Author(s)

Masataka Kusunoki^1*, Kazuhiko Tsutsumi², Daisuke Sato³, Tetsuro Miyata⁴, Takao Nakamura³

¹Department of Internal Medicine, Medical Clinic, Aichi Medical University, Nagoya, Japan.
²Okinaka Memorial Institute for Medical Research, Tokyo, Japan.
³Department of Biomedical Information Engineering, Graduate School of Medical Science, Yamagata University, Yamagata, Japan.
⁴Vascular Center, Sanno Medical Center, Tokyo, Japan.

Plasma lipoprotein(a) (Lp(a)) is known to be a strong independent risk factor for ischemic heart disease. However, it is not easily modulated by drugs that are presently available. Lp(a) is not present in many experimental animals except for Old World monkeys. In this study, we examined whether cynomolgus monkeys are useful model for research of human plasma Lp(a), and observed that plasma Lp(a) in cynomolgus monkeys varied as much as humans. As a result of 4 day-fasting in cynomolgus monkeys, the plasma Lp(a) level decreased in a monkey with originally high Lp(a) level. The Lp(a) level continued to decrease even 3 days after banana feeding, but returned to the original level 3 days after monkey chow feeding. On the other hand, in a monkey with low Lp(a) level, fasting had no effect on the Lp(a) level. However, in the third monkey having originally high Lp(a) level, the Lp(a) was not affected by decreasing the amount of monkey chow feeding by 50%. In summary, we found that cynomolgus monkeys may be an useful model for studying the effects of food on plasma Lp(a) in place of humans, and that high Lp(a) level may be controllable by strict diet regulation.

Lipoprotein(a), Fasting, Cynomolgus Monkey, Banana

Kusunoki, M. , Tsutsumi, K. , Sato, D. , Miyata, T. and Nakamura, T. (2014) Effects of Fasting on Plasma Lipoprotein(a) in Cynomolgus Monkeys: Preliminary Experiments Results. Open Journal of Animal Sciences, 4, 222-227. doi: 10.4236/ojas.2014.45028.