Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of long-term supplementation with dietary lipids on growth and fatty acid composition of rabbit's brain. Soybean oil, fish oil, sesame oil, docosahexaenoic acid and arachidonic acid were fed to weanling rabbits for 100 days. The rabbits were decapitated and brain sample was removed, homogenized and fatty acid concentration was measured by gas chromatography. Dietary lipids had a distinct effect on growth rate only in males. Rabbits fed the fish oil diet showed the highest total omega-3 fatty acids and lowest to omega-6/omega-3 ratios. Rabbits fed the DHA diet had highest total saturated fatty acids and lowest values of total MUFA, total PUFA, total to omega-6, and total to omega-3 in females. This study shows that omega-6/omega-3 ratios have tremendous effect on the fatty acid composition of rabbit's brain. Effect of treatment was not significant among different gender except for total saturated, ARA, C20:1 and C16:0. FO, DHA and DHA+ARA groups showed the omega-6/omega-3 ratios within the recommended range. This study shows that fatty acid composition of brain can be modulated by dietary lipids and long-term supplementation of dietary lipids especially fish oil (FO) has very good effect on the fatty acid composition of rabbit's brain.