Effects of dehydroepiandrosterone and carnitine treatment on rat liver.

It is well established that DHEA treatment is associated in the rat to an increase in fatty acids metabolism. This condition would require levels of L-carnitine much higher than those physiologically present in the liver. The possibility thus exist that during DHEA treatment the concentration of L-carnitine may become a limiting factor for fatty acids oxidation and therefore responsible of some of the effects observed after administration of the hormone. The present experiments were designed to test this hypothesis. The results show that the increase in the levels of peroxisomal enzymes induced in hepatocytes by DHEA, is greatly reduced by parallel administration of L-carnitine. Furthermore, L-carnitine administration counteracts the effect of DHEA on mitochondrial structure. On the contrary, carnitine has no significant effect on the reduction in weight gain observed upon short- or long-term treatment with DHEA.