The Analysis of Blood Cockle (Anadara granosa) Flour Supplementation on The Concentrations of Zinc, IGF-I, And Ephiseal Plate Width of Femur Malnourished Male Rats (Rattus Norvegicus)

Blood cockle (Anadara granosa) is one of the foods and it is economically and culturally acceptable to the community, but has not been fully utilized in Gorontalo. Blood cockle contains high of zinc and protein, so that it has the potential of supplementation therapeutic for malnourished children, particularly stunting. The objective of this study is to analyze the supplementation of blood cockle flour in increasing the levels of plasma zinc, IGF-I serum, and epiphyseal plate width, in malnourished male Wistar strain rats (Rattus norvegicus). The design of this research was The Separate Sample Pre - Post Test Design. The 48 Wistar male rats, 6 weeks age, 115-120 g body weight were randomly grouped into 2 groups: 12 rats in normal control (NC) and 36 rats in the malnourished group (Kkg0). After eight weeks, 4 rats from each group were sacrificed as initial data. Eight rats of normal control were standard fed (NC), whereas 32 malnourished rats were randomly grouped into 4 groups, namely malnourished (Kkg1), malnourished supplemented with blood cockle flour in the amount of 2.5 g (Pkg1), 5 g (Pkg2), and 10 g (Pkg3) for 8 weeks. Rats were sacrificed after treatment. Data analysis was performed with One Way ANOVA, LSD test, Kruskal - Wallis and Mann-Whitney test. The results of this study indicate that supplementation of blood cockle flour can improve the growth of malnourished rats evidenced by the increasing plasma zinc level, IGF-I serum level, and the width of the epiphyseal plate of malnourished rats. Thus, it can be concluded that zinc and protein derived from blood cockle flour improve growth through a mechanism of change in the IGF-I level. which further improve bone metabolism, demonstrated growth of chondrocytes in epiphyseal plate and epiphyseal plate width.