Jining Yang

Exhaustive exercise (EE) induces liver injury and has recently gained much attention. Sulforaphane (SFN) can protect the liver from inflammation and oxidative stress. However, the effects of SFN on EE-induced liver injury and its underlying mechanisms are still unclear. C57BL/6J mice swimming to exhaustion for seven days were used to simulate the liver injury caused by EE. Different doses of SFN (10, 30, 90 mg/kg body weight) were gavage-fed one week before and during the exercise. SFN intervention significantly reduced the EE-induced lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), creatine kinase (CK), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), and aspartate aminotransferase (AST) in the serum, as well as attenuating liver tissue morphological abnormality, oxidative stress injury, and inflammation. Liver transcriptomic analysis showed that the differentially expressed genes altered by SFN intervention in the exercise model were mainly enriched in glucose and lipid metabolism pathways. The most altered gene by SFN intervention screened by RNA-seq and validated by qRT-PCR is Ppp1r3g, a gene involved in regulating hepatic glycogenesis, which may play a vital role in the protective effects of SFN in EE-induced liver damage. SFN can protect the liver from EE-induced damage, and glucose and lipid metabolism may be involved in the mechanism of the protective effects.

Rationale: Epidemiological studies that focus on the relationship between dietary isoflavone intake and the risk of breast cancer still lead to inconsistent conclusions. Herein, we conducted a meta-analysis of the latest studies to explore this issue. Method: We performed a systematic search using Web of Science, PubMed, and Embase from inception to August 2021. The robust error meta-regression (REMR) model and generalized least squares trend (GLST) model were used to establish dose–response relationships between isoflavones and breast cancer risk. Results: Seven cohort studies and 17 case-control studies were included in the meta-analysis, and the summary OR for breast cancer was 0.71 (95% CI 0.72–0.81) when comparing the highest to the lowest isoflavone intake. A subgroup analysis further showed that neither menopausal status nor ER status has a significant influence on the association between isoflavone intake and breast cancer risk, while the isoflavone intake doses and study design does. When the isoflavones exposure was less than 10 mg/day, no effects on breast cancer risk were detected. The inverse association was significant in the case-control studies but not in the cohort studies. In the dose–response meta-analysis of the cohort studies, we observed an inverse association between isoflavone intake and breast cancer: a 10 mg/day increase in isoflavone intake was related to reductions of 6.8% (OR = 0.932, 95% CI 0.90–0.96) and 3.2% (OR = 0.968, 95% CI 0.94–0.99) in breast cancer risk when using REMR and GLST, respectively. In the dose–response meta-analysis of the case-control studies, the inverse association for every 10 mg/day isoflavone intake was associated with breast cancer risk reductions by 11.7%. Conclusion: present evidence demonstrated that taking in dietary isoflavone is helpful in reducing the breast cancer risk.

Background/aims: Liver lipid accumulation induced by high-fat diet (HFD) is an early onset process of non-alcoholic fatty liver diseases (NAFLD). Protein kinase A (PKA) is known to be involved in hepatic lipid metabolism. However, the role of PKA in NAFLD has not been well tested in vivo due to the lack of optimal PKA deficient mouse model.Methods: A novel PKA-specific inhibitor gene was conditionally overexpressed in mouse (PKAi mouse) liver using LoxP/Cre system. PKA activity in the liver extract was measured with a commercial assay kit. The PKAi and control mice of 8-week age, were subjected to HFD or chow diet (CD) for 2 months. Body weight, liver index, and triglyceride in the liver were measured. RNA sequencing was performed for the liver tissues and analyzed with Gene Ontology (GO) and pathway enrichment.Results: PKAi-GFP protein was overexpressed in the liver and the PKA activation was significantly inhibited in the liver of PKAi mouse. When fed with CD, RNA sequencing revealed 56 up-regulated and 51 down-regulated genes in PKAi mice compared with control mice, which were mainly involved in lipid metabolism though no significant differences in the body weight, liver index, triglyceride accumulation were observed between PKAi and control mice. However, when fed with HFD for 2 months, the liver was enlarged more, and the accumulation of triglyceride in the liver was more severe in PKAi mice. When comparing the transcriptomes of CD-fed and HFD-fed control mice, GO enrichment showed that the genes down-regulated by HFD were mainly enriched in immune-related GO terms, and up-regulated genes were enriched in metabolism. When comparing the transcriptomes of CD-fed and HFD-fed PKAi mice, GO analysis showed that the down-regulated genes were enriched in metabolism, while the up-regulated genes were clustered in ER stress-related pathways. When comparing HFD-fed PKAi and HFD-fed control mice, the genes with lower expression level in PKAi mice were enriched in the lipoprotein synthesis, which might explain that more TG is accumulated in PKAi liver after HFD feeding.Conclusions: Reduced PKA activity could be a factor promoting the TG accumulation in the liver and the development of NAFLD.