Abstract
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Obesity is a growing epidemic in the world and impacts all functions of the body, including reproduction. An increase of consumption of diet containing fat or refined carbohydrate contributes to obesity and related diseases. Although studies have shown the obesity effect induced by high fat diet in reproduction, no reproductive data are available in obesity animals as result of fed high-refined carbohydrate-containing (HCD) diet. In this study, we assessed whether HCD diet results in reproductive abnormalities.
Adult female Wistar rats were fed regular chow (Socil, CON) or HC diet for 15 days. The HCD diet was composed of 45% condensed milk, 10% refined sugar, and 45% chow diet. The macronutrient composition of the chow diet (4.0 kcal/g) was 65.8% carbohydrate, 3.1% fat, and 31.1% protein; the HCD diet (4.4 kcal/g) was 74.2% carbohydrate, 5.8% fat, and 20% protein. It is important to note that HCD diet contains at least 30% refined sugars, mostly sucrose. We further assessed the reproductive tract function, inflammation, oxidative stress, fibrosis and metabolic parameters. All the protocols were approved by the Ethics Committee of Animals of the Federal University of Espírito Santo.
All data are reported as the mean ± SEM. Comparisons between the groups were performed using Student’s and Mann-Whitney ttests for Gaussian and non-Gaussian data, respectively. A value of p < 0.05 was regarded as statistically significant. HCD diet led to increased body weight and adiposity compared with CON rats (p<0.05, n=10). An irregular estrous cyclicity, with longer estrous cycle length (54 %), tendency to increase basal LH, FSH and estrogen levels were observed in HCD rats 30 and 48 % respectively (p=0.09, p=0.05 and p=0.05, respectively, n=10).
A reduction in ovarian follicular reserve was observed, with low primordial and primary follicles numbers in HCD rats compared with CON rats 30 and 15 % respectively (p<0.05, n=6). Impairment in ovarian follicular development was observed in HCD rats, with reduction in preantral, antral follicles and corpora lutea numbers 15 and 25 % (p<0.05, n=6). HCD diet led to uterus atrophy, reduction in the endometrium and myometrium area and uterine gland numbers (10% p<0.05 and 12% p<0.001, respectively, n=6).
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