Dietary supplementation of grape polyphenols to rats ameliorates chronic ethanol-induced changes in hepatic morphology without altering changes in hepatic lipids.

Increase in oxidative stress after chronic ethanol consumption can result in hepatic injury. Because polyphenolic compounds can offer antioxidant protection to the cardiovascular system, this study was designed to investigate whether dietary supplementation of polyphenols from grapes may ameliorate hepatic injury resulting from chronic ethanol consumption. Male Sprague-Dawley rats were administered the following diets for 2 mo: 1) Lieber-DeCarli (L-D) diet with isocaloric amount of maltose instead of ethanol (Basal), 2) the L-D diet with 50g/L ethanol (EtOH); 3) L-D diet with 50 mg/L of grape polyphenols (GP) and 4) ethanol diet with GP (EtOH + GP). Rats given EtOH or EtOH + GP diets had significantly more hepatic triacylglycerols (P < 0.0001) and lipid peroxidation products (P < 0.01) compared with those given the Basal and GP diets. In addition, ethanol ingestion also decreased significantly (P < 0.01) the proportion of 16:0 and increased 18:0 and 18:1 in hepatic phospholipids, suggesting a perturbation of the de novo fatty acid biosynthesis pathways. However, GP supplementation alone and GP added to the ethanol diet did not alter the lipid changes mediated by ethanol except for the levels of 22:6(n-3) which were significantly (P < 0.05) higher in the EtOH + GP group than in the EtOH group. Despite a lack of gross lipid changes, histologic assessment showed significantly (P < 0.05) less hepatic damage in the GP + EtOH group compared with the EtOH group. These results clearly distinguished ethanol-mediated changes in hepatic morphology from the changes in hepatic lipids and further demonstrated the ability of GP to ameliorate hepatic damage resulting from chronic ethanol consumption.