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Calcium ameliorates obesity induced by high-fat diet and its potential correlation with p38 MAPK pathway

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Abstract

To investigate whether and on which pathway dietary calcium influence the obesity induced by high-fat diet, thirty male Kunming mice were fed in six groups for 4 weeks and mouse preadipocytes were divided into eight groups for different treatment. Body weight gain was measured each week. Calcium in serum and tissues, intracellular free Ca2+ concentration ([Ca2+]i), blood fat and intracellular lipid content were also measured. The expression of Lipid metabolism-related genes were measured by q RT-PCR. Compared with control group, body weight gain (P < 0.05) and fat pad weight (P < 0.01) in Low calcium group decreased. Triglycerides (TG) and total Cholesterol (TC) level decreased (P < 0.01), while HDL-Cholesterol (HDL) level increased (P < 0.01). And calcium supply increased calcium content in blood serum and tissues. In tissues, adipogenesis and vitamin D receptor (VDR) genes expression decreased but lipoclasis genes expression increased. These anti-obesity effects were more obvious when supplying with 2.8% calcium, but the effects were reduced while supplying Nifedipine at the same time. The results in preadipocytes indicated that calcium-treated can reduce intracellular lipid content, along with adipogenesis and lipoclasis genes expression decrease, promoted the expression levels of p38 MAPK pathway upstream gene MKK6 (P < 0.01) and downstream gene MAPKAPK2 (P < 0.01). Treated with SB203580 could increase adipogenesis genes expression, decrease lipoclasis genes expression and ([Ca2+]i) (P < 0.01). These results implied that dietary calcium had remarkable effect on anti-obesity effect and p38 MAPK pathway potentially participated in calcium-mediated lipid accumulation and lipolysis in mouse preadipocytes.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by a grant from The National Nature Science Foundation of China (30871785) and the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in Universities, Chinese Ministry of Education (NCET-06-0865) and the fund of International Science and Technology Cooperation.

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  1. College of Animal Science and Technology, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, Shaanxi, 712100, China

    Chao Sun, Li Wang, Jun Yan & Shumin Liu

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  1. Chao Sun
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  2. Li Wang
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Correspondence to Chao Sun.

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Sun, C., Wang, L., Yan, J. et al. Calcium ameliorates obesity induced by high-fat diet and its potential correlation with p38 MAPK pathway. Mol Biol Rep 39, 1755–1763 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11033-011-0916-x

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