Abstract
Algal oil is rich in docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and has various health benefits against human metabolic disorders and disease. This study aimed to investigate the effects of DHA algal oil on colonic inflammation and intestinal microbiota in dextran sulfate sodium (DSS)-induced colitis mice model. Male C57BL/6 mice was induced colitis by 2.5% DSS and followed by 2 weeks of treatment with algal oil (250 or 500 mg/kg/day). The colonic inflammation was assessed by colon macroscopic damage scores, and the degree of neutrophil infiltration was evaluated by measuring tissue-associated myeloperoxidase (MPO) activity in colonic mucosa. Tight junction proteins in the colonic tissue were measured by real-time PCR and western blot. Moreover, the intestinal microbiota and shot chain fatty acids (SCFAs) were estimated by bioinformatic analysis and GC, respectively. Colonic damage due to DSS treatment was significantly ameliorated by algal oil supplementation. In addition, algal oil significantly inhibited the increases of malondialdehyde (MDA) content, MPO activity, pro-inflammatory cytokines level and tight junction proteins expression in DSS-treated mice. Furthermore, supplementation of algal oil modulated the intestinal microbiota structure in DSS induced colitis mice by increasing the proportion of the unidentified_S24_7 and decreasing the relative abundance of unidentified_Ruminococcaceae, Clostridium and Roseburia. On the analysis of SCFAs, the caecal content of acetic acid, propionic acid, isobutyric acid, buturic, and the total SCFAs showed a significant increase in algal oil-administered mice. Together, these results suggested that algal oil rich in DHA inhibited the progress of DSS-induced colitis in mice by modulating the intestinal microbiota and metabolites and repairing the intestinal barrier, which may be applied in the development of therapeutics for intestinal inflammation.
Highlights
As the recurrent and chronic inflammatory diseases, inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) have been found to be becoming commonplace around the world (Keethy et al, 2014; Ng et al, 2018)
We studied the therapeutic effects of algal oil rich in docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and docosapentenoic acid (DPA) on colitis induced by dextran sulfate sodium (DSS) and tried to explore its potential mechanism
Our study confirmed that supplementation of algal oil alleviated the intestinal inflammation and exerted a protective effect on maintaining intestinal epithelial barrier function in colitis mice
Summary
As the recurrent and chronic inflammatory diseases, inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) have been found to be becoming commonplace around the world (Keethy et al, 2014; Ng et al, 2018) It represents a series of chronic relapsingremitting gastrointestinal tract disorders characterized by a persistent intestinal inflammation with clinical symptoms of abdominal pain, blood in stool, weight loss, diarrhea, fatigue, or maldigestion (Hanauer and Hommes, 1996; Yu and Rodriguez, 2017). IBD is closely related to intestinal epithelial barrier dysfunction, abnormal immune response and gut microbiota dysbiosis (Harris and Chang, 2018; Li et al, 2019). A microbial imbalance, leads to the increased permeability of the intestinal epithelial mucosa and attracts lymphocytes and macrophages to release and accumulate inflammatory factors and cytokines, accelerating inflammation (Nagalingam et al, 2015; Rodiño-Janeiro et al, 2018; Wu et al, 2020)
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