Abstract:With China’s increasing development of fisheries and aquaculture, there is an annual increase in the manufacture of aquatic products. Processing of aquatic products is associated with a large amount of waste products, in which fishbone and fishhead account for 45%. The waste products had been used as material of fish sauce and hydrolyzed protein, which companied with high cost and complicated processes. How to efficiently utilize this kind of calcium source becomes focus in fish deep processing. Not only in China calcium deficiency is a prevalent nutritional disease, it has attracted the attention of the world because its serious result. The lack of calcium intake leads to great interests in demand of calcium supplement and calcium fortification. Fishbone is a kind of natural calcium source. Till now, researches on utilization of fishbone almost focused on freshwater fish, no research on seawater fish were conducted to study biological effects on calcium supplement and bone fortification. So, to investigate the possible use of waste products obtained after processing haddock, the present study prepared haddock bone calcium powder by NaOH and ethanol soaking (alkaline-alcohol method) and prepared haddock bone calcium tablets using the powder in combination with appropriate excipients. The biological efficacy of the haddock bone calcium tablets was investigated using Wistar rats as an experiment model. Results showed that the optimal parameters for the alkaline-alcohol method are as follows: NaOH concentration 1 mol/L, immersion time 30 h, ethanol concentration 60%, immersion time 15 h. The fish powder processed in this way has high quality in color and odor when compared with that prepared in acid method. Contents of fishbone powder are as follows: calcium 27.8%, phosphors 12.2%, protein3.67%, fat 0.44%. A mixture of 4% polyvinylpyrrolidone in ethanol was used as an excipient, the ratio between full-cream milk powder and filler was 1:2. Under these conditions, there is no necessity in the use of a disintegrating agent for disintegrating time is less than 12 min. This process provided satisfactory characters for tablets in terms of rigidity and taste. Animal studies showed that the haddock bone calcium tablets at a dose of 2g/kg/d or 5g/kg/d significantly increased blood calcium and phosphorus levels and bone calcium content in Wistar rats. Therefore, the haddock bone calcium tablets have a better biological efficacy than the traditional calcium carbonate formulation and promote bone growth, increase bone density and prevent osteoporosis. The absorption rate is crucial for nutrients. High absorption rates are usually directly related to the bioactivity of the nutrient. Although the reasons of high absorption in the rats fed with haddock bone calcium tablets are still unclear, it is suggested that there are some factors, such as treatment with method of alkaline-alcohol or the vitamin D in the added milk, may play positive roles in increasing absorption ratio. Some natural trace elements such as magnesium, iron and phosphorus may also be responsible for the high bioavailability of calcium derived from haddock fishbone relative to calcium carbonate. These researches provide a more effective way for economically utilization of fish bone derived from marine fish processing.