Department of Pharmacy, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430022, China.
Hubei Province Clinical Research Center for Precision Medicine for Critical Illness, Wuhan 430022, China.
Food Funct. 2022 Oct 17;13(20):10415-10425. doi: 10.1039/d2fo01518h.
Alcoholic liver disease (ALD) is a mounting public health problem with significant medical, economic and social burdens. Tartary buckwheat ( (L.) Gaertn, bitter buckwheat) is a kind of healthy and nutritious food, which has been demonstrated to protect against ALD, but the underlying mechanism has not been fully studied. Herein, we aimed to elucidate the beneficial effects of Tartary buckwheat extract (mainly composed of polyphenols including rutin, quercetin, kaempferol and kaempferol-3--rutinoside) in terms of lipid metabolism with the aid of lipidomic analysis. In our study, we employed C57BL/6J mice and a Lieber-DeCarli alcohol liquid diet to construct an ALD model and found that Tartary buckwheat extract was able to prevent ALD-induced histopathological lesions, liver injury and abnormal plasma lipid levels. These beneficial effects might be attributed to the regulation of energy metabolism-related genes (SIRT1, LKB1 and AMPK), lipid synthesis-related genes (ACC, SREBP1c and HMGR) and lipid oxidation-related genes (PPARα, CPT1 and CPT2). In addition, lipidomic profiling and KEGG pathway analysis showed that glycerophospholipid metabolism contributed the most to elucidating the regulatory mechanism of Tartary buckwheat extract. In specific, chronic ethanol intake reduced the level of phosphatidylcholines (PC) and increased the level of phosphatidylethanolamines (PE) in the liver, resulting in a decrease in the PC/PE ratio, which could be all significantly restored by Tartary buckwheat extract intervention, indicating that the Tartary buckwheat extract might regulate PC/PE homeostasis to exert its lipid-lowering effect. Overall, we demonstrated that Tartary buckwheat extract could prevent ALD by modulating hepatic glycerophospholipid metabolism, providing the theoretical basis for its further exploitation as a medical plant or nutritional food.
酒精性肝病（ALD）是一个日益严重的公共卫生问题，给医疗、经济和社会带来了巨大的负担。苦荞（(L.) Gaertn，苦荞）是一种健康且有营养的食品，已被证明可以预防 ALD，但其潜在机制尚未完全研究清楚。在此，我们旨在借助脂质组学分析阐明苦荞提取物（主要由芦丁、槲皮素、山奈酚和山奈酚-3-O-芸香糖苷等多酚组成）在脂质代谢方面的有益作用。在我们的研究中，我们使用 C57BL/6J 小鼠和 Lieber-DeCarli 酒精液体饮食构建了一个 ALD 模型，发现苦荞提取物能够预防 ALD 引起的组织病理学损伤、肝损伤和异常的血浆脂质水平。这些有益作用可能归因于能量代谢相关基因（SIRT1、LKB1 和 AMPK）、脂质合成相关基因（ACC、SREBP1c 和 HMGR）和脂质氧化相关基因（PPARα、CPT1 和 CPT2）的调节。此外，脂质组学分析和 KEGG 途径分析表明，甘油磷脂代谢对阐明苦荞提取物的调节机制贡献最大。具体来说，慢性乙醇摄入降低了肝脏中磷脂酰胆碱（PC）的水平，增加了磷脂酰乙醇胺（PE）的水平，导致 PC/PE 比值降低，而苦荞提取物干预可以显著恢复这一比值，表明苦荞提取物可能通过调节 PC/PE 平衡来发挥其降脂作用。总的来说，我们证明了苦荞提取物可以通过调节肝甘油磷脂代谢来预防 ALD，为其作为药用植物或营养食品的进一步开发提供了理论依据。
