PFP alleviates nonalcoholic steatohepatitis fatty liver in both Apo E-/- mice and Changliver cell[S].

High-calorie food leads to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) through the dysregulation of genes involved in lipid metabolism, but the precise mechanism is still unknown. Pomegranate flowers are used to treat diabetes mellitus in traditional Uighur medicine. Here we sought to investigate the effect and mechanism of pomegranate flower polyphenols (PFP) on NAFLD Apo E-/- mice induced by a high-fat diet (HFD) and whether PFP improves NAFLD through decreasing oxidative stress. PFP supplementation in mice significantly reduced the HFD-induced gains in body weight compared with the mice fed only with HFD. It also significantly reduced HFD-induced increases in serum lipids, including cholesterol and triglyceride. Consistent with the reduced liver weight, hepatic lipid accumulation, and the size of lipid droplets in the epididymal fat pads were also reduced by PFP supplementation. To further investigate how PFP may reduce obesity, we analyzed lipid metabolism-related genes in the liver. PFP supplementation altered expression profiles of several lipid metabolism-related genes, including ACC, AMPK, CPT-1α, FAS, LDLR, Leptin, LXR, PON1, PPAR, SirT3, and SREBP, relative to those in HFD control mice. The expression patterns of these genes observed by quantitative reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction and AMPK, SirT3, ACC2, and CPT-1A expression were confirmed by immunohistochemical assays. Collectively, our results indicate that PFP prevents HFD-induced obesity in Apo E-/- mice, and its anti-obesity effects may be related to the regulation of lipogenesis at the level of transcription.