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Prolonged intermittent fasting and metabolic-related fatty liver disease

SHI Dan^1,2, LIAN Xue-Mei^1,2, RUAN Xiong-Zhong^1,*

¹Key Laboratory of Molecular Biology of infectious diseases of Ministry of Education, Center of Lipid Research, Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing 400016, China；²Department of Nutrition and Food Hygiene, College of Public Health, Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing 400016, China

Abstract

In recent years, intermittent fasting (IF) has attracted extensive attention due to its significant improvement of body health metabolism. IF refers to the diet pattern of intermittent little or no intake of food containing calories [1,2]. IF includes three types of diet: alternate day fasting (ADF), time limited feeding (TRF), and 5:2 diet with two days of fasting every week [1,2]. Among them, ADF refers to fasting every other day or taking a very small amount of food for 24 hours, but does not limit the intake of drinking water and other calorie free foods [1,2]. A large number of previous animal and human studies have confirmed the beneficial effects of ADF, including weight loss, insulin sensitivity enhancement, improvement of risk indicators of metabolic syndrome, inhibition of tumor occurrence and development, and anti-aging, and this beneficial effect has been effectively confirmed in both long-term and short-term studies [1 – 5]. The 9-week ADF significantly reduced the weight and fat content of C57BL/6J male mice induced by high-fat diet, and showed the best fasting blood glucose level and glucose tolerance compared with the time limited diet and energy limited diet [6]. Meta analysis further found that ADF of 1-2 months was associated with the decrease of body mass index in healthy adults and overweight, obese or nonalcoholic fatty liver adults [7]. Another randomized clinical trial explored the effect of long-term ADF on the weight of obese adults with metabolic health, and found that 6-month ADF significantly reduced body weight and serum leptin levels [8, 9]. Although a small number of studies have also explored the impact of ADF on non-obese healthy people, and found its role in reducing body weight and fasting insulin [10], most studies focus on non-healthy people or animal disease models under high-fat diet. Whether long-term intermittent fasting under the background of normal diet still has a beneficial improvement effect on healthy individuals needs further confirmation by more studies. In this issue of Acta Physiologica Sinica, Gong et al. used C57BL/6N female adult mice as models to explore the effects of long-term intermittent fasting on the health of mice and liver lipid metabolism in the way of 4-month ADF [11]. The study was divided into two groups: Ad Libitum group and ADF group. The results showed that compared with the free eating group, the ADF group mice had significantly lower body weight and improved glucose and lipid metabolism, which was consistent with a series of previous studies [3, 5, 7, 9, 12]. However, ADF also caused an increase in liver lipid accumulation in mice, specifically, liver index and liver triglyceride content increased significantly, accompanied by an increase in liver lipid metabolism genes and autophagic activity.

Received: 　　Accepted:

Corresponding author: 阮雄中　　E-mail: xiongzruan@foxmail.com

Citing This Article：

SHI Dan, LIAN Xue-Mei, RUAN Xiong-Zhong. Prolonged intermittent fasting and metabolic-related fatty liver disease. Acta Physiol Sin 2022; 74 (6): 959-961 (in Chinese with English abstract).