Lime and atherosclerosis

Citrus is a family of fruits whose peels and juices contain high amounts of various biofunctional nutrients like flavonoids carotenoids and ascorbic acid. Lime fruit as a member of this family has been known as a typical healthy food for a long time but its antioxidant-rich peel is wasted and only lime juice is consumed. In this project using an animal model it was found that fresh juice and peel of lime fruit prevents atherosclerosis progression and surprisingly lime peel has a direct effect on atherosclerosis while its juice has an inverted U-shaped effect. Moreover the mechanism of the observed effect was studied in this project.