Scope
Studies based on DHA/EPA supplementation in animal models of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) reveal controversial results. It is speculated that different forms of DHA may explain the controversial results. Therefore, the effects of DHA‐enriched phospholipids (DHA‐PL) and DHA‐enriched triglyceride (DHA‐TG) on IBD are compared.
Methods and results
Male C57BL6/J mice are given DHA‐PL and DHA‐TG for 14 consecutive days, and receive ad libitum a 3.0% dextran sodium sulfate solution on the eighth day to establish IBD model. The results show that both DHA‐PL and DHA‐TG can reverse the colitis pathological process by decreasing the disease activity indexes (DAI), raising the colon length, suppressing the intestinal permeability, suppressing the oxidative stress, down‐regulating pro‐inflammatory factors, up‐regulating anti‐inflammatory factor in colon tissues. DHA‐PL and DHA‐TG also regulate the composition of gut microbiota via decreasing of the abundance Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes, and DHA‐TG increases the abundance of Odoribacter. Importantly, DHA‐PL and DHA‐TG obviously attenuate the activation of microglia.
Conclusions
DHA‐PL shows outstanding advantages in regulating oxidative stress, inflammatory responses, and intestinal barrier permeability. The current research indicates that the existence of DHA affects the improvement, DHA in phospholipid form could be a more effective choice for nutritional intervention to prevent and treat colitis.
Our previous study showed that EPA-enriched ethanolamine plasmalogen (EPA-pPE) exerted more significant effects than EPA-enriched phosphatidylethanolamine (EPA-PE) in improving learning and memory deficit.
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