Effects of oral supplementation with alpha-lipoic acid and eicosapentaenoic acid in overweight/obese healthy women conjonintly with a hypocaloric diet

Abstract

The general aim of the current work was to analyze the efficacy of a dietary supplementation with eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and/or alpha-lipoic acid in combination with a moderately energy-restricted diet on body weight loss and on some metabolic and inflammatory status biomarkers in metabolically healthy overweight/obese women, as well as to characterize the transcriptomic and epigenetic mechanisms that could be involved. In order to achieve these goals, a group of Caucasian healthy overweight/obese women (n= 77) aged 20-50 years followed a 10-weeks nutritional intervention with a hypocaloric diet (-30% from the total energy expenditure) after being randomly assigned to one of the four parallel experimental groups: 1) Control group (placebo); 2) EPA group (1.3 g/day of EPA); 3) alpha-lipoic acid group (0.3 g/day of alpha-lipoic acid) and 4) EPA + alpha-lipoic acid (1.3 g/day of EPA + 0.3 g/day of alpha-lipoic acid). At the end of the study, blood samples from 73 volunteers were available and subcutaneous abdominal adipose tissue (SAAT) biopsies from 57 women were obtained. Moreover, within an in vitro approach, human cultured adipocytes were treated with EPA (100-200 microM) or alpha-lipoic acid (100-250 microM) during 24 h. Summing up the current investigation suggests that alpha-lipoic acid and/or EPA supplementation could be beneficial in body weight regulation/management and in preventing inflammation onset and other associated metabolic complications commonly found in overweight/obese women. The data analysis also revealed the ability of alpha-lipoic acid and EPA to regulate the transcriptomic profile and the inflammation in adipose tissue. Finally, the available data also support the involvement of some epigenetic mechanisms, related to methylation changes, in the metabolic actions of alpha-lipoic acid and EPA.