Figure 3. Effects of methanol extract of N. sativa on (A,B) intestinal glucose absorption, (C) disaccharidase enzyme activity, and (D) GI motility (by BaSO4 traversed) in non-diabetic rats.
Rats were fasted for 36 h (gut perfusion) and 20 h (enzyme activity and gut motility), and intestine was perfused with glucose (54 g/l) in the presence (treated group) or absence of (control group) methanol extract of N. sativa (10 mg/ml; with every individual obtaining 15 ml of perfusion). Enzyme activity was determined and BaSO4 administered at 60 min. Motility was measured over the following 15 min. Acarbose (ACB) (200 mg/kg) and bisacodyl (10 mg/kg) were used as standard drugs for disaccharidase activity and GI motility test correspondingly. The values are means and standard deviations represented by vertical bars (n=8). The mean values that are marked with an asterisk (*) were substantially different from those of respective control rats (*P<0.05 and **P<0.01) (this was derived from repeated-measures ANOVA and adjusted using Bonferroni correction).