"Materials and Methods

Male albino rats of Wistar strain weighing 50 ± 5 g were purchased from CLRI, Adyar, Madras. The animals were maintained on standard pellet diet, (Lipton India Ltd., Bangalore) and water ad libitum. The animals were divided at random into three groups of ten animals each. The group I animals served as control. The rats in group II and III received, by gavage a dose of 10 mg Cr/kg body weight/day as sterile solutions of chromic chloride and potassium dichromate respectively. The experimental period was sixty days. The dosage was fixed by earlier experiments with high concentrations of chromium given to rats.

At the end of the experimental period, the rats were sacrificed at overnight fasting. The blood was collected in centrifuge tubes. Whole blood was used to estimate glucose (8) and urea (9). Liver and kidney tissues were removed immediately and a portion of the tissue was fixed in 10% formal saline for routine histological studies. Chromium was estimated in the blood spectrophotometrically (to) following wetashing of the samples. Serum was centrifuged out from the blood and used for estimations of serum lipids (11), cholesterol (12), phospholipids (13) and triglycerides (14).

Activities of aspartate amino transferase (E.C. 2.6.1.1) and alanine aminotransferase (E.C. 2.6.1.2) were determined in serum by the method of Mohur and Cook (15). Serum y-glutamyl transferase y-GT: E C. 2. 3. 2. 2), a marker enzyme of hepatodamage was also estimated (16). The method of Lowry et al. (17) was followed for protein estimation.

The data on various parameters between treated and control groups were analysed by applying Students t-test."

Male Albino Rats