Efeito do consumo do adoçante artificial sacarina sobre parâmetros endócrino-metabólicos do tecido adiposo marrom em camundongos controle e obesos

Abstract

Obesity and overweight are defined as an excessive accumulation of body fat that brings harm to health. The obesity epidemic is directly related to the greater consumption of energy-dense foods, rich in sugars and fats. An important mechanism that can cause obesity is metabolic programming, a phenomenon that occurs through nutritional and/or hormonal changes that modulate crucial adjustments, which can predispose to obesity in adulthood. Due to the need to lose and control body weight associated with the increased prevalence of obesity, the consumption of sweeteners, products that promote a sweet taste without adding calories, has increased worldwide. Among the ANC, saccharin stands out, the first sweetener discovered, therefore the oldest, used for more than 100 years and has a sweetening power of 200 to 700 times greater than sucrose. Experimental studies showed that saccharin was able to reduce UCP-1 expression in brown adipose tissue. Our objective, therefore, was to evaluate the effect of consumption of the artificial sweetener saccharin on endocrine-metabolic parameters and mitochondrial function of the BAT of obese adult mice submitted to hyperalimentation during lactation. To induce overfeeding, litters of Swiss mice were reduced to 3 male pups per suckling on the 3rd day of postnatal life (hyperfed group - GH). Control litters were adjusted to 9 pups per lactant (control group - GC). At 90 days of age, the control and hyperfed groups were divided into two subgroups, control and hyperfed groups that received water containing 0.3% saccharin (GC-SAC and GH-SAC) or control and hyperfed groups that received pure water (GC-AG and GH-AG). The animals were euthanized at 180 days of age. We evaluated the food and water consumption by the animals throughout the study. Body composition was measured by nuclear magnetic resonance and we verified the weight of some tissues such as liver, brown adipose tissue and retroperitoneal fat. Mitochondrial metabolism was analyzed by high-resolution respirometry. Our data show that hyperalimentation during lactation induces an increase in body fat and tissue weights such as liver, heart fat, brown adipose tissue and retroperitoneal fat, an increase in body fat percentage and a decrease in lean mass in obese animals. The sweetener saccharin, in turn, was able to increase body mass, body fat and decrease lean mass in obese animals. In addition, after saccharin treatment, a significant reduction in respiratory flow was observed in the oxidation of energy substrates related to fatty acid oxidation among the animals in the control group. Furthermore, saccharin was able to increase the fat area of brown adipocytes in obese animals. Thus, our data suggest that the sweetener saccharin is involved in the regulation of body composition and thermogenic activity of the BAT of adult animals from the control and overfed groups, thus suggesting that saccharin acts differently depending on the nutritional status of the animal.