Obesity is a main cause of morbidity worldwide, and its incidence has incredibly grown in recent years, leading to an increased risk for comorbidities, including cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. Timely intervention is essential and natural products can be useful in a preventive/therapeutic perspective. In this context, some vegetables belonging to the Brassicaceae family have been successfully studied. The aim of this experimental work was the evaluation of the positive effects of the glucosinolate glucoerucin (GER), extracted from vegetables of the Brassicaceae family, on the metabolic profile of high-fat diet (HFD) fed mice. GER (10 mg/kg) was orally supplemented to wild-type mice with metabolic disorder obtained by 10-week HFD. GER contained the body weight gain and positively influenced the triacylglycerols levels and glycemic profile in HFD mice. GER contributed to contain visceral white adipose tissue (vWAT) deposition, white adipocyte size, and inflammation, in favor of an increased metabolic activity. Worthy of note, an increase in irisin pathway was observed; indeed, beside the increase of myokine in the blood, upstream an increase of the expression of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma coactivator 1-alpha (PGC-1α) and of fibronectin type III domain-containing protein 5 (FNDC5) levels were observed; downstream of irisin, a positive effect on expression and levels of mitochondrial uncoupling protein 1 (UCP1) was reported. The obtained results reveal that the preventive effects of GER on metabolic profile may be related to its ability to promote thermogenesis in vWAT, probably through the browning process.
Flori et al. (Mon,) studied this question.