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©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Jul 7, 2015; 21(25): 7754-7763
Published online Jul 7, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i25.7754
Published online Jul 7, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i25.7754
Ezetimibe improves hepatic steatosis in relation to autophagy in obese and diabetic rats
Eugene Chang, Department of Nutritional Science and Food Management, Ewha Womans University, Seoul 120-750, South Korea
Lisa Kim, Diabetes Research Institute, Kangbuk Samsung Hospital, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul 110-746, South Korea
Se Eun Park, Eun-Jung Rhee, Won-Young Lee, Ki-Won Oh, Sung-Woo Park, Cheol-Young Park, Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism, Department of Internal Medicine, Kangbuk Samsung Hospital, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul 110-746, South Korea
Cheol-Young Park, Diabetes Research Institute, Kangbuk Samsung Hospital, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, 110-746, South Korea
Author contributions: Chang E conceived and designed the experimental study, conducted the experiments, performed the data analysis, and wrote the manuscript; Kim L conducted the experiments; Park SE, Rhee EJ, Lee WY, Oh KW and Park SW contributed to the discussion; and Park CY directed the study and revised the manuscript.
Supported by Samsung Biomedical Research Institute, Grant No. SBRI C-B1-111-3; National Research Foundation of Korea, No. 2012R1A1A2009143/2013027171; and Korean Diabetes Association (to Park CY, 2014S-1)
Institutional animal care and use committee: All procedures involving animals were reviewed and approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of Kangbuk Samsung Hospital, Sungkyunkwan University (IACUC protocol number: 201010014).
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest that could be perceived as prejudicing the impartiality of the research reported.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Cheol-Young Park, MD, PhD, Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism, Department of Internal Medicine, Kangbuk Samsung Hospital, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, No. 108, Pyung-Dong, Jongno-Ku, Seoul 110-746, South Korea. cydoctor@chol.com
Telephone: +82-2-20011869 Fax: +82-2-20011588
Received: August 31, 2014
Peer-review started: September 1, 2014
First decision: September 27, 2014
Revised: November 18, 2014
Accepted: January 8, 2015
Article in press: January 8, 2015
Published online: July 7, 2015
Peer-review started: September 1, 2014
First decision: September 27, 2014
Revised: November 18, 2014
Accepted: January 8, 2015
Article in press: January 8, 2015
Published online: July 7, 2015
Core Tip
Core tip: As an anti-hypercholesterolemia drug, ezetimibe is reported to improve metabolic disorders. Moreover, the hepatic expression of Niemann-Pick C1-like 1 protein, the target of ezetimibe, has led to increased interest in the effects, which have not been fully delineated, of ezetimibe on the liver. In the current study, ezetimibe treatment improved hepatic fat accumulation, which was accompanied by the induction of hepatic autophagy in obese and diabetic rats. In addition, in vitro hepatocytes treated with an inhibitor of autophagy showed that ezetimibe-induced autophagy resulted from an increase in autophagic flux. Therefore, ezetimibe-increased autophagy flux may play an important role in the improvement of hepatic steatosis.