Salmon sperm DNA prevents acute liver injury by regulating alcohol-induced steatosis and restores chronic hepatosis via alleviating inflammation and apoptosis.

Current medications used to treat alcoholic liver injury (ALD) can cause secondary damage to the liver. Therefore, it is important to improve alcoholic liver injury from the perspective of dietary and nutritional supplementation. Nucleic acids, as functional biomolecules, are present in almost all foods, especially in aquatic products, but their edible research has been neglected for a long time. Hence, the effects of a typical aquatic nucleic acid, namely, salmon sperm DNA, in acute, and chronic alcoholic liver injury model of male ICR mice were studied. The results showed that salmon sperm DNA significantly attenuated the accumulation of cholesterol (TC) and triglycerides (TG) in acute alcoholic liver injury, and it was further demonstrated to mainly regulate lipid metabolism by fluorescent quantitative PCR and immunoblotting experiments. In addition, nucleic acid intervention alleviated inflammation and apoptosis in mice with chronic alcoholic liver injury. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS: These results suggest that salmon sperm DNA can prevent and ameliorate alcoholic liver injury and can be used as an effective dietary and nutritional supplement for the prevention and treatment of ALD. Moreover, this study provided some new ideas for the development and utilization of large aquatic nucleic acid resources, promoted the comprehensive use of fish processing waste, such as fish sperm, and provided new directions for reducing emissions.