Poster Presenter

Effects of Dietary Cholesterol on Reverse Transport Cholesterol in the Golden Syrian Hamster CETP Species Using Hamster Primary Macrophages
M. Tréguier, F. Briand, A. Boubacar, T. Magot, P. Nguyen, T. Sulpice and K. Ouguerram
France

Reverse cholesterol transport (RCT) is a key process by which peripheral cholesterol is transported by high-density lipoprotein (HDL) to the liver for excretion in bile and feces. However, some species including humans and hamsters have an alternative pathway of delivery of HDL-C to the liver provided by CETP. Although protective role of RCT is well established in mice, its study still needs a relevant animal model.

We therefore used a hamster model exposed for 4 weeks to cholesterol enriched diet. Dietary cholesterol increased plasma total cholesterol and triglyceride levels and liver lipids. We investigated the impact of this diet on the RCT adapting an in vivo method developed in mice tracing the movement of cholesterol from 3H-cholesterol-labelled macrophages into plasma, liver and ultimately into bile and feces. The use of hamster primary macrophages allowed us to apply this method to our model. We shown that dietary cholesterol reduced the macrophage to feces cholesterol excretion. Moreover, a significant increase in the aortic cholesterol content revealed an accumulation of cholesterol in vessels.

These results show that dietary cholesterol reduced reverse cholesterol transport in a species with CETP activity and that hamster is a relevant model for drug profiling or nutritional investigations.