PROCEEDINGS |
Dehydroepinandrosterone (DHEA) is a steroid hormone and proliferates peroxisomes of liver in rodents. Ortic acid (OA) induces fatty liver. This experiment is to visualize the prevention of fatty liver by DHEA, phenobarbital and clofibrate. Sprague Dawley male rats (166-196g, 6 weeks old) a diet containing 50% sucrose and 1% ortic acid for two weeks.
Animals in the phenobarbital group (PB) were fed that diet and intraperitoneally injected with 6% PB at 60mg/kg once a day, 5 days a week, for two weeks. Other animals were fed above-mentioned diet containing 0.5% DHEA or 0.5% clofibrate for 2 weeks. Numerous large lipid droplets occupied the cytoplasm of hepatocytes of rats fed OA. Those lipid droplets were significantly decreased in number and size in DHEA acetate, PB or clofibrate administered rats. The relative liver weight to body weight and the number of the peroxisomes were increased in DHEA, PB and clofibrate treated rats. The increase of liver was mainly due to the enlarged size of hepatocytes. More significant increase of liver weight was induced by the mixture of DHEA and PB. The preventive effect of DHEA, PB and clofibrate on fatty liver was assumed to the decomposition of lipid droplets by proliferated peroxisomes.