fed butterfat, corn oil, or fish oil.

Dietary fats have been shown to influence blood pressure in humans and animal models of hypertension. The ability of a particular fat to modulate arterial pressure appears to depend on its fatty acid profile rather than its degree of saturation or unsaturation. Little is known about the effects of specific dietary fats of animal origin on blood pressure. We tested the concurrent effects of both calcium and dietary fat on blood pressure development in the spontaneously hypertensive rat. Sixty animals were fed diets containing butterfat, fish oil, or corn oil from 3-26 weeks of age. Each diet among the three oils was further modified to contain either 0.25% or 2.0% of the diet as calcium. All six diets provided 18% of the diet (36% of the calories) as fat. The polyunsaturated-to-saturated fat ratio was 0.07, 0.84, and 4.54 for butterfat, fish oil, and corn oil, respectively. Fish oil consumption resulted in lower blood pressures compared with butterfat (p less than 0.036) or corn oil (p less than 0.0009). Similarly, butterfat feeding resulted in lower blood pressures when compared with corn oil (p less than 0.054). Supplementing the diet with calcium decreased blood pressure in both the butterfat and corn oil diets. When butterfat diets were supplemented with calcium, the resulting blood pressures did not differ significantly from those obtained with the two fish oil diets. It is concluded that butterfat, though highly saturated, is associated with less of an increase in the spontaneously hypertensive rat's blood pressure than is corn oil, which is highly unsaturated.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)