Effects of using rosemary volatile oil for weight gain reduction in rats.

Obesity is a major health problem world-wide. Medical interventions used for weight reduction proved to have side effects which might be dangerous for human health. The current trend is to use plant essential oils as a safer natural alternative that were found to have favourable effects e.g. as antioxidants. In the present study, the effects of rosemary essential oils in reducing body weight were studied and also the major components of the volatile oil were identified using GC-MS analysis. During the 45 days experimental period, rats were divided into 3 groups, fed a diet containing 15% cottonseed oil that was either fresh oil (G1) or heated oil (G2) or heated oil mixed with 0.2% Rosemary essential oil (G3). The parameters examined for studying the health effects of the rosemary oil were body weight gain, food intake, Food efficiency (FE), Protein efficiency ratio (PER) and Organs weights, Haematological indices were measured in blood samples include assessing Hemoglobin, hematocrite, red blood cells (RBC), total leucocytes count (TLC) and leucocytes deferential , Serum glucose , Serum total bilirubin, and also lipid profiles . The results showed that the weight gain for G2 was 119.57% and 90.35% for G3 compared to G1. Same pattern of effect was observed for food intake, which was found to be 12.5, 16.6 and 10.5 gm/day for G1, G2 and G3 respectivel