The Role Of Periostin In Mouse Model Of Alcoholic Fatty Liver Diseases

Globally,alcohol leads to 3.3 million deaths in one year,which contributes to about 6%of total cases of death all around the world.Alcohol causes heavy physical burden on alcohol abusers.Ethanol,as well as its metabolites,such as acetaldehyde and superoxides,impair organs inside human body,including liver,intestine,and brain.Alcoholism results in lots of kinds of alcohol-associated diseases.Among them,the most common one is alcoholic liver diseases(ALD),which in fact is a series of pathological process,ranging from alcoholic fatty liver(AFL),hepatitis,cirrhosis,to alcohol associated liver cancer.In the midst of them,alcoholic fatty liver is the early stage of the process,and we still haven't undersood its mechanism thoroughly yet.Periostin,an extracellular matrix protein,has been found to be upregulated in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease(NAFLD),where it promotes lipid accumulation in liver by suppression of lipolysis.Moreover,periostin deficiency results in relief of inflammation of NAFLD in mice.However,there isn't any report showing whether periostin contributes to the formation and development of alcoholic fatty liver or not.In our study,we successfully established mouse model of alcoholic fatty liver using NIAAA model to explore the role of periostin in the disease,and we found that periostin level in liver and serum of AFL mice were significantly upregulated.The phenotype of AFL became more serious,with worse liver impairment and rising level of lipid as well as inflammatory factors in liver of periostin-knockout mice.We further found that the expression of many enzymes in lipid synthesis was upregulated in periostin-deficient ALF mice.Taken together,the periostin level is upregulated in mice with AFL and periostin deficiency aggravates the disease with more lipid and inflammation in the liver of mice with AFL.Our results indicate that,in contrary to the role of periostin in NAFLD,periostin may protect liver from alcoholic fatty liver.