Amelioration effect of black seed oil against high-fat diet-induced obesity in rats through Nrf2/HO-1 pathway

Title : Amelioration effect of black seed oil against high-fat diet-induced obesity in rats through Nrf2/HO-1 pathway

Abstract:

Obesity is a chronic inflammatory disease that represents a risk factor for number of diseases including diabetes, steatohepatitis, and cancer. Using safe natural compounds to ameliorate obesity and its related metabolic syndrome is an interesting spot for research. We investigated the regulatory role and the underlying mechanism of black seed oil (BSO) on high-fat diet (HFD)-induced obesity in rats. The study included two models: the first one aimed to study the prophylactic effect of BSO (BSO administration for 10 weeks along with HFD) while the second one aimed to study the treatment role of BSO (BSO administration starting from the 10th week for 4 weeks along with HFD). BSO significantly decreased insulin resistance and body weight characteristics in both models. It also normalized lipid profile. Moreover, histopathological examination confirmed these results as BSO significantly decreased adipocyte size and hepatic lipid deposition. Besides, BSO alleviated HFD-induced oxidative stress as indicated by significant increase in the total antioxidant capacity and significant decrease in liver malondialdehyde. Moreover, BSO decreased significantly liver gluconeogenic enzymes mRNA expressions (phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase and glucose-6-phosphatase) and significantly increased heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1), nuclear factor erythroid-2-related factor-2 (Nrf2) and insulin receptor mRNA expressions. In conclusion, BSO represents a natural therapy that can prevent and treat HFD-induced obesity in rats that may be mediated through Nrf2/HO-1 pathway's activation and insulin receptor expression's increase. To our best knowledge, this study represents a novel study that investigates the regulatory role of BSO on Nrf2 pathway in preventing and treating HFD-induced obesity.

Biography:

Nada Ghazy, lecturer of clinical biochemistry at Mansoura University, Egypt for 3 years. She worked as a post-doctoral fellowship visitor at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, the UK for 6 months starting from Jan 2019.  She got my B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D of pharmaceutical sciences from Mansoura University, 2012, 2015 and 2018 respectively. She has a good experience in animal models and cell culture in addition to a good experience in several techniques like ELISA technique, colorimetric assay, RNA extraction, PCR work, gel electrophoresis, real-time PCR work, protein array, PCR array, and immunohistochemistry. She published 10 manuscripts in addition to 3 conference abstracts.