N-acetylcysteine resolves placental inflammatory-vasculopathic changes in mice consuming a high fat diet.

N-acetylcysteine resolves placental inflammatory-vasculopathic changes in mice consuming a high fat diet. Am J Pathol. 2019 Aug 17;: Authors: Williams L, Burgos ES, Vuguin PM, Manuel CR, Pekson R, Munnangi S, Reznik SE, Charron MJ Abstract The mechanism by which poor maternal nutrition can impact the long-term health of offspring is poorly understood. In mice, we previously demonstrated maternal high fat diet (HFD) exposure results in reduced fetal growth regardless of maternal genotype. Here, we test our hypothesis that maternal HFD-induced inflammation contributes to metabolic disease susceptibility of the offspring via alterations in the placenta. The effect of maternal genotype, diet, and treatment with the anti-inflammatory compound N-acetylcysteine (NAC) on placental morphology was investigated. Placentas from wild type (WT) dams maintained on a HFD, but not those heterozygous (+/-) for Glut4 (Slc2a4) on the same diet, demonstrated an increase in decidual inflammation and vasculopathy occurring together. NAC administration resulted in amelioration of HFD-induced decidual vasculopathy independent of offspring genotype and sex. Consistent with these morphologic improvements, placentas from HFD dams treated with NAC demonstrated decreased mRNA and immunostaining of interleukin-1β and MCP1, decreased mRNA of inflammatory genes, and increased mRNA of Vegfa. These results strongly suggest consumption of a HFD results in vascular cha...
Source: The American Journal of Pathology - Category: Pathology Authors: Tags: Am J Pathol Source Type: research