The effects of weight cycling on lifespan in male C57BL/6J mice - PubMed (original) (raw)

The effects of weight cycling on lifespan in male C57BL/6J mice

E O List et al. Int J Obes (Lond). 2013 Aug.

Abstract

Objective: With the increasing rates of obesity, many people diet in an attempt to lose weight. As weight loss is seldom maintained in a single effort, weight cycling is a common occurrence. Unfortunately, reports from clinical studies that have attempted to determine the effect of weight cycling on mortality are in disagreement, and to date, no controlled animal study has been performed to assess the impact of weight cycling on longevity. Therefore, our objective was to determine whether weight cycling altered lifespan in mice that experienced repeated weight gain and weight loss throughout their lives.

Methods: Male C57BL/6J mice were placed on one of three lifelong diets: a low-fat (LF) diet, a high-fat (HF) diet or a cycled diet in which the mice alternated between 4 weeks on the LF diet and 4 weeks on the HF diet. Body weight, body composition, several blood parameters and lifespan were assessed.

Results: Cycling between the HF and LF diet resulted in large fluctuations in body weight and fat mass. These gains and losses corresponded to significant increases and decreases, respectively, in leptin, resistin, GIP, IGF-1, glucose, insulin and glucose tolerance. Surprisingly, weight cycled mice had no significant difference in lifespan (801±45 days) as compared to LF-fed controls (828±74 days), despite being overweight and eating a HF diet for half of their lives. In contrast, the HF-fed group experienced a significant decrease in lifespan (544±73 days) compared with LF-fed controls and cycled mice.

Conclusions: This is the first controlled mouse study to demonstrate the effect of lifelong weight cycling on longevity. The act of repeatedly gaining and losing weight, in itself, did not decrease lifespan and was more beneficial than remaining obese.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1

Figure 1. Lifelong body weights

Mouse weights were collected weekly starting at 4 weeks of age and continued for the entire life of each mouse. LF fed mice are represented by black circles, HF fed mice are represented by white boxes and cycled mice are represented by grey triangles. Data are expressed as mean ± SEM. Cycles 2, 6 and 10 are indicated with brackets. A detailed analysis of body composition was determined during these 3 cycles as shown in figure 2.

Figure 2

Figure 2. Body composition

Body composition was measured weekly over three time periods; 15–23 weeks of age (cycle 2, left column), 47–55 weeks of age (cycle 6, center column) and 79–87 weeks of age (right column). (A) Body mass, (B) fat mass, and (C) lean mass was determined for all three diet groups; HF fed (white squares), LF fed (black circles) and cycled (grey triangles) were determined. Repeated measures ANOVAs were performed to determine effect of diet over time. Data are expressed as mean ± SEM.

Figure 3

Figure 3. Glucose metabolism

Glucose metabolism in mice on a LF diet (black bars), HF diet (white bars), and in cycled mice during a LF phase (dark grey bars) or during a HF phase (light grey bars). (A) Fasting blood glucose, (B) intraperitoneal glucose tolerance tests (IPGTT), (C) IPGTT area under the curve, (D) fasting plasma insulin (E), and fasting plasma C-peptide are shown. Data are expressed as mean ± SEM. Means shown with a common superscript letter are not significantly different, p>0.05.

Figure 4

Figure 4. Weekly food consumption

Average group food consumption is shown from 8–104 weeks of age for (a) mice on the LF diet, (b) mice on HF diet, and (c) mice that were cycled. For cycled mice (c), cycles 1–12 are represented with divisions between the 8 week cycles being indicated by vertical dashed lines. For comparison to body composition data shown in Figure 2, cycles 2, 6 and 10 are indicated by shading. For 4c, LF feeding is indicated with a black circle and HF feeding is indicated with a white box.

Figure 5

Figure 5. Effect of diet cycling on longevity

(a) Kaplan-Meier survival curves LF (solid black line), HF (solid grey line) and cycled (dashed line) mouse groups. (b) Mean lifespans of LF fed mice (black bar), HF fed mice (white bar), and cycled mice (grey bar). Data are expressed as mean ± SEM. Means shown with a common superscript letter are not significantly different, p>0.05.

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