Tesis doctoral de Montse Pinent Armengol
Flavonoids, and more specifically, red wine procyanidins, have many beneficial effects against pathologies such as cardiovascular heart disease and related illnesses. Although adipose tissue has a central role in some of these pathologies, including obesity and diabetes, there is a lack of information about the effects of procyanidins on this tissue. This thesis addresses this question. The effects of a grape seed procyanidin extract (gspe) on the lipid and glucose metabolism of adipocytes were evaluated by taking the 3t3-l1 cell line as a model of study. Results show that the gspe has insulinomimetic effects, stimulating glucose uptake, glycogen synthesis and trigliceride synthesis. To achieve this, the gspe shares some of the mechanisms and intracellular mediators of the insulin-signalling pathways (such as glut-4 translocation, pi3k and p38 mapk) but it must also use other, complementary, mechanisms. These results suggest that procyanidins have beneficial effects on diabetes and/or insulin resistance. This is partially proven by in vivo studies that show that gspe has antihyperglycemic properties on streptozotozin-induced diabetic rats. Also analyzed in this thesis are the molecular mechanisms used by gspe to explain the already described lipolytic effects. Protein kinase a and ppar? Are shown to be involved in these effects. Some of these results opened up another line of study into the effects of gspe on the differentiation process of the 3t3-l1. These studies showed that procyanidins alter the differentiation of preadipocytes when added at the induction of differentiation. Since an increase in the number of adipocytes has a negative effect on obesity, this is a promising characteristic of gspe that should be taken into account when its possible antiobesity properties are studied.
Datos académicos de la tesis doctoral «Adipose cell metabolism modulation by red wine procyanidins«
- Título de la tesis: Adipose cell metabolism modulation by red wine procyanidins
- Autor: Montse Pinent Armengol
- Universidad: Rovira i virgili
- Fecha de lectura de la tesis: 08/03/2005
Dirección y tribunal
- Director de la tesis
- Anna Ardévol Grau
- Tribunal
- Presidente del tribunal: marií Alemany lamana
- María Luisa Puerta lopez (vocal)
- rosa Sola alberich (vocal)
- zlatko Trajanoski (vocal)