Endocrine Abstracts

Obesity is associated with low-grade systemic inflammation, indeed the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines by mesenteric adipose tissue has been implicated in the pathogenesis of inflammatory diseases of the small intestine: duodenum, jejunum and ileum. This is the main site of intestinal inflammation. The objective of this work is to study the effect of a high calorie diet on the histology of the ileum in Psammomys obesus. The animals were captured in the area of Beni Abbes, in the Algerian Sahara. 11 Psammomys obesus were divided into two groups, a control group (n=5) fed with the halophile plant containing (0.4 Kcal/g), and the second group (n=6) subjected to a high calorie diet (3.85kcal/g) for 12 weeks. A part of the ileum was fixed in bruin’s solution and was sliced at 3 mm thickness then stained with masson trichrome. Our results show that the high calorie diet induced significant increase on body weight gain compared to control group. Histological analysis shows an increase in muscularisis thickness in high calorie diet group compared to the control one. Furthmore in the submucosa we observed the presence of fat cells and lymphoid infiltration in high calorie diet group, we also observed fibrosis in conjonctive tissue. These results show that our animal could be a model of inflammation and nutrient-induced fibrosis of the ileum. We conclude that a high calorie diet induces inflammatory lesions in ileum that may affect enteroendocrine cells involved in the control of feeding and metabolic pathways related to obesity.