Background and aims: Acetaminophen (APAP) overdose is the leading cause of acute liver failure, with one available treatment, N-acetyl cysteine (NAC). Yet, NAC effectiveness diminishes about ten hours after APAP overdose, urging for therapeutic alternatives. This study addresses this need by deciphering a mechanism of sexual dimorphism in APAP-induced liver injury, and leveraging it to accelerate liver recovery via growth hormone (GH) treatment. GH secretory patterns, pulsatile in males and near-continuous in females, determine the sex bias in many liver metabolic functions. Here, we aim to establish GH as a novel therapy to treat APAP hepatotoxicity.
Approach and results: Our results demonstrate sex-dependent APAP toxicity, with females showing reduced liver cell death and faster recovery than males. Single-cell RNA sequencing analyses reveal that female hepatocytes have significantly greater levels of GH receptor expression and GH pathway activation compared to males. In harnessing this female-specific advantage, we demonstrate that a single injection of recombinant human GH protein accelerates liver recovery, promotes survival in males following sub-lethal dose of APAP, and is superior to standard-of-care NAC. Alternatively, slow-release delivery of human GH via the safe nonintegrative lipid nanoparticle-encapsulated nucleoside-modified mRNA (mRNA-LNP), a technology validated by widely used COVID-19 vaccines, rescues males from APAP-induced death that otherwise occurred in control mRNA-LNP-treated mice.
Conclusions: Our study demonstrates a sexually dimorphic liver repair advantage in females following APAP overdose, leveraged by establishing GH as an alternative treatment, delivered either as recombinant protein or mRNA-LNP, to potentially prevent liver failure and liver transplant in APAP-overdosed patients.