Hepatoprotective Effects of Insect Extracts in an Animal Model of Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease

Abstract

Insects represent the largest and most diverse group of organisms on earth and are potential food and drug resources. Recently, we have demonstrated that a Forsythia viridissima extract prevented free fatty acid-induced lipid accumulation in an in vitro cellular nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) model. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the hepatoprotective effects of extracts of the insects Protaetia brevitarsis seulensis Kolbe, 1886 (PB), Oxya chinensis sinuosa Mishchenko, 1951 (OC), and Gryllus bimaculatus De Geer, 1773 (GB) in a high-fat diet (HFD)-induced NAFLD animal model, as well as to elucidate the underlying mechanisms. The effects of the supplementation with PB, OC, and GB extracts were evaluated histopathologically and histochemically. PB, OC, and GB extract supplementation inhibited the HFD-induced increase in body weight and body fat mass and ameliorated other adverse changes, resulting in decreased liver function parameters, lower serum triglyceride and cholesterol levels, and increased serum adiponectin levels. The expression of hepatic genes involved in lipid droplet accumulation and in fatty acid uptake also decreased upon treatment of HFD-fed mice with the extracts. These results provide evidence of the protective effects of the PB, OC, and GB extracts against HFD-induced fatty liver disease in an animal model.

<i>Elaeagnus mollis</i> Oil Attenuates Non-alcoholic Fatty Disease in High-fat Diet Induced Obese Mice via Modifying the Expression of Lipid Metabolismrelated Genes

“…As mentioned above, the high-fat diet directly caused lipid metabolism disorder, and simultaneously lead to the imbalance of lipids synthesis and catabolism in the liver. And mild NAFLD was formatted accompany with excessive hepatic lipids accumulation as a result of higher calories food 12 . Similar results were observed by liver pathology changes in this study Fig.…”

“…What s more, literature reported that the over-expressed of lipogenic genes such as SREBP-1c, PPARγ, FAS and so on in the liver increased the risk of inflammation and hepatic steatosis 21 . SREBP-1c is regarded as a critical transcription factor for TG synthesis 35 , which could decrease the expression of lipogenic enzymes, including FAS, ACC, and SCD1 12,24 . PPARγ, which regarded as an important transcription factor in adipogenesis 36 , involving in the micro vesicular accumulation of lipids droplets and glucose homeostasis 38 , and its downstream gene mainly contained FAS, AP2, and LPL.…”

Modeling Diet‐Induced Metabolic Syndrome in Rodents

“…All data presented herein were obtained from refs. [44,54,55,70,72,74,75,78,88,95,96,98,102–111,116,119–121,124–130,132,134–137,140–144,147–156,158,159,161,163–171,173–176...…”

“…All data presented herein were obtained from refs. [70,72,74,77,78,88,95,96,98,104,105,107,109–112,114–128,130,132,133,135–142,144–146,148,150,151,153,154,157,159,161–168,174,176–184,187,188,190,191,194,196–198,200–204,206,208–212,215,217,219–226,229,230,232–235,237,239–242,244,250–253,257,258,263,264,266–268,270–276,278,285,287–290,292,295,296,298–301,303,304,308–310,314,316,317,319,321,322,324,325,329,331–342].…”

Upregulation of Kruppel-like Factor 4 Gene expression by Allomyrina dichotoma Hemolymph in the INS-1 Pancreatic β-cells

“…Many recent results provide evidences that effects of edible insect extracts against liver diseases (Ahn et al, 2014;Im et al, 2017;Kim and Chae, 2018;Lee et al, 2017a;Lee et al, 2017b). Our results also provide an insight to the development of KLF4-related disease therapies through gene expression regulation of KLF4 using A. dichotoma hemolymph combined with mild ER stress (Yoshida & Hayashi, 2014;Lu et al, 2015).…”