Novel Aspects in Inhibiting Pancreatic Lipase with Potential New Compound from Nutmeg in Connection with Obesity - In Vitro, In Silico, In Vivo and Ex Vivo Studies.

Obesity is now considered a "new world syndrome" because it is affecting developed and developing nations in all classes of people. Pancreatic lipase (PL) is the key enzyme for absorption of dietary lipids. Excessive consumption of cafeteria foods leads to obesity. Nutmeg is being used as a spice and it has many medicinal values. We aimed to see whether nutmeg could be used as a potential source of new lipase inhibitors and to explore its molecular mechanism in obesity. An in vitro study, which was performed to check its anti-lipase activity, showed a potent lipase inhibition (66.24%). A liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) analysis was carried out to identify new compounds, and tetrahydrofuran (THF) with MW 536 at RT 15.2 min was isolated. A molecular docking study, that was carried out to check the interaction between THF and PL, found a PL inhibitory action of tetrahydrofuran. A further in vivo study was conducted to see PL inhibition. The percentage of fecal fat was higher in nutmeg treated rats. The size and number of adipose tissue fat cells were also decreased after treatment with nutmeg extract, which pointed to the inhibition of PL by the newly identified compound, THF. These four different types of studies suggested that nutmeg could potentially inhibit pancreatic lipase.