Abstract
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is currently a serious and growing clinical problem in developed and developing countries and is considered one of the most frequent chronic liver diseases in the world. The aim of this study was to evaluate the functionality of dietary carotenoids provided by tomato and spinach in the dietary treatment of steatosis. Twenty-two Sprague-Dawley rats with induced steatosis were grouped into three groups and fed standard diet (CD group) and two experimental diets supplemented with 12.75% (LC12.75 group) and 25.5% (HC25.5 group) of a mixture of spinach and tomato powder. Rats fed carotenoid-rich feeds showed an improvement in the plasma biomarkers of steatosis, with lower levels of glucose, total cholesterol, VLDL, TG, proteins, ALT and AST. Likewise, a decrease in oxidative stress was observed, with a significant reduction of malondialdehyde (MDA) in plasma (up to 54%), liver (up to 51.42%) and urine (up to 78.89%) (p < 0.05) and an increase in plasma antioxidant capacity (ORAC) (up to 73.41%) (p < 0.05). Furthermore, carotenoid-rich diets led to an accumulation of carotenoids in the liver and were inversely correlated with the content of total cholesterol and hepatic triglycerides, increasing the concentrations of MUFA and PUFA (up to 32.6% and 48%, respectively) (p < 0.05). The accumulation of carotenoids in the liver caused the modulation of genes involved in lipid metabolism, and we particularly observed an overexpression of ACOX1, APOA1 and NRIH2 (LXR) and the synthesis of the proteins. This study suggests that dietary carotenoids from spinach and tomato aid in the dietary management of steatosis by reversing steatosis biomarkers.
Highlights
Among non-communicable diseases, chronic liver diseases (CLD) have become the new epidemic of this century, with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) being one of the most important, associated with the increase in obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus [1,2]
Supplementation with the mixture of spinach and tomato provided a significant increase in the content of total phenolic compounds, carotenoids and oxygen radical absorption capacity (ORAC), which increased significantly according to the percentage of lyophilized vegetables included in the diet
Considering that the main difference in the composition of the diets was the carotenoid content, and since the intake of the nutrients, including fat, only varied by no more than 0.5% in the experimental diets, these results suggest that the supplementation of the diet with spinach and tomato and the accumulation of carotenoids in the liver have a positive effect on lipid metabolism in the liver, reducing total fat, total cholesterol and triglycerides
Summary
Among non-communicable diseases, chronic liver diseases (CLD) have become the new epidemic of this century, with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) being one of the most important, associated with the increase in obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus [1,2]. NAFLD is the accumulation of excess fat in more than 5% of hepatocytes without significant alcohol intake [3]. Various authors have described that a higher consumption of this carotenoid in the diet from food sources is associated with a lower risk of primary liver cancer [7,8]. Vegetables such as spinach and tomato are a good source of dietary carotenoids, with values that can reach 10.87 and 7.82 mg/100 g of fresh weight, respectively [9]. Carotenoids are recognized as antioxidants, the dietetic supplementation of carotenoids has not been used in the treatment of patients with NAFLD, but its beneficial effects have been studied experimentally using animal models [10,11,12,13,14,15,16]
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