Restricted immunological and cellular pathways are shared by murine models of chronic alcohol consumption

Abstract

Murine models of chronic alcohol consumption are frequently used to investigate alcoholic liver injury and define new therapeutic targets. Lieber-DeCarli diet (LD) and Meadows-Cook diet (MC) are the most accepted models of chronic alcohol consumption. It is unclear how similar these models are at the cellular, immunologic, and transcriptome levels. We investigated the common and specific pathways of LD and MC models. Livers from LD and MC mice were subjected to histologic changes, hepatic leukocyte population, hepatic transcripts level related to leukocyte recruitment, and hepatic RNA-seq analysis. Cross-species comparison was performed using the alcoholic liver disease (ALD) transcriptomic public dataset. Despite LD mice have increased liver injury and steatosis by alcohol exposure, the number of CD45 ⁺ cells were reduced. Opposite, MC mice have an increased number of monocytes/liver by alcohol. The pattern of chemokine gradient, adhesion molecules, and cytokine transcripts is highly specific for each model, not shared with advanced human alcoholic liver disease. Moreover, hepatic RNA-seq revealed a limited and restricted number of shared genes differentially changed by alcohol exposure in these 2 models. Thus, mechanisms involved in alcohol tissue injury are model-dependent at multiple levels and raise the consideration of significant pathophysiological diversity of human alcoholic liver injury.