Sea cucumber cerebrosides and long-chain bases from Acaudina molpadioides protect against high fat diet-induced metabolic disorders in mice

Abstract

Metabolic syndrome (MS) is a cluster of metabolic disorders such as abdominal obesity, hypertension, glucose intolerance, dyslipidemia and hepatic steatosis that contribute to increased cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. There is an urgent need for strategies to prevent this emerging global epidemic. Recently, growing interest in discovering food functional nutrients for the prevention and treatment of MS has generated. In the present study, sea cucumber cerebrosides (SCC) and the main structural units, long-chain bases (LCB), were prepared from Acaudina molpadioides and then administered to high fat (HF) diet-induced obese C57BL/6J mice at a diet supplement dosage of 0.025% for 5 weeks to evaluate their effects on obesity-related metabolic disorders. SCC and LCB significantly decreased epididymal adipose tissue weights, lowered hepatic triacylglycerol levels, and reduced serum glucose, insulin levels and HOMA-IR index in mice. The activities of hepatic lipogenetic enzymes including FAS, ME and the mRNA levels of SREBP-1c and FAS were reduced by SCC and LCB treatment. However, SCC and LCB showed no effect on the hepatic lipolysis pathway. Besides, SCC and LCB also efficiently up-regulated the gene expression of SREBP-1c, FAS, ACC, ATGL and HSL, and down-regulated the gene expression of LPL and VLDL-r in the adipose tissue. These results demonstrated that SCC and LCB were efficacious in suppressing hepatic SREBP-1c mediated lipogenesis, inhibiting lipid uptake and increasing TG catabolism in the adipose tissue. The ameliorative degree and regulatory mechanisms of these two compounds were basically the same, suggesting that LCB are the key active structural units. Such findings would offer new insight into the application of SCC or LCB in the development of functional foods for preventing MS in humans.

Xanthohumol improves dysfunctional glucose and lipid metabolism in diet-induced obese C57BL/6J mice

“…Hyperlipidemia, characterized by elevated levels of TGs in plasma or serum is one of the metabolic disorders induced by feeding a high-fat diet to C57BL/6J mice [46–48]. In our study, XN significantly decreased plasma TG levels in diet-induced obese C57BL/6J mice.…”

Pharmacological Potential of Sea Cucumbers

“…Sphingolipids of marine invertebrates have a unique triene type of sphingoid bases with a conjugated diene such as 2-amino-4,8,10-octatriene-1,3-diol (d18:3) and 2-amino-9-methyl-4,8,10-octatriene-1,3-diol (d19:3). The first studies devoted to investigating holothurian sphingolipids indicated that three types of major LCBs of the sea cucumber cerebrosides (d17:1, d18:2, and t17:1) isolated from Apostichopus japonicus , Cucumaria frondosa and Acaudina molpadioides [ 94 , 95 ]. Sugawara et al [ 96 ] found d17:1, d18:1, d18:2, d18:3, d19:1, d19:2 and d19:3 in the sea cucumber S. horrens .…”

Phytochemicals in whole grain wheat and their health‐promoting effects

“…Diets containing 1.0% SDG significantly reduced visceral fat accumulation by 32.3%, liver fat accumulation by 25.6%, hyperlipaemia by 37.9%, and hypercholesterolaemia by 14.9% . Sphingolipids may possibly contribute to the beneficial effect of WG wheat intake in the prevention of diabetic development . Antidiabetic effects of simple phenolic acids, such as gallic acid, syringic acid, ferulic acid, caffeic acid, p‐coumaric acid, sinapic acid, and cinnamic acid, in rodents have been recently reviewed .…”