The levels of serum glucose, total cholesterol (TC), triglyceride (TG), density lipoprotein (LDL), high-density lipoprotein (HDL), urea and creatinine and the activities of alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST) were determined using a commercial kit (Nanjing Jiancheng Bioengineering Institute, Nanjing, China) [14, 15] .