A Bioactive Peptide Ameliorates Diet‐induced Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver in Senescence Accelerated Mice Prone 8 (SAMP8)‐Genetic Ageing Model
Authors: DUmeUS Stanley , Kuo Wei‐Wen , Huang Chih‐Yang 
Published: June 2021

Background & Purposes

Aging and high‐fat diet (HFD) hypernutrition represent two major risk factors for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). To investigate the chemopreventive effects of bioactive compounds in fatty liver, our lab has successfully developed various dietary murine models for the past years. Considering special issues with drug administration in elderly subjects, we purposed in this present work to induce NAFLD in senescence‐accelerated mice prone 8 (SAMP8) specific strains with HFD (60% calories from fat) and evaluate a novel bioactive peptide (DIKTNKPVIF) synthesized from a well‐studied lipolysis‐activating potato protein hydrolysate (PH), for its efficacy to reduce HFD‐driven fat deposition and associated proinflammatory events responsible for NAFLD development in SAMP8 aging mice.

Methods & Results

Five groups of six‐month‐old SAMP8 mice (n=4, per group) were submitted to a fourteen‐week experimental study. After sacrifice at ten months of age, liver tissue from individual mouse was collected for histopathological analyses and immunoblot assay. In comparison to the normal chow‐fed control group (NC) with minor aging‐associated hepatic fat depot, HCO group upon the fourteen‐week HFD feeding without treatment displayed widespread hepatic fat droplets evidenced by histopathological analyses of their liver slides. In addition to HFD feeding, a concomitant treatment for the final eight weeks with intraperitoneal dose of the bioactive peptide (HPEP group; 15 mg/kg/d b.w.), oral PH supplementation (HPH group; 50 mg/kg/d b.w.) or oral administration of probucol (HRX group; 500 mg/kg/d b.w) reduced liver steatosis in HPEP, HPH and HRX respectively. Contrary to a very low level of AMPK (HCO vs NC, p<0.001), highly expressed hepatic inflammatory proteins such as p‐38 MAP Kinase, MMP‐9, TNF‐α, IL‐6 were found in HCO. Following the trends of other treatments, the peptide administration reactivated hepatic AMPK (HPEP vs HCO, p<0.05), while significantly downregulated proinflammatory marker p‐p38 and cytokines TNF‐α, FGF‐2.

Conclusions

Our set of data show strong evidence for an anti‐steatosis effect of our ten‐amino‐acid peptide (DIKTNKPVIF) and its role to alleviate proinflammatory reaction associated with HFD‐induced hepatosteatosis development in elderly, through activation of AMPK signaling in parallel with the impediment of proinflammatory and mitogenic activities of p‐38 MAPK and FGF‐2. Similarly to PH, our peptide may be suggested as a preventive alternative for NAFLD in elderly subjects.

Support or Funding Information

This work was funded in part by grants from the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan (MOST103‐2410‐H‐029‐037 and MOST104‐2410‐H‐029‐ 033‐MY2). SD (Faculte de Medecine et de Pharmacie, Universite d'Etat d'Haiti ‐ FMP UEH) was financially supported by Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) Scholarship Program for the Republic of Haiti.

This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.