Toxicology of ageing in long-term dietary study on Sprague-Dawley rats

The research in a newly developing field, toxicology of ageing, is highly relevant nowadays and very well interdisciplinary challenged. The improvement of eating habits might serve as an anti-ageing prevention and treatment strategy for metabolic disorders. The goal of our study was to contribute to the elucidation of the impact of ageing on immunological alterations along with prenatally conditioned metabolic syndrome in Sprague-Dawley (SD) female offspring rats. We have investigated the influence of guided two-generation nutritional intervention, specifically the effect of a high-fat diet (H) on fundamental metabolic parameters and cytokines. To mimic the dietary preferences of a western-style diet rich in high fat, we first fed the parental generation of SD rats either a control (C) standard diet or a high-fat diet (H, containing 1% cholesterol and 7.5% lard) three months prior to mating. Then, the type of diet either continued within the offspring´s generation (CC, HH) or changed (CH, HC). The non-invasive blood pressure measurement was carried out by tail-cuff plethysmography. The plasmatic levels of total cholesterol (TC), triacylglycerides (TAG), low-density lipoprotein (LDL-C), high-density lipoprotein (HDL-C), adipose triglyceride lipase (ATGL), and C-reactive protein (CRP) were assessed by ELISA kits. The serum levels of interleukins IL-1β, IL-4, IL-6, IL-10, IL-12, and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) were evaluated using magnetic bead–based immunoassays on Bio-Plex 200 systems (Bio-Rad, U.S.). Our data indicated that the inflammaging, which is age-related chronic low-grade inflammation, was present in diet-related disturbances, especially within the HH groups of SD female offspring rats. Therefore, epigenetic programming through parental diet appears to play a critical role in worsening inflammaging.