| Abstract: | Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the steatosis of liver parenchyma unrelated to alcoholism, autoimmunity, and viral infection. It is also a metabolism-related syndrome, which has an unseparated relationship with adipose tissue dysfunction and obesity. Hepatic encephalopathy (HE) is one of the severe complications of chronic liver disease and one of the end-stage syndromes of liver disease. Some researchers have suggested that NAFLD, like other forms of liver injury, may be related to the metabolic disorder of branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs), which have been approved to be associated with HE influencing ammonia and energy metabolism. However, several studies have revealed the relationship among amino acids in serum, HE, and chronic liver disease; there are few studies on the contents of amino acids in brain tissues of an animal model with NAFLD. In the present research, we established a NAFLD mouse model with C57BL/6 mice and determined the contents of 13 amino acids in brain tissues of model mice by HPLC-FLD derivatization method using ortho-phthalaldehyde (OPA) to explore the relationship between the contents of amino acids in brain tissues and the progression of NAFLD. Moreover, the study showed that the changes of amino acid contents in the brain of the C57BL/6 mice were associated with the advancement of NAFLD, and this change might be related to the mechanism of HE. |
