Slightly different metabolomic profiles are associated with high or low weight duck foie gras

PLoS One. 2022 Jun 28;17(6):e0255707. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0255707. eCollection 2022.

Abstract

Understanding the evolution of fatty liver metabolism of ducks is a recurrent issue for researchers and industry. Indeed, the increase in weight during the overfeeding period leads to an important change in the liver metabolism. However, liver weight is highly variable at the end of overfeeding within a batch of animals reared, force-fed and slaughtered in the same way. For this study, we performed a proton nuclear magnetic resonance (1H-NMR) analysis on two classes of fatty liver samples, called low-weight liver (weights between 550 and 599 g) and high-weight liver (weights above 700 g). The aim of this study was to identify the differences in metabolism between two classes of liver weight (low and high). Firstly, the results suggested that increased liver weight is associated with higher glucose uptake leading to greater lipid synthesis. Secondly, this increase is probably also due to a decline in the level of export of triglycerides from the liver by maintaining them at high hepatic concentration levels, but also of hepatic cholesterol. Finally, the increase in liver weight could lead to a significant decrease in the efficiency of aerobic energy metabolism associated with a significant increase in the level of oxidative stress. However, all these hypotheses will have to be confirmed in the future, by studies on plasma levels and specific assays to validate these results.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Ducks*
  • Fatty Liver*
  • Hyperaldosteronism
  • Metabolomics
  • Thinness

Supplementary concepts

  • Glucocorticoid-Remediable Aldosteronism

Grants and funding

For this specific study we received a grant from the ANR-T (grant number = ANR-T 2017/1414) to partly cover Bara LO’s PhD. salary. An other financial support (number = ANR-10-INBS-08) was previously given to the technical platform in charge of our metabolomics analysis. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.