Ursolic acid ameliorates obesity of mice fed with high-fat diet via alteration of gut microbiota and amino acid metabolism

Chunfeng Tian; Jie Li; Yan Bao; Long Gao; Lixin Song; Kai Li; Ming Sun

doi:10.3389/fmicb.2023.1183598

Ursolic acid ameliorates obesity of mice fed with high-fat diet via alteration of gut microbiota and amino acid metabolism

Front Microbiol. 2023 Jul 6:14:1183598. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2023.1183598. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Chunfeng Tian^#¹, Jie Li^#², Yan Bao^{1

3}, Long Gao¹, Lixin Song⁴, Kai Li¹, Ming Sun¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Public Health, Baotou Medical College, Inner Mongolia University of Science and Technology, Baotou, China.
² School of Public Health, Jiamusi University, Jiamusi, China.
³ Institute of Nutrition and Food Health, Baotou Medical College, Baotou, China.
⁴ Baotou Disease Prevention Control Center, Baotou, China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Obesity has been regarded as one of the major health problems worldwide. Studies demonstrated that ursolic acid (UA) can significantly ameliorate the progress of obesity. However, whether the effect of UA on obesity depends on the regulation of gut microbiota and metabolism is uncertain. To investigate the regulatory role of UA in obese mice from the perspective of intestinal microbiome and metabolomics analyses, an obese mice model was established with a high-fat diet, and the effect of UA on obesity was evaluated. The alterations of gut microbiota and metabolism related to obesity were evaluated by bioinformatic analysis. The results of the gut microbiota analysis showed that UA intervention could shift the Firmicutes to Bacteroidetes ratio at the phylum level and increase in the genera of Lactobacillus, Bacteroides, and Akkermansia. Additionally, metabolomics analysis showed that the beneficial influence of UA on obesity partly depended on amino acid metabolism. The current study demonstrated the roles of UA in the anti-obesity process, which depends in part on alterations in the gut microbiota and metabolism. Therefore, our findings highlight the potential therapeutic effect of UA on the improvement of diet-induced obesity in humans.

Keywords: gut microbiota; high-fat diet; metabolism; metabolomics; obesity; ursolic acid.

Grants and funding

This study was supported by the Medical and Health Science and Technology Plan Project of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Health Commission (202201368); the Natural Science Foundation of Inner Mongolia (2021LHMS08017); the Young Scientific and Technological Talents Inner Mongolia Universities (NJYT22119); the Baotou Medical College Doctoral Research Start-up-fund Project (BSJJ201801); Heilongjiang Provincial Colleges and Universities Basic Scientific Research Projects, China (2022-KYYWF-0649); and Jiamusi University Young Innovative Talent Training Support Program Project, China (JMSUQP2022014).