Animal Model for In Vivo Evaluation of Cholesterol Reduction by Lactic Acid Bacteria

For many years, it has been recognized that elevated serum cholesterol is a risk factor associated with atherosclerosis and coronary heart disease, the latter being a major cause of death in Western countries. Numerous drugs that lower cholesterol have been used to treat hypocholesterolemic individuals (1 ). However, the undesirable side effects of these compounds have caused concerns about their therapeutic use (2 ). Ingestion of probiotic (beneficial for health ) lactic acid bacteria (LAB) would possibly be a more natural method to decrease serum cholesterol in humans (3 ), as has been was reported (4 ,5 ).