Fig. 1.

Liver histology of the female Sprague Dawley rats fed diets containing 20% casein in the absence (D1) or presence (D2) of supplemental isoflavones (ISF, 50 mg/kg diet) or increasing amounts of alcohol-washed soy protein isolate (SPI), 5% (D3), 10% (D4) or 20% (D5) in replacement of the same amounts of casein for 90 days. For the assessment of hepatic lipid droplet (HLD) formation and accumulation, the sections were stained with hematoxylin and eosin. The circumference of 100 randomly selected fat droplets in five fields of each section at 20× was measured under microscope using the software Northern eclipse version 7.0. The scale bars represent 10 μm, and the total areas of HLD were presented (E), and the means in (E) with different letters (a, b) differ. (Adapted and reformatted from Xiao et al. [55])