Lipotoxicity- induced metabolic inflammation: potential role of ceramides in glial cells interaction and inflammatory-damage propagation

MELINA BELLOTTO ; VINUESA A; BENTIVEGNA M; GREGOSA, AMAL; POMILIO C; GONZALEZ-PEREZ, N; PRESA J; BEAUQUIS J; SARAVIA F

Congreso; Reunion Anual de la Sociedad Argentina de Investigacion Clinica; 2021

SAIC

Western diet is associated with the elevated rates of obesity andrelated metabolic disorders, also considered important risk factorsfor brain dysfunction. Chronic inflammation and insulin resistancecomprise the most relevant shared pathways, promoting alterationsin the plasticity of limbic structures such as the hippocampus. Withthe aim to study the impact of metabolic disturbances on the brainwe focused on the role of glial cells in two different approaches: invivo, in the hippocampus of C57BL/6 mice exposed to a high fat diet(HFD) and in vitro, emulating the lipotoxic context with the saturatedfatty acid palmitate (PA) as an insult to microglia and astrocyte celllines and the role of ceramide pathway.We have previously found that HFD mice exhibited decreased neurogenesisand structural synaptic alterations, together with spatialmemory impairment and neuroinflammation, with increased expressionof hippocampal TNFα and IL1β cytokines and enlargedmicroglia. Here, we show that astrocytes also respond to the inflammatorystatus with a trend to increased S100b staining and a highercell complexity (assessed by GFAP labeling and Sholl analysisRM-ANOVA p