Butyrate Alleviates Metabolic Impairments and Protects Pancreatic β Cell Function in Pregnant Mice with Obesity

The relative or absolute deficiency of pancreatic β-cell mass function underlies the pathogenesis of diabetes. It is necessary to alleviate the metabolic stress and reduce the demand for insulin to decrease the effects of mutations affecting β-cell expansion. Butyrate is a natural nutrient existed in food and can also be produced physiologically through the intestinal fermentation of fiber. Pregnancy and obesity model would be helpful for understanding how β-cell adapt to insulin resistance and how butyrate alleviate the metabolic impairment and protect pancreatic β cell function in pregnant mice with obesity. C57BL/6J female mice were divided into three groups and fed with high fat food (HF group, 40% energy from fat), high fat with sodium butyrate food (HSF group, 95% HF with 5% butyrate), or control food (CF group, 14% energy from fat), respectively. The feeding would last for 14 weeks before mating and throughout the gestation period. A subset of dams were sacrificed at gestational day (GD) 14.5 to evaluate the changes of metabolism and β-cell function, mass, proliferation and apoptosis, inflammatory reaction of islet from different diet. Pancreases were double immuno-labeled to assess the islet morphology, insulin expression, expression of proliferation gene PCNA and anti-apoptosis gene bcl-2. Moreover, we detected the expression of NF-κB, phosphorylated NF-κB (pNF-κB) to evaluate the islet inflammatory response with immunohistochemistry. Mice fed with HSF showed obviously changes including the decreased values of weight gain, glucose, insulin, triglyceride and total cholesterol level of blood compared with high fat diet group, and the reduced circulating maternal pro-inflammation factors at GD14.5. Mice fed with HF displayed β-cell hyperplasia with a greater β-cell size and β-cell area in pancreas. Furthermore, the higher ratio of apoptosis and inflammatory response were found in HF group compared with HSF and CF group, while the proliferation rates of β-cell increased in HF group, but not in HSF or CF. Butyrate shows an obvious function of anti-obesity, and can alleviate the metabolic stress, maintain the β-cell function and protect them from inflammatory response in pregnant obese mouse without obvious fetus toxicity.