Dear Segun,

perhaps some nuts or oily seeds? What do you use for cooking oil in Nigeria?

@Petra, the commonest cooking oil here is palm-oil and it is claimed to lower cholesterol. Other oils are advertised as containing no cholesterol such as groundnut oil. Please what have you used before to induce hypercholesterolemia in rats aside from cholesterol.

I don't work with rats - I work with transgenic mice that tend to be hypercholesterolemic already and then get fed western diet chow. Here's an idea - how about the worst junk food you can find? I'm sure there's McD or something?

If you could get hold of any standard high fat rat chow, it would help make your experiment more comparable

Thanks Petra, I will consider your suggestions.

Dear Segun,

Unfortunately, it is rather difficult to make rats hypercholesterolemic. When rats made hypothyroid by either thydoidectomy or treatment with mercazole, an anti-thyroid agent,  the animals become sensitive to cholesterol feeding and blood cholesterol increases. Again, without cholesterol  loading, blood cholesterol level of hypothyroid rats remains normal.

I hope that hypercholesterolemia may develop in hypothyroid rats fed an oil/food available in Nigeria.

I do not know whether there are any maneuvers that selectively enhance  de novo synthesis of cholesterol, causing elevation of blood cholesterol.

For rats, Sprague-Dawley and Wistar, fat-rich diets with high levels of cholesterol (1–1.5%) and cholic acid (0.25–0.5%) are capable of promoting elevations in total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol. This is happens as a result of blocking the main pathway of cholesterol catabolism.However, u should keep in mind that  atherosclerotic lesions in rats are not feasible to be induced unless a thyroid hormone inhibitor (2-thiouracil, w 0.5% w/w) is added to the diet.

Best of luck !

As I commented earlier, it seems difficult to induce hypercholesterolemia in rats without using cholesterol. (I misunderstood that there is some food rich in cholesterol in Nigeria.).

I am in agreement with Ahmad's comments that only "fat-rich diets with high levels of cholesterol and cholic acids are capable of promoting elevations in total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol" and "Atherosclerotic lesions in rats are not feasible to be induced unless a thyroid hormone inhibitor is added to the diet".

In our experiences, thyroidectomized rats fed a normal laboratory chow did not  show elevated plasma cholesterol (Metabolism 29: 797, 1980). In rats  fed a diet containing 1% cholesterol plus 0.5% cholic acid  for 2 weeks, plasma cholesterol concentrations increased 2-fold, further,those of thyroidectomized rats were 3-fold higher than those of high cholesterol-fed controls (Metabolism 32: 145, 1983). [Unfortunately I have not the PDF file of these papers. I realized that the files are available, however, purchase access to these articles costs 31.5$ USD]   In another experiments we used rats made hypothyroid by feedig atherogenic diet containing o.2% 6-methyl-2-thyouracil (J Clin Invest 92: 411, 1993). Again,I would say that it is difficult to induce hypercholesterolemia in rats without using cholesterol.