Analysis of lipid profile of catfish (<i>Clarias albopunctatus</i>) from selected water bodies in Ebonyi State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study analyzed the lipids of catfish, (Clarias albopunctatus) from four rivers (Mkpuma, Amaka, Enyigba and Ebonyi) in Ebonyi State. Fishes were harvested, weighed and sacrificed and the gill tissues were collected and used for the extraction of lipid for the analysis. All extracted lipids were homogenized in a chloroform-methanol solution using standard procedure. After extraction, lipids were resolved and analyzed differently while simple correlation was used to analyze the data collected. Results showed that there were varying levels of lipid composition among the catfish samples from the different rivers. Results further revealed the correlation between triglyceride (TG) and other lipids to be only significant for phosphatidylcholine (PC) (r=0.818, p<0.05). Although TG had moderate correlation with sphingomyelin (SM), the correlation was not significant (r=0.701, p>0.05). Free fatty acid (FFA) had strong positive significant correlation with cholesterol (CHO) (r=0.981, p<0.01); sphingomyelin (SM) (r=0.949, p<0.01) and phosphatidylethanolamine (PE) (r=0.886, p<0.01). However, moderate correlation with no significant difference (0.631, p>0.05) was observed with phosphatidylcholine (PC). Cholesterol also had strong positive correlation with SM and PE and insignificant correlation with PC while a strong positive correlation was observed between SM and PC (r=0.828, p<0.01).

Keywords: Lipid profile, catfish, water bodies, Ebonyi State, correlation.