The Role of Estrogen Receptor Alpha in Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease

Overview

Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) is a range of conditions characterized by elevated intrahepatic lipid stores in people who drink little or no alcohol. NAFLD is currently being investigated by medical and health scientists, particularly in physiology labs. It is associated with many other diseases including obesity, insulin resistance, cardiovascular disease, and type II diabetes, among others. Currently, weight loss and exercise are the only known treatments for NAFLD. Critical to this study, females are less likely to develop NAFLD than males until menopause when estrogen signaling is lost. This suggests that estrogen signaling may play a role in protecting female livers against NAFLD. Possible post-menopausal NAFLD treatments could be discovered by investigating the role of estrogen signaling in the development of NAFLD. We hypothesize that Estrogen receptor alpha (ERα) signaling inhibits the development of HFD-induced NAFLD through the regulation of mitochondrial quality in the liver in response to metabolic stress and that the loss of estrogen signaling reduces the influence of exercise-induced mitochondrial adaptations. Elucidating the role of ERα in the liver could lead to the development of treatments for NAFLD in post-menopausal women, who are at higher risk for NAFLD than pre-menopausal women and men. While this study is ongoing, our data demonstrate the effects of HFD-induced metabolic stress in mouse models. HFD stress increases overall body mass and percent fat mass while causing significant changes in mitochondrial protein expression. Additionally, our data suggest that female mice have mitochondrial respiration adaptations in response to HFD stress.

Competition history

• JSHS 2023 Category not listed

Resources

• National JSHS abstract book ↗

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