Health Sciences publishes on alcoholic liver disease

Alumni of the East Tennessee State University College of Public Health Bachelor of Sciences in Health Sciences program, Kristy Thomas and Callie Root, have authored an article in PLoS One.  Dr. Jonathan Peterson, former Department of Health Sciences faculty member, is a co-author.  

The article, Transgenic overexpression of CTRP3 does not prevent alcohol induced hepatic steatosis in female mice, discusses the hypothesis that female mice would be protected from alcohol-induced alcoholic liver disease by overexpression of the CTRP3 protein.

Chronic liver disease is the 12th leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide.  Almost half of liver-related deaths are due to alcohol over-consumption, referred to as alcoholic liver disease.  The other leading cause of liver disease results from a high-fat diet, referred to as nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.

In male mice, increased levels of circulating CTRP3 prevents alcoholic liver disease. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to replicate the observed protective effect of elevated circulating CTRP3 levels in female mice.

Twelve-week-old female wildtype and CTRP3 overexpressing transgenic mice were fed the Lieber-DeCarli alcohol-containing liquid diet (5% vol/vol) for 6 weeks. Unlike the previous study with male mice, CTRP3 overexpression provided no attenuation to alcohol-induced hepatic lipid accumulation, cytokine production, or overall mortality. In conclusion, there appears to be a clear sex-specific effect of CTRP3 in response to alcohol consumption that needs to be explored further.  This finding may have important implications for further research on alcoholic liver disease in humans.