Duration of feeding on a sucrose-rich diet determines metabolic and morphological changes in rat adipocytes

Department of Biochemistry, University of Litoral, 3000 Santa Fe, Argentina In this work, we studied the effect of a short-term (3 wk) and a long-term (15 wk) administration of a sucrose-rich diet (SRD) to Wistar rats on the morphological aspects and metabolic function of the epididymal adipose tissue that may contribute to the mechanism underlying the impaired glucose homeostasis and insulin resistance. The present work showed the following. 1 ) There was both a moderate increase of basal lipolysis and a decrease of the antilipolytic action of insulin in the adipocytes of rats fed a SRD for 3 wk. Neither size alterations nor increases in adipose tissue mass were recorded in this period. 2 ) There was a significant ( P < 0.05) increase of epididymal weight after 15 wk on a SRD as well as a hypertrophy of adipocytes with a clear alteration in the cell size distribution. This was accompanied by a significant increase ( P