A weekly alternating diet between caloric restriction and medium fat protects the liver from NAFLD in middle aged C57BL/6J mice. Mus musculus

SCOPE: We investigated whether a novel dietary intervention consisting of an every-other-week calorie-restricted diet could prevent nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) development induced by a medium-fat (MF) diet. METHODS AND RESULTS: Nine-week-old male C57BL/6J mice received either a (i) control (C), (ii) 30E% calorie restricted (CR), (iii) MF (25E% fat), or (iv) intermittent (INT) diet, a diet alternating weekly between 40E% CR and an ad libitum MF diet until sacrifice at the age of 12 months. The metabolic, morphological, and molecular features of NAFLD were examined. The INT diet resulted in healthy metabolic and morphological features as displayed by the continuous CR diet: glucose tolerant, low hepatic triglyceride content, low plasma alanine aminotransferase. In contrast, the C- and MF-exposed mice with high body weight developed signs of NAFLD. However, the gene expression profiles of INT-exposed mice differed to those of CR-exposed mice and showed to be more similar with those of C- and MF-exposed mice with a comparable body weight. CONCLUSIONS: Our study reveals that the INT diet maintains metabolic health and reverses the adverse effects of the MF diet, thus effectively prevents the development of NAFLD in 12-month-old male C57BL/6J mice. Overall design: Male C57Bl/6J mice were divided to 4 dietary intervention groups: Control (AIN-93W), 30% calorie restriction (CR; AIN-93W-CR), medium fat (MF; AIN-93W-MF; 25% energy from fat) and intermittent diet (INT; weekly alternating diet between AIN-93W-MF ad lib and 40% CR of AIN-93W). We performed various measurements on metabolic parameters and gene expression analysis on the liver. This entry represents the microarray data of the liver gene expression of each mouse.