Cellular and Molecular Variations in Male and Female Murine Skeletal Muscle after Long-Term Feeding with a High-Fat Diet.

Current information regarding the effects of a high-fat diet (HFD) on skeletal muscle is contradictory. This study aimed to investigate the effects of a long-term HFD on skeletal muscle in male and female mice at the morphological, cellular, and molecular levels. Adult mice of the C57BL/6 strain were fed standard chow or an HFD for 20 weeks.

Identification of early indicators of altered metabolism in normal development using a rodent model system.

Although the existence of a close relationship between the early maternal developmental environment, fetal size at birth and the risk of developing disease in adulthood has been suggested, most studies, however, employed experimentally induced intrauterine growth restriction as a model to link this with later adult disease. Because embryonic size variation also occurs under normal growth and differentiation, elucidating the molecular mechanisms underlying these changes and their relevance to later adult disease risk becomes important. The birth weight of rat pups vary according to the uterine horn positions.

Bioenergetics of the spinal cord in experimental autoimmune encephalitis of rats.

Background: Mitochondrial dysregulation is important in axonal damage and demyelination in multiple sclerosis (MS) and experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE). There is however, no evidence in the literature of any study that has examined cellular bioenergetics of the central nervous system (CNS) during the early development and clinical course of EAE. EAE, a rodent model of relapsing/remitting MS, is a CD4(+) T cell-mediated disease of the CNS.