Upon gross examination, we observed significant enlargement and darkening of the liver after 150 days of DDC feeding in both KO Selleckchem LBH589 and WT livers (Fig. 2A). However, we noted the formation of hepatic nodules in 7 out of 7 KOs after 150 days of DDC diet feeding; however, no nodules were observed in the WT (Fig. 2A). We previously reported that our β-catenin KO mice have smaller livers than WT.9 However, after 80 days of DDC feeding the liver weight / body weight ratio equalized, with
a modest increase in the KO liver at 150 days of DDC feeding (Fig. 2B). It has been previously reported that DDC feeding induces activation of stellate cells, which results in fibrosis in the mouse liver as a function of atypical ductular proliferation.2 We performed trichrome staining to analyze the amount of fibrosis in our study. KO livers showed greater fibrosis after 80 and 150 days of DDC feeding than the WT controls at the same stages of DDC exposure
(Fig. 2C). Overall, the percentage of area of fibrosis was twice as much in the KOs when compared to WT at 150 days and the difference was statistically significant (Fig. 2D). At 150 days, spread of fibrosis between portal triads was evident in the KO liver, suggestive of significant progression of disease in these animals. Given the paradoxical decrease in hepatocyte injury spontaneously in the KO mice after long-term DDC, we sought the mechanism Luminespib of such improvement. We initiated the analysis by examining β-catenin expression in the KO livers at 150 days where unequivocal differences in AST and ALT were evident when compared to WT. Immunohistochemical analysis for β-catenin performed at Amine dehydrogenase 150
days identified extensive β-catenin-positive hepatocytes throughout the liver in the KO livers (Fig. 3A). This was also evident in the western analysis that revealed a dramatic recovery in β-catenin expression levels in the KO liver at 150 days of DDC feeding (Fig. 6). To determine the chronology of appearance of β-catenin-positive hepatocytes in the KO livers, we next examined earlier timepoints after the DDC exposure. At 80 days of DDC feeding, small clusters of β-catenin-expressing hepatocytes were observed, surrounded by β-catenin-negative parenchyma by IHC and immunofluorescence (Fig. 3A,B). At 30 days after being on a DDC diet, even fewer β-catenin-positive hepatocytes were observed, especially in the periportal region by these two imaging modalities (Fig. 3A,B). Analysis of KO livers after 7 days of DDC exposure also revealed a few β-catenin-positive hepatocytes in the periportal areas (Fig. 3B). This led us to analyze baseline livers at 3 months in chow-fed KO mice. Surprisingly around 1-2 hepatocytes per 200× magnification were β-catenin-positive in the KO livers as detected by immunofluorescence (Fig. 3B).
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