Dietary Phyllanthus emblica L. (Indian gooseberry, Amla) improves fecundity and resistance to oxidative stress in a Drosophila melanogaster model of early-life malnutrition.

Amla is a celebrated ethnobotanical fruit whose consumption is associated with several beneficial claims. Many studies have demonstrated Amlas positive impact on molecular and systemic readouts in diseased conditions. Studies on Amlas potential as a nutraceutical however are limited. To test if daily dietary supplementation with Amla improves select systemic readouts associated with wellbeing, and alleviate phenotypes associated with early life malnutrition, we deployed the fly animal model system. Benefits were compared between adult flies that were subject to larval starvation (ELS) and controls, and between genders. The most dramatic effect was observed in resistance to oxidative stress: prophylactic feeding of 1% Amla Juice (AJ) increased median survival by [~]75% (control) and 200% (ELS) in males, and [~]167% (control) and [~]150% (ELS) in females, respectively. Interestingly, survival also increased in both genders when AJ was fed only during stress or, before and during stress. For other assays, impacts were seen only in ELS flies: AJ feeding decreased lifespan in female ELS flies, increased egg numbers by [~]25% and improved survival upon P. entomophila infection by [~]80%. Together, these suggest that prophylactic AJ dietary intake has selective biological effects and in the context of malnutrition, it can be explored further as a nutraceutical. O_FIG O_LINKSMALLFIG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=108 SRC="FIGDIR/small/626288v1_ufig1.gif" ALT="Figure 1"> View larger version (25K): org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@d66901org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@87e4fcorg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1ca7027org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@18922cc_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP M_FIG C_FIG