High Fat Diet-Induced Skeletal Muscle Wasting Is Decreased by Mesenchymal Stem Cells Administration: Implications on Oxidative Stress, Ubiquitin Proteasome Pathway Activation, and Myonuclear Apoptosis

Figure 7

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) administration inhibits the increased myonuclear apoptosis induced by a high fat diet (HFD) in mice. C57BL/10J male mice were fed with a standard chow (control) or HFD for 38 weeks. At week 30, a subgroup of HFD mice received MSC injected through the tail-vein. At week 38, all mice were sacrificed and the tibialis anterior (TA) was excised and homogenized to evaluate (a) Bax and Bcl2 protein levels through Western blot analysis; (b) Bax/Bcl2 ratio analysis (the values are expressed as fold of induction relative to the control and correspond to the mean ± SD (; versus control; versus HFD, two-way ANOVA)); (c) cleaved caspase-3 levels detected by Western blot analysis; (d) quantification of caspase-3 levels from experiments shown in (c). The values are expressed as fold of induction relative to the control and correspond to the mean ± SD (; versus control; versus HFD, two-way ANOVA). For (a) and (c), the levels of tubulin are shown as the loading control. The molecular weights are shown in kDa. (e) Caspase-3 activity was measured and expressed as fold of induction relative to the control, with values corresponding to the mean ± SD (; versus control; versus HFD; two-way ANOVA). (f) Cryosections of TA were used to perform the TUNEL assay. The bar corresponds to 50 μm. (g) Blinded quantification of TUNEL-positive nuclei per field in five randomly captured images. The values are expressed as the fold of induction relative to the control and correspond to the mean ± SD (; versus control; versus HFD, two-way ANOVA).

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