Figure 1.

Effect of alcohol and betaine on liver structure, liver lipids, and hepatic lipid score. Six rats per group were pair fed their respective HFC, HFE, HFCB, and/or HFEB liquid diets for 8 weeks, after which they were sacrificed for measuring the following lipid parameters, as described in Materials and Methods. H&E staining shows structural tissue changes (A), total liver cholesterol (B), liver triglycerides (C), histological features of liver sections showing oil red O–stained lipid droplets (D), and a bar graph representing percentage of relative levels of oil red O–stained lipid pixel values to total red pixels, calculated to show the extent of hepatosteatosis (E). The data are expressed as means ± SD in each group. Statistical significance of variance was calculated using the Tukey's test: ^∗∗P < 0.01 versus HFC, ^††P < 0.01 versus HFE.