期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：1998
卷号：95
期号：16
页码：9558-9561
DOI：10.1073/pnas.95.16.9558
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：Obesity causes its complications through functional and morphologic damage to remotely situated tissues via undetermined mechanisms. In one rodent model of obesity, the Zucker diabetic fatty fa/fa rat, overaccumulation of triglycerides in the pancreatic islets may be responsible for a gradual depletion of {beta} cells, leading to the most common complication of obesity, non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus. At the onset of non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, the islets from fa/fa rats contain up to 100 times the fat content of islets from normal lean rats. Ultimately, about 75% of the {beta} cells disappear from these fat-laden islets as a consequence of apoptosis induced by long-chain fatty acids (FA). Here we quantify Bcl-2, the anti-apoptosis factor in these islets, and find that Bcl-2 mRNA and protein are, respectively, 85% and 70% below controls. In normal islets cultured in 1 mM FA, Bcl-2 mRNA declined by 68% and completely disappeared in fa/fa islets cultured in FA. In both groups, suppression was completely blocked by the fatty acyl-CoA synthetase inhibitor, triacsin C, evidence of its mediation by fatty acyl-CoA. To determine whether leptin action blocked FA-induced apoptosis, we cultured normal and fa/fa islets in 1 mM FA with or without leptin. Leptin completely blocked FA-induced Bcl-2 suppression in normal islets but had no effect on islets from fa/fa rats, which are unresponsive to leptin because of a mutation in their leptin receptors (OB-R). However, when wild-type OB-R is overexpressed in fa/fa islets, leptin completely prevented FA-induced Bcl-2 suppression and DNA fragmentation.
