The worldwide prevalence of obesity and metabolic disease is increasing at an exponential rate and current projections provide no indication of relief. This growing burden of obesity-related metabolic disorders, including type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), highlights the importance of identifying how lifestyle choices, genetics and physiology play a role in metabolic disease and place obese individuals at a greater risk for obesity-related complications including insulin resistance (IR). This increased risk of IR, which is characterized by a decreased response to insulin in peripheral tissues including adipose tissue (AT) and liver, is associated with a chronic, low grade inflammatory state; however, the causative connections between obesity and inflammation remains in question. Experimental evidence suggests that adipocytes and macrophages can profoundly influence obesity-induced IR because adipocyte dysfunction leads to ectopic lipid deposition in peripheral insulin sensitive tissues, and obese AT is characterized by increased local inflammation and macrophage and other immune cell populations. Attempts to delineate the individual roles of macrophage-derived pro-inflammatory cytokines, like tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) and interleukin-1 beta (IL-1β), have demonstrated causative roles in impaired systemic insulin sensitivity, adipocyte function and hepatic glucose and lipid metabolism in obese animal models. Thus, the attenuation of macrophage-derived inflammation is an evolving area of interest to provide insight into the underlying mechanism(s) leading to obesity-induced IR.
Thus, in the first chapter of this thesis, I describe experiments to refine the current paradigm of obesity-induced AT inflammation by combining gene expression profiling with computational analysis of two anatomically distinct AT depots, visceral adipose tissue (VAT) and subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) to address whether the inflammatory signature of AT is influenced by diet-induced obesity (DIO). Microarray and qRT-PCR analysis data revealed that DIO mouse SAT is resistant to high fat diet (HFD)-induced inflammation and macrophage infiltration, and our data support the current model of obesity-induced visceral adipose tissue macrophage (VATM) enrichment. Our data demonstrated robust increases in VAT pro-inflammatory cytokine expression, which are consistent with the significant increases in macrophage-specific gene expression and consistent with previous reports in which VAT inflammation is enhanced and attributed to classically activated (M1) macrophage infiltration. However, these data are only observed relative to the expression of invariant housekeeping gene expression. When M1-specific genes are expressed relative to macrophage-specific standards like F4/80 expression, these inflammatory makers are unchanged. These data indicate that the changes in the overall inflammatory profile of DIO mouse VAT is because of quantitative changes in adipose tissue macrophage (ATM) number and not qualitative changes in activation state. These observations are consistent with the idea that infiltrating ATMs may have roles other than the previously described role in mediating inflammation in obese adipose tissue.
Hepatic IR occurs partly as a consequence of adipocyte dysfunction because the liver becomes a reservoir for AT-derived fatty acids (FAs), which leads to obesity-related non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). In the second part of my thesis, I used clodronate liposome-mediated macrophage depletion to define the role of macrophages in hepatic lipid metabolism regulation. We discovered that i.p. administration of clodronate liposomes depletes Kupffer cells (KCs) in ob/ob mice without affecting VATM content, whereas clodronate liposomes depletes both KCs and VATMs in DIO mice. To this end, we established that clodronate liposome-mediated KC depletion, regardless of VATM content in obese mice, abrogated hepatic steatosis by reducing hepatic de novo lipogenic gene expression. The observed reductions in hepatic inflammation in macrophage-depleted obese mice led to the hypothesis that IL-1β may be responsible for obesity-induced increased hepatic triglyceride (TG) accumulation. We determined that IL-1β treatment increases fatty acid synthase (Fas) protein expression and TG accumulation in primary mouse hepatocytes. Pharmacological inhibition of interleukin-1 (IL-1) signaling by interleukin-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1Ra) administration recapitulated these results by reducing hepatic TG accumulation and lipogenic gene expression in DIO mice. Thus, these data highlight the importance of the inflammatory cytokine IL-1β in obesity-driven hepatic steatosis and suggests that liver inflammation controls hepatic lipogenesis in obesity.
To this end, the studies described herein provide new insight and appreciation to the multi-functional nature of macrophages and clinical implications for anti-inflammatory therapy in obesity and NAFLD treatment. We demonstrate the complexities of macrophage-mediated functions in insulin sensitive tissues and a role for obesity-induced inflammatory cytokine IL-1β in hepatic lipid metabolism modulation, which is reversed via IL-1Ra intervention. The use of anti-inflammatory therapy to ameliorate obesity-associated NAFLD was perhaps the most important contribution to this body of work and is full of promise for future clinical application. It is likely that the future of therapeutics will be multi-faceted and combine therapeutic approaches to enhance glucose tolerance and overall health in obese, IR and T2DM patients.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:umassmed.edu/oai:escholarship.umassmed.edu:gsbs_diss-1715 |
| Date | 16 April 2014 |
| Creators | Negrin, Kimberly A. |
| Publisher | eScholarship@UMassChan |
| Source Sets | University of Massachusetts Medical School |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences Dissertations and Theses |
| Rights | Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved. |
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