Abstract:
Obesity has become a harmful factor for life expectancy through a series of diseases, but research on
obesity in the past few decades has obtained only limited results. The discovery of the metabolic healthy
obesity phenomenon brings a new direction for research of obesity problem, but the lack of an animal of
metabolic healthy obesity limits its study. Tupaia belangeri is a new type of experimental animal emerging
in recent years and is extremely widely used in various disease models because of its evolutionary status
and high affinity with primates. Here, in order to judge whether this new experimental animal can serve
as special materials in obesity research, we constructed an obesity model in T. belangeri by using highfat
food, then studied animal insulin sensitivity, blood pressure, blood biochemistry, routine blood,
inflammatory response, and liver fat accumulation, etc. We found that T. belangeri had no metabolic
disorders such as insulin resistance, hypertension, or hyperlipidemia after obesity, and there were also no
typical obesity complications such as diabetes, inflammation, or fatty liver. To sum up, we suggest that T.
belangeri can be used as an animal model of metabolic healthy obesity, and the special model organism of
metabolic healthy obesity will provide us with new opportunities to study obesity problems.
Keywords:
Animal Model
,
Weight loss
,
Tupaia belangeri
,
Energy metabolism
,
Metabolic healthy obesity