Figure 4.

Microbiota ablation did not mitigate WSD-induced adiposity but ameliorated features of metabolic syndrome. (A) Four-week-old male C57BL/6J conventionally raised mice were purchased from The Jackson Laboratory, 4-week-old male C57BL/6 mice possessing an ASF were obtained from the Georgia State University breeding repository, and 3- to 5-week-old male C57BL/6 GF mice were purchased from Taconic Biosciences (N=5). At day 0, animals were switched to a high-fat diet (60% kcal from fat) for 8 weeks or continued on a standard grain-based chow as a control. An additional group of conventional C57BL/6J mice were started on an antibiotic cocktail 3 days before high-fat diet administration and maintained throughout the experiment. At day 56, mice were euthanized for tissue collection and biometric measurements, data of WSD-treated mice represented here are relative to the chow-fed mice of their corresponding groups: (B) final body weight, (C) epididymal adipose tissue weight, (D) subcutaneous adipose tissue weight, (E) brown adipose tissue weight, (F) 15-hour fasting blood glucose level, (G) ALT concentration, (H) AST concentration, (I) total serum cholesterol, (J) liver weight, (K) colon weight/length ratio, and (L) spleen weight. Data are the means ± SD. Statistical significance was determined using 1-way analysis of variance corrected for multiple comparisons with a Bonferroni test. *P ≤ .05, **P ≤ .01, ***P ≤ .001, and ****P ≤ .0001. ABX, antibiotic; Conv, conventional; ns, nonsignificant.