Efeito do suco de caju (Anacardium occidentale L.) adicionado de farinhas do bagaço de caju sobre a resposta imunológica em camundongos

Abstract

The cashew apple and cashew nut, pseudo fruit and fruit (Anacardium occidentale L.) have high nutritional value, but less than 10% of the cashew apple from the processing of cashew nut is availed. The cashew apple juice added with bagasse flour could therefore be an alternative for the improvement of its nutritional properties. The aim of this study was to evaluate the phytochemical composition, the total antioxidant potential and immunomodulatory activity of cashew apple juice with added of the flour mature bagasse (CAJM) and immature (CAJIM) of the cashew apple. Therefore, we evaluated the antioxidant capacity of juice and flour of cashew apple (clone CCP-76) by two methods, ABTS and DPPH. The phytochemicals compounds quantified were polyphenols, vitamin C, carotenoids, anthocyanins and flavonoids yellow. In vivo tests were performed with male swiss mice, from the animal colony of UFC, with approval by the Ethics Committee on Animal Research (CEPA) under the UFC protocol No. 102/2011. Toxicity tests were carried out on mice treated for 19 days orally with CAJM and CAJIM at different doses. Physiological parameters such as body weight, relative organ to body weight, lipid peroxidation and dosage of the ALT and AST enzymes were determined. To evaluate the humoral and cellular immune response, the treated animals were immunized with sheep red blood cells (SRBC) to determine the antibody titer by hemagglutination method and later challenged with (SRBC) to evaluate the delayed type hypersensitivity (DTH) reaction. To analyze the significant differences between the means of different groups, we applied the ANOVA followed by Tukey or Newman-Keuls and differences were considered significant at p < 0.05. Flour Cashew green bagasse showed the highest antioxidant capacity and the highest levels of polyphenols, also predominant constituent in flour and ripe cashew juice. The ripe flour showed the highest antioxidant capacity and the highest levels of polyphenols, also predominant constituent in ripe flour and cashew apple juice. There were no significant changes in any parameters evaluated in toxicity test. In the humoral response, the cashew apple juice and CAJIM at dose of 300 mg / kg showed higher antibody titer with an increase of 120.69 and 100.00 % compared to the control group. Already in cellular response, juice, SFM and SFV (300 mg / kg) induced an increase in DTH of 10.66, 10.66 and 11.11% respectively, compared to control. The cashew apple juice added with the flour of cashew bagasse in stages of maturity different can be an alternative for improving the immune system. However, further studies are needed to enable this supplementation of juice with flours.