Soybean soluble polysaccharide prevents obesity in high-fat diet-induced rats via lipid metabolism regulation

Soybean soluble polysaccharide (SSPS) was reported to possess the anti-obesity activity and improve metabolic syndrome. Unfortunately, the underlying mechanisms are not well understood. Here, we treated high-fat diet (HFD) Sprague Dawley rats with 250 mg per kg of SSPS, the SSPS treatment significantly decreased their body weight (P < 0.001), liver index value (P < 0.01), as well as the concentration levels of Triglyceride (TG), total cholesterol (TC), low-density cholesterol (LDL-C)), and inflammatory cytokines in the serum. Furthermore, we uncovered 276 differently expressed proteins (P < 0.05) highly involved in lipid metabolism processes. Additionally, after SSPS treatment, both fatty acid binding protein 5 and 7 were downregulated, consistent with the in vivo results. However, peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ expression in liver tissue was up-regulated, contradictory to in vitro results. We deduced that two different lipid metabolism mechanisms exist between in vivo and in vitro. Furthermore, in the in vitro experiments, SSPS exerted a lipid-lowering effect. Altogether, the study's results provide an overview of SSPS-induced changes in the liver proteome, which could help us understand the molecular mechanism by which SSPS alleviates obesity.