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Germinated Brown Rice Enhances Antioxidant Activities and Immune Functions in Aged Mice

¹State Key Laboratory of Food Science and Technology, Jiangnan University, 1800 Lihu Road, Wuxi 214122, Jiangsu Province, China. ²School of Food Science and Technology, Jiangnan University, 1800 Lihu Road, Wuxi 214122, Jiangsu Province, China. ³Corresponding author. Phone: +86-0510-85917100. E-mail: xmxu@jiangnan.edu.cn

The present work was designed to obtain information on the effect of germinated brown rice (GBR) that has undergone different germination times (zero, one, two, three, and four days) on antioxidant activities and immune functions in aged mice. White rice (WR) was also investigated as a comparison. Chemical analysis of rice samples showed that the amounts of most nutritional and bioactive components increased significantly after two days of germination and were much higher in GBR and brown rice (BR) than in WR. Animal feeding experiments showed that dietary GBR and BR performed much better than WR in enhancing antioxidant activities and improving immune function in aged mice, and dietary GBR from three to four days of germination overall exhibited a better effect than GBR from zero to two days of germination.