Effect of Calorie Restriction on Intestinal Inflammation in Mice Treated with a High-Calorie Diet

Abstract Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is classified into ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease. It is chronic inflammation of gastrointestinal tract and idiopathic disease. Sugar is proved to be risk factor for IBD. Calorie restriction is a nutrition intervention to reduce energy intake and can reduce chronic desease. This study aims to determine the difference in the effect of a high-calorie diet and calorie restriction on intestinal inflammation. Eight-week-old healthy female Balb/c mice were divided into two groups. The high calorie (HC) group was fed standard diet plus oral gavage of glucose solution every day for 4 weeks. The dose of glucose solution was 0.0325 ml/gBW or 3-5% additional calories each day. The calorie restriction (CR) group had their calorie intake restricted to 50% of standard diet 3 times a week. After 4 weeks of treatment, the mice had their colon removed. The assessment of the intestinal inflammation was carried out using a light microscope, with a scoring system by Erben et al (2014) in HE staining. The mean score of the HC group was 1.22, this was higher than the CR group with a mean score of 1.18 even tough the result revealed that the scores of intestinal inflammation were not significantly different in the two groups (P = 0.827). However, there is no evidence for the underlying mechanism of intestinal inflammation by high-calorie diet and improvement of intestinal inflammation in high-calorie diet via calorie restriction. Thus, further research is needed on other calorie restriction methods in high-calorie diet study. Keywords: High calorie diet, Calorie restriction, Intestinal inflammation