Effects of overfeeding and high-fat diet on cardiosomatic parameters and cardiac structures in young and adult zebrafish

Abstract

Obesity is a complex global health problem because it is a risk factor for multiple chronic pathologies such as cardiovascular, endocrine, metabolic, and neoplastic diseases. It is considered a multicausal disease, and one of the determining factors is nutritional imbalances, which include high-fat diets. In this paper, we use the zebrafish model to assess the impact of overfeeding and a high-fat diet in somatic and cardiac parameters in young and adult zebrafish. The results show that fish receiving a high-fat diet showed greater weight gain compared to fish receiving a standard fat diet. Additionally, changes in the heart, including increases in size, a change in the triangular shape of the ventricle to a globular shape, and an increase in the thickness of the trabeculae of the spongy myocardium were observed. These changes could be indicators of cardiovascular overload. The results show that there is a direct relationship between the intake of a high-fat diet and obesity, which in turn can induce cardiac changes, supporting the hypothesis of the relationship between high-fat diets and cardiovascular risk factors. Given the genetic similarity between zebrafish and humans, these results could be extrapolated to human beings, and the findings similarly highlight the importance of incorporating a balanced diet from the early life stages to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.

Zebrafish as a Model for Obesity and Diabetes

“…They demonstrated that these high-fat diets make zebrafish obese (Meguro et al, 2015 ). Similarly, overfeeding the combination of a commercial tropical fish flakes (Tetramin) and 20% crude vegetable oil to zebrafish for 256 days triggers cardiovascular overload (Vargas and Vásquez, 2017 ).…”

Influence of Commercial and Laboratory Diets on Growth, Body Composition, and Reproduction in the Zebrafish Danio rerio

“…Similar concerns regarding nutritional requirements and diet standardization were addressed in rodent models several decades ago, leading to the development and adoption of standardized reference and open formulation diets of specific composition. 11 As observed in mammals, specific nutrients and dietary ingredients, or the lack thereof, can potentially alter physiology, behavior, and/or molecular pathways in zebrafish, [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] whereas other researches suggested that nutrient content of diets fed to adult zebrafish can even influence the development and health of their offspring. [26][27][28][29][30][31] All these evidences suggest that for zebrafish, diet is an important environmental factor that can potentially compromise and confound outcomes related to the question of study; Therefore, a lack of nutritional control in zebrafish laboratories could affect the interpretation of both past and future research.…”

Zebrafish and Flavonoids: Adjuvants against Obesity

“…The aforementioned model has also been used to test the effects of some dietary supplement effects on body fat accumulation [ 27 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 ]. DIO zebrafish have subsequently been documented and applied as an induction by overfeeding with commercial feed or through a high calorie diet of corn oil or commercial oil enriched feeds for various obesity study purposes [ 27 , 64 , 65 , 66 ]. Although it should be noted that not all lipid metabolism genes are highly conserved in sequence and function in zebrafish.…”