Effects of the Probiotic Saccharomyces cerevisiae on Some Haematological Indices of Female Rats (Rattus norvegicus)

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the safety of Saccharomyces cerevisiae (SC) supplementation as probiotic on haematological indices (HI) of female Albino rats. Twenty female rats of 12-14 weeks old were used for the study. The rats were randomly assigned to four groups designated A, B, C, and D (N=5). Distilled water was administered to group A (control), while groups B, C and D received 0.5, 1.0 and 1.5 g/kg body weight of SC respectively by oral gavage for twenty weeks. One milliliter of blood was collected from each rat through the ophthalmic venous plexus using a micro-capillary pipette into a labelled EDTA sample bottle at 4th, 8th and 20th weeks of treatment. Haematological indices were determined using automated haemo-analyzer. The HI investigated included: packed cell volume, haemoglobin concentration, red blood cells, mean corpuscular volume, mean corpuscular haemoglobin, mean corpuscular haemoglobin concentration, total leucocytes count (TLC), lymphocyte, neutrophil, monocyte, basophil, eosinophil and platelets. The results showed that the erythrocytic indices were not altered among the groups (p>0.05) throughout the study. There was a significant decrease (p<0.05) in monocytes of the treatment groups at 4th week. There was a significant decrease in TLC, monocytes, basophil and eosinophil of the treatment groups at 8th week. There was no significant difference (p>0.05) between the treatment groups and the control at 20th week in all the HI investigated. It was concluded that SC supplementation up to 1.5 g/kgbw has no adverse effects on HI of female rats.