Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: In vitro adipogenesis is a two-step developmental process in which an undifferentiated mesenchymal cell differentiates into a preadipocyte, which then undergoes a secondary differentiation step to become a lipid-filled adipocyte. The triglyceride accumulation is influenced by various endogenous and exogenous factors.

Methods: In an attempt to understand the antipsychotics effects on lipid accumulation during adipogenesis, aripiprazole and olanzapine effects on triglyceride content were studied.To induce adipocyte differentiation from mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEF), these were grown to confluence and then cultured in adipogenic medium (DMEM +5 μM DEX +0.2 μM IBMX +10 μg/ml insulin) for 2 days and in a sustaining medium (DMEM +10 μg/ml insulin) for 12 days. Cells exposed to adipogenic medium±pioglitazone were used as absolute and positive controls, respectively. Aripiprazole and olanzapine were used at different concentrations (0.5, 5 and 20 μM). On the 7th and 14th days after induction, the cells viability test and Oil red O staining were performed. The accumulated Oil red O was dissolved in 1 ml 100% isopropanol and spectrophotometric analysis was performed (results expressed in mAU). For statistical analysis Student’s t test was used and the significance level was established at P<0.05.

Results: Aripiprazole and olanzapine had no cytotoxic effect at the concentrations tested. After 7 days no significant differences were observed in the triglyceride contents of the cells, but highest mAU was obtained in pioglitazone (238±23.2) and 5 μM aripiprazole (272±65.7) added cultures. Although a decrease of lipid accumulation in all of the cells was observed in the 14th day, in pioglitazone and 5 μM aripiprazole added cultures signficantly higher triglyceride contents were present than in the control cells.

Conclusion: Our results demonstrate that aripiprazole similarly to pioglitazone but not olanzapine increased the triglyceride content during in vitro adipogenesis in MEF cells.

Acknowledgment: This work was supported by the Domus Program of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Grant no. 5706/7/2015).