Glycemic potency of muffins made with wheat, rice, corn, oat and barley flours: a comparative study between in vivo and in vitro.

PURPOSE: Muffins made with wheat flour are a popular snack consumed in western and emerging countries. This study aimed to examine the content of amylose, glycemic response (GR) and glycemic index (GI) of muffins baked with refined wheat and rice flours, as well as wholegrain corn, oat and barley flours. METHODS: This study adopted a randomized, controlled, crossover, non-blind design. Twelve healthy participants consumed wheat, rice, corn, oat and barley muffins once and the reference glucose solution three times in a random order on non-consecutive day. Capillary blood samples were taken every 15 min in the first 60 min and every 30 min for the remaining 60 min for blood glucose analysis. The Megazyme amylose/amylopectin assay procedure was employed to measure amylose content. RESULTS: The GR elicited from the consumption of wheat, rice and corn muffins was comparable between these samples but significantly greater when compared with oat and barley muffins. Consumption of wholegrain muffins, apart from corn muffin, blunted postprandial GR when compared with muffins baked with refined cereal flours. Muffins baked with wheat, rice, corn, oat and barley flours gave rise to GI values of 74, 79, 74, 53 and 55, respectively. The content of amylose was significantly higher in corn, oat and barley muffins than wheat and rice muffins. CONCLUSIONS: The greater content of amylose and fibre may play a part in the reduced glycemic potency of oat and barley muffins. Wheat flour can be substituted with oat and barley flours for healthier muffins and other bakery products.

Study of serum lipase, alpha-amylase and pancreatic amylose in gall-stone diseases.

Silent gall-stone causes significant morbidity and mortality and its incidence in India as well as in whole world is on the rise. It has positive correlation with development of carcinoma gall bladder. So far no predictive study has been done to show its correlation with biochemical markers. The present study has been aimed to establish whether simple enzymatic markers can predict association with cholelithiasis. Study group has been selected from the patients attending general surgery OPD of a tertiary healthcare centre with complaints of vague abdominal pain, flatulence and dyspepsia. A total of 61 cases (male = 18, female = 43) were studied and data matched with age and sex matched control. The biochemical markers studied are serum alkaline phosphatase, serum lipase, serum alpha-amylase and serum pancreatic amylase. Patients with obstructive cholelithiasis, duct stones, pancreatic insufficiency and malignancy are excluded from the study. The results were analysed by Student's t-test. Alkaline phosphatase in all the above mentioned cases was not significantly different from the control group (40 female, 21 male healthy individuals). A significant association was found out with serum alpha-amylase (p < 0.05) and a highly significant association was found out with pancreatic amylase (p < 0.001). Results of serum lipase however were inconclusive (p = 0.1). Pancreatic amylase can be estimated at a reasonable cost and costwise may prove to be a marker of gall-stone diseases which are in many cases silent preventing further complications and chances of Malignancy especially where alkaline phosphatase isinconclusive.