Considering the proposed preventive effect of nervonic acid on obesity- and diabetes-related coronary risk factors, the content of its precursors (oleic, 11-eicosenoic and 13-docosenoic acids) was measured in liver and plasma phospholipids and triglycerides, brain and spleen phospholipids, and adipose tissue lipids of fed or overnight fasted control and hereditarily diabetic Goto-Kakizaki female rats, as well as fed streptozotocin-induced diabetic female rats. In liver and brain phospholipids, the 11-eicosenoate/oleate ratio was significantly higher in diabetic rats than in control animals. Such was not the case in either spleen phospholipids or liver triglycerides and adipose tissue lipids. The increase in the liver phospholipid 11-eicosenoate/oleate ratio found in female diabetic rats represents a mirror image of the situation recently documented, in the same animal models of diabetes, in male rats. These contrasting findings may be relevant to the higher coronary heart disease risk prevailing in female, as compared to male, diabetic subjects.

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