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Updated: Mar 14, 2026
Quantification of Atherosclerosis in Mice
Published on: June 12, 2019
Atherogenic high cholesterol/high fat diet induces TLRs-associated pulmonary inflammation in C57BL/6J mice
Yan Fang1,2, Shuang Wang1,3, Tingting Zhu1
1Department of Nutrition and Food Hygiene, School of Public Health and Management, Chongqing Medical University, No.1 Yixueyuan Road, Yuzhong District, Chongqing, 400016, China.
Objective:
To explore the effects of high cholesterol/high fat diet-induced hypercholesterolemia on pulmonary homeostasis of wild-type C57BL/6J mice.
Materials And Methods:
Six- to eight-week-old male C57BL/6J mice were randomly divided into two groups and treated with either high cholesterol/high fat diet (HCD, containing 20 % fat, 1.25 % cholesterol and 0.5 % sodium cholate) or a matching regular diet (RD, containing 4 % fat with no cholesterol and cholate added) for 12-16 weeks.
Results:
Twelve to sixteen weeks after HCD diet feeding, hypercholesterolemia and pulmonary lipid accumulation were progressively exacerbated in C57BL/6J mice. Meanwhile, the HCD-fed mice showed distinctive signs of inflammation in the lung, which includes macrophage accumulation in alveolar lumen and lymphocyte infiltration around perivascular area. Simultaneously, the mRNA and protein expression of TLR2 and TLR4 were significantly up-regulated, and the translocation of NFκB into nucleus was activated in HCD-fed mice lung. In vitro, oxidized low-density lipoprotein (oxLDL) could directly up-regulate the expression of TLR2 and TLR4 in both A549 and MLE-12 lung epithelial cell lines.
Conclusions:
These findings suggested that high cholesterol/high fat diet-induced hypercholesterolemia could result in TLRs/NFκB pathway-associated low-grade pulmonary inflammation in C57BL/6J mice, which might alter the lung's immune responsiveness to a variety of environmental exposures.
