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Dietary Guar Gum Halts Further Renal Enlargement in Rats with Established Diabetes^1,2,3,

Department of Food Science and Nutrition ^* School of Statistics, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN 55108

Guar gum, a dietary fiber known to improve glucose tolerance, was fed to rats with established diabetes to determine its effect on renal enlargement and microalbuminuria. Diabetic rats were fed a modified AIN-76A (basal) diet for 4 wk, at which time half the rats continued to receive the same basal diet (DB-BA group) and half were switched to a 5% guar gum diet (DB-GG group). Nondiabetic rats fed the basal diet served as controls (NRL group). After 8 additional weeks the animals were killed. Glycated hemoglobin, a measure of long-term blood glucose control, was 14.4% in the DB-BA group and 12.4% in the DB-GG group, a statistically significant difference (P < 0.05). Kidney weight of the DB-BA group (3.51 g) was significantly greater than that of the DB-GG group (2.76 g) (P < 0.05). Eight weeks after induction of diabetes, 24-h urinary albumin excretion was highest in the DB-BA group and lowest in the NRL group; excretion in the DB-GG group (4 wk of guar feeding) was intermediate. However, by 12 wk no differences in albumin excretion among the groups were apparent. These results suggest that guar gum may be useful for slowing the progression of diabetic nephropathy and that guar gum deserves further study in this regard.

KEY WORDS: • guar gum • diabetes • kidney • microalbuminuria • rats

¹ Presented in part at the 75th Annual Meeting of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, April 21–25, 1991, Atlanta, GA [Gallaher, D. & Olson, J. (1991) Decreased renal hypertrophy by dietary guar gum in diabetic rats. FASEB J. 5: A570 (abs.)].

² Supported by a grant-in-aid from the University of Minnesota Graduate School.

³ Paper no. 19,749 of the scientific series of the Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station on research conducted under the Minnesota Experiment Station project no. 18-058.

⁴ To whom correspondence and reprint requests should be addressed.

Manuscript received 28 February 1992. Revision accepted 13 August 1992.