The Effect Of Marine Echinoderms Cerebroside On Liver Disease In Animals

There exist over 7000 kinds of echinoderms in the ocean, which contain many bioactive components. They have been proven to have anti-virus, antifungal, anti-inflammatory and antihypertensive activities. The cerebroside from echinoderms is an important second metabolite, and the study on its biological functions mainly focused on the antitumor activity. This is the first paper to study the hepatoprotective effect of echinoderms cerebroside in animals. At present, the bioactivity investigations of echinoderms are principally conducted on sea cucumber and starfish. In this study, the cerebrosides were separately extracted from sea cucumber Acaudina Molpadioides and starfish Aster rollestoni to evaluate their hepatoprotective activity. The regulative roles of the two marine cerebrosides on nonalcoholic fatty live disease (NAFLD) and hepatic injury were assessed, and then the mechanism was systematically undertaken at the level of molecular biology, to provide academic reference for the deep development of marine cererbroside.This is the first time to compare the effect of sea cucumber cerebrosides (CSCC) and starfish cerebroside (CSF) on hepatic lipid metabolism in NAFLD-rats. The results show that both cerebrosides can significantly reduce lipid accumulation in the liver of the rats. The hepatic lipid-lowering effect of the two cerebrosides proceeds through inhibiting the fatty acid biosynthesis and expediting the lipid secretion in hepatocytes. And CSCC can suppress the hepatic stearoyl-CoA desaturase (SCD) activity, which may also help to ameliorate hepatic steatosis in rat. Besides, different doses of CSCC can reduce the activities of aminotransferase in the serum of rat, and improve the NAFLD-accompanied hepatic damage in dose-dependent manner.A further study is conducted to compare the hepatoprotective roles of CSCC and CSF in animals using the liver damage model established with intraperitoneal injection of CCl4 in rat. The results turns out that CSCC can attenuate liver damage in rats by reduction of the activities of serum aminotransferase, amelioration of hepatocyte necrosis and regulation of hepatic oxidative stress. Moreover, CSCC plays an important role in liver regeneration through increasing the HGF mRNA expression in rat. Also theα-SMA mRNA expression was inhibited by the treatment of CSCC, which indicates its possible preventative effect on the development of liver fiberosis. And CSF markedly suppressed hepatic lipid accumulation and hepatocyte necrosis in liver damage rat.Insulin resist (IR) is considered to be the primary reason caused fatty liver, while its clinical manifestation concentrates on hyperlipidemia, hepatic steatosis and abnormal glucose metabolism. Therefore, we eventually evaluate the effect of CSCC and CSF on the IR mice induced by high fructose diet. In view of the results, CSCC administration can significantly reduce body weight gain and adipose tissue weight, inhibit hepatic lipid accumulation and increase insulin sensitive index (ISI), which restrains the evolution of the NAFLD at source. Furthermore, CSCC can reduce serum lipid levels in rats, which can inhibit atherosclerosis. All the results demonstrate the available prevention effect of CSCC on NAFLD in rats. Though the CSF administration also can suppress excess hepatic lipid accumulation and the raise of fasting plasma glucose (FPG), its effect on the IR still requires follow-up investigation.This is the first time to systematically study and compare the beneficial effect and mechnism of CSCC and CSF on the liver disease in animals. Those findings offer novel and reasonable scientific reference for the deep utilization of marine echinoderms cerebroside in the fields of nutraceuticals and medicines.