POTENTIAL OF ETHANOL AND DECOCTION EXTRACTS OF BAY LEAVES TO IMPROVE LIPID PROFILE (LDL-CHOLESTEROL) OF WISTAR RATS

ABSTRACT Hyperlipidemia is a common cardiovascular disease, and numbers of patients with such symptom tend to increase due to bad life pattern (people tend to consume fat rich foods with low fibre content). Until recently, patients with hyperlipidemia symptom rely on simvastatin to cope with such disease. Long term use of this medicine is not recommended. Therefore there is a need to reseach alternative medicines with similar effect, but lower risk. The main objective of this research was to investigate the effectiveness of ethanol and decoxion extracts of bay leaves to reduce the level of blood LDL cholesterol in Wistar rats. This research applied a randomized block design with 8 groups of treatments including distilled water treatment (negatif control), treatments (mg/kg body weight) of Simvastatin 0.36 mg/kg (positive control), EEDS 252mg/kg, EEDS 504mg/kg, EEDS 756mg/kg, RBDS 25%/kg, RBDS 50% mg/kg, and RBDS 75% mg/kg, and the treatments were applied for 1 week following acclimatation of the rats for 30 days in which those rats were fed with fat-rich food. The results showed that all groups of treatments gave significant effect (p?0.05) to reduce LDL cholesterol level with percentage of reduction of between 8.00±0.82% and 56.16 ± 5.69% (< negatif control where 6.25 ± 0.50% was observed). Application of EEDS at dose of 756mg/kg body weight (EEDS 756) even reduced the LDL cholesterol better than simvastatin (positive control). Hypolipidimea effects of the extracts might be partly due to flavonoid, alkaloid, and tannin content of the plant symplisia (bay leaf extracts). Keywords: Bay leaves, LDL-Cholesterol, Rat Wistar