Study of oleanolic acid on the estrodiol production and the fat production of mouse preadipocyte 3T3-L1 in vitro.

The women during the menopause period have an increased tendency for the obesity, which represents the more fat production than during the premenopausal period. Although this is not beneficial overall, it could provide a compensatory source for the estrogen production for the menopausal women. So it would be meaningful to find an agent that could inhibit the fat production while does not disturb the total estrogen production by fat tissues. In the present study, the effect of oleanolic acid (OA) on the fat production and the total estrogen production of the differentiating mouse preadipocyte 3T3-L1 as well as the mechanisms behind those effects were preliminarily investigated. The cell line 3T3-L1 was chosen as the model cell because it is usually used for the research about the obesity. During the induced differentiation of 3T3-L1 cells, cells were intervened continuously with OA. The fat production was determined with the oil red staining assay and the total estrogen production was measured with the ELISA assay. Finally, the expression patterns for important genes of the fat production and the estrogen production were studied, respectively with the real-time fluorescence quantitative PCR (qPCR). The results showed that for the differentiating 3T3-L1 cells, OA could significantly inhibit the fat production and did not disturb the total estrogen production significantly. In the mechanism studies, OA was found to significantly down-regulate ACC, the key gene for fat synthesis, which could explain the inhibitory effect of OA on the fat production; OA was also found to significantly up-regulate CYP11A1, CYP17, CYP19, the key genes for the estrogen synthesis and significantly down-regulate CYP1A1, the key gene for the estrogen decomposition, which preliminarily explained the lack of the effect of OA on the total estrogen production. In conclusion, OA was found able to inhibit the fat production while maintaining the total estrogen level and the mechanisms for the above findings were preliminarily clarified, which suggests that OA may be useful to treat the menopausal obesity.