Protective effect and transcriptomic analysis of swimming on metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease in mice
LIU Yingying
FANG Zhiqiang
DU Wei
HE Fei
WANG Lin
Abstract：Objective To investigate the protective effect of swimming on metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease(MASLD)in mice and its possible mechanism.Methods Sixteen C57 mice were randomly divided into a control group and a swimming group,with eight mice in each group.Both groups started a high-fat diet(HFD)at the same time.Mice in the swimming group started swimming after 24 weeks of HFD(moderate intensity aerobic exercise,60 min/d,6 d/week),while the control group remained sedentary.The obesity of mice in each group was observed after continuing HFD for 8 weeks.The fixed sections of liver tissue were taken and stained to observe hepatic steatosis,and total RNA was extracted for whole-genome sequencing.Differentially expressed genes(DEGs)were filtered out for GO enrichment analysis,KEGG pathway enrichment analysis,and gene set enrichment analysis(GSEA).Results Swimming significantly improved the body mass,liver mass,liver-to-body mass ratio,and liver tissue morphology of obese mice,reducing lipid deposition in the liver.Transcriptomic analysis revealed 946 DEGs.Both GO enrichment analysis and KEGG pathway enrichment analysis indicated that DEGs were enriched in metabolic pathways,especially in lipid metabolism-related pathways such as PPAR pathway.GSEA indicated that swimming reduced the expression of genes related to lipid metabolism pathways.Conclusion Swimming can improve MASLD by inhibiting the expression of genes related to lipid metabolism pathways.
Keywords：swimmingmetabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver diseaseRNA-seqmicelipid metabolismsignaling pathways
Publication Date：2025-06-30
Online Publishing Date：2026-08-26(First online date of this platform, not the publication date of the document)
Pages：5( 793-797 )