Lupine as a potential agent against diet-induced obesity through adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase pathway: crude oil versus nanoemulsion formulations

Obesity represents a major challenge to the pharmaceutical community due to the minimal availability of anti-obesity drugs and the drawbacks of current weight-loss agents. The study described herein presents lupine oil, in two pharmaceutical formulations, as a potential anti-obesity agent via its effect on different physiological, biochemical, and hormonal parameters. Rats were divided into two groups; one group was continued on a standard commercial rodent diet and served as the non-obese control. The other group was fed a high-fat diet for 7 weeks to prepare an obese rat model. Then, the obese rats were divided into groups to receive 100 mg/kg of the crude lupine oil or nanoemulsion for 10 or 20 days. Lupine oil showed a potent body weight-reducing effect and improved insulin resistance. The oil altered obesity-induced hyperlipidemia and it enhanced the leptin/adiponectin/AMPK hormonal system in epididymal fat, serum, and liver, to which all the above physiological activities could be attributed. The nanoemulsion formulation of lupine oil significantly amplified the activity for all the above physiological and hormonal parameters when compared to the crude oil formulation. Lupine oil nanoemulsion could be used as a potential drug against diet-induced obesity.

Genomic organization of regions that regulate chicken glycine decarboxylase gene transcription: physiological and pathological implications.

Regions required for chicken glycine decarboxylase gene transcription were examined. A region between -82 and +22 (-82/+22) with motifs similar to binding sites for Sp1, NF-Y and CP2 was assigned to the proximal promoter active in both chicken hepatoma cell line, LMH, and hepatocytes in primary culture. In LMH cells, a genomic region, KX, between KpnI (-4155) and XbaI (-2113) sites changed promoter activity with the aid of four additional genomic regions termed upstream regulator regions for suppression (UpRS) and activation (UpRA) of transcription. Those precise segments are UpR1S (-376/-346), UpR1A (-345/-291), UpR2S (-137/-108) and UpR2A (-107/-83). Within KX, -4155/-3605 activates and -3604/-3367 suppresses the promoter. -3366/-3024 activates or suppresses the promoter, probably with different UpR counterparts. -2197/-2113 restores the actions of -3366/-3024. While in LMH cells, the upstream UpRs abrogate the functions of immediately downstream UpRs, UpR1S or UpR2S or both may be at least less active in hepatocytes than in LMH cells. Nuclear extracts from various chicken tissues and LMH cells had UpR2A binding proteins in different populations, suggesting that together with the UpRs, the segments in KX are involved in the regulation of cell type-specific transcription of this gene.