Early-onset obesity and food restriction alter hepatocyte metabolism in adult Wistar rats

Abstract

RL and CR alter systemic and liver glucose metabolism.

Caloric Restriction and Litter Size Do Not Compromise Renal Function of Male Wistar Rats

“…On the other hand, the higher adiposity of reduced-litter rats indicates that it may have been programmed by the lactational overfeeding and remained until adult life. As expected and already observed [40], the 30% caloric restriction since weaning (group G3R) decreased both body weight and visceral fat.…”

“…As previously shown [40], body weight did not differ significantly between rats raised in normal (nine pups) or reduced litters (three pups) when they were 90 days old. This was observed in other investigations, and it was argued that body weight differences between control and reduced litters are more pronounced after weaning but tend to decrease with aging [26,33,[40][41][42][43][44][45]. On the other hand, the higher adiposity of reduced-litter rats indicates that it may have been programmed by the lactational overfeeding and remained until adult life.…”

Rat Hepatocyte Glucose Metabolism Is Affected by Caloric Restriction but not by Litter Size Reduction

“…This suggests that, on the reduced-litter young adult rat, liver glucose metabolism is not significantly shifted from its normal (control) status by the early (lactational) condition; in other words, it is not programmed by early life overfeeding. This is in accordance with data from older animals [31] and thus seems to be age-independent.…”

“…Consistent with this idea, higher glycogen content and similar findings on liver glucose metabolism were reported in reduced-litter, calorically-restricted rats aging 90 days [31]. As rats from large litters subjected to caloric restriction after weaning also display these patterns of liver glucose metabolism [24,32,33], it can be assumed that caloric restriction had an impact on liver glucose metabolism that seems to be dependent of the prevailing nutritional condition, and not of age or litter size.…”

“…Therefore, hepatocyte nitrogen handling was changed by litter size reduction, but restored to normal by caloric restriction after weaning. Later in life, urea production from alanine and glutamine in RG rats actually decreases, but those animals had less fat and lower body weight even when compared with control rats and would be recycling nitrogen instead of releasing it to the incubation medium, implying that nitrogen metabolism changes in an age-dependent manner, with older animals possibly favouring transamination [31].…”