Protective Mechanism of Common Buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum Moench.) against Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease Associated with Dyslipidemia in Mice Fed a High-Fat and High-Cholesterol Diet

This
study aimed to investigate the
protective mechanism of common
buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum Moench.)
against nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) associated with dyslipidemia
in mice that were fed a high-fat and high-cholesterol diet (HFD).
Results showed that oral supplementation of common buckwheat significantly
improved physiological indexes and biochemical parameters related
to dyslipidemia and NAFLD in mice fed with HFD. Furthermore, the HFD-induced
reductions in fecal short-chain fatty acids were reversed by common
buckwheat intervention, which also increased the fecal bile acid (BA)
abundance compared with HFD-induced hyperlipidemic mice. Liver metabolomics
based on ultraperformance liquid chromatography-quadrupole time-of-flight
mass spectrometry demonstrated that common buckwheat supplementation
made significant regulatory effects on the pentose phosphate pathway,
starch and sucrose metabolism, primary BA biosynthesis, and so forth.
The results of high-throughput sequencing revealed that common buckwheat
supplementation significantly altered the structure of the intestinal
microbiota in mice fed with HFD. The correlations between lipid metabolic
parameters and intestinal microbial phylotypes were also revealed
by the heatmap and network. Additionally, common buckwheat intervention
regulated the mRNA expressions of genes responsible for liver lipid
metabolism and BA homeostasis, thus promoting BA synthesis and excretion.
These findings confirmed that common buckwheat has the outstanding
ability of improving lipid metabolism and could be used as a potential
functional food for the prevention of NAFLD and hyperlipidemia.