eng Science and Education Publishing Journal of Food and Nutrition Research 2333-1240 2015-07-05 3 6 384 391 10.12691/jfnr-3-6-5 JFNR2015365 article Nurliyani nurliyani@yahoo.com 1 Eni Harmayani 2 Sunarti 3 Department of Animal Product Technology, Faculty of Animal Science, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Jl. Fauna 3 Kampus UGM, Bulaksumur, Yogyakarta 55281, Indonesia Faculty of Agricultural Technology, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia Diabetes has been known as an inflammatory diseases, and the certain of probiotics when administered in adequate amounts were reported have an anti-inflammatory properties. The purpose of this study were to evaluate the effect of administration of goat milk and soy milk kefir on immune responses including spleen lymphocyte proliferation, production of pro-inflammatory cytokine (TNF-α) and anti-inflammatory cytokine (IL-10), as well as peritoneal macrophage nitric oxide (NO) production in diabetic rats induced with streptozotocin-nicotinamide. Male Wistar rats were divided into five groups: negative control, positive control, diabetic rats fed goat milk kefir, diabetic rats fed kefir combination from goat milk and soy milk kefir and diabetic rats fed soy milk kefir. After 5 weeks treatment, the rats were sacrificed and sampled for spleen and peritoneal macrophages. The results showed that kefir combination from goat milk and soy milk kefir could increase lymphocyte proliferation and IL-10 production, as well as decreased TNF-α significantly (p<0.05) in diabetic rats. However, the effect of kefir combination showed the lowest NO production in diabetic rats compared with goat milk kefir and soy milk kefir. In conclusion, kefir combination from goat milk and soy milk may be used as biotherapeutic for type-2 diabetes mellitus by improving systemic immune responses through increasing in lympocyte proliferation and IL-10 as well as decreasing in TNF-α production. http://pubs.sciepub.com/jfnr/3/6/5/jfnr-3-6-5.pdf goat milk kefir soy milk kefir lymphocyte proliferation IL-10 TNF-α Nitric oxide diabetic