Momordica Charantia Alleviates the Lipid Metabolism Disorder of Mice on a High-fat Diet Via Down-regulating ACACA And FASN

As a common vegetable, Momordica charantia (M. charantia), also known as bitter melon, has the pharmacological activity of reducing blood sugar and body fat. This experiment explored the effect of M. charantia on the mice liver by adding freeze-dried M. charantia to the feed intake of high-fat diet mice. Among the three groups of normal diet mice (Control), high-fat diet mice fed with lyophilized bitter melon powder (BM) and single high-fat diet mice (HFD), it was seen that the body weight of BM mice did not change apparently (p>0.05), while the body weight of HFD mice increased significantly (p<0.01). Serum triglycerides, total cholesterol, high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), Low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) of HFD mice was significantly higher than those of Control and BM mice (p<0.01). The results of RT-PCR and Western blot showed that the transcription and protein expression levels of acetyl-CoA carboxylases alpha (ACACA) and fatty acid synthase (FASN) genes in HFD mice were significantly increased (p<0.01), while BM administration could reduce the transcription and expression of these two genes (p<0.01). It is concluded that M. charantia powder alleviates the lipid metabolism disorder of liver in HFD mice via downregulating ACACA and FASN both in the transcription and protein expression levels, and thus exhibits protective effects for the liver.