Molecular pathology of acute kidney injury in a choline-deficient model and fish oil protective effect.

PURPOSE: The aim of this work was to investigate the potential protective effects of fish oil on the basis of kidney transcriptomic data on a nutritional experimental model.

METHODS

Male weanling Wistar rats were divided into four groups and fed choline-deficient (CD) and choline-supplemented (CS) diets with vegetable oil (VO) and menhaden oil (MO): CSVO, CDVO, CSMO and CDMO. Animals were killed after receiving the diets for 6 days. Total RNA was purified from the right kidney and hybridized to Affymetrix GeneChip Rat Gene 1.0 ST Array. Differentially expressed genes were analyzed.

RESULTS

All CSVO, CSMO and CDMO rats showed no renal alterations, while all CDVO rats showed renal cortical necrosis. A thorough analysis of the differential expression between groups CSMO and CDMO was carried out. There were no differential genes for p < 0.01. The analysis of the differential expression between groups CSVO and CSMO revealed 32 genes, 11 were over-expressed and 21 were under-expressed in CSMO rats.

CONCLUSIONS

This work was part of a large set of experiments and was used in a hypothesis-generating manner. The comprehensive analysis of genetic expression allowed confirming that menhaden oil has a protective effect on this nutritional experimental model and identifying 32 genes that could be responsible for that protection, including Gstp1. These results reveal that gene changes could play a role in renal injury.