Circadian, metabolic, and reproductive systems are inter-regulated. Excessive fatness and circadian disruption alter normal physiology and the endocrine milieu, including cortisol, the primary stress hormone. Our aim was to determine the effect feeding a high fat diet to female ICR mice had on diurnal feeding pattern, weight gain, body composition, hair corticosterone levels and circadian patterns of fecal corticosterone. Prepubertal (~35d of age) ICR mice were assigned to control (CON; 10% fat) or high fat (HF; 60% fat) diet and fed for 4 wk to achieve obesity under 12h light and 12h of dark. Feed intake was measured twice daily to determine diurnal intake. Mice were weighed weekly. After 4 wk on diets hair was collected to measure corticosterone, crown-rump length was measured to calculate body mass index (BMI), and body composition was measured with EchoMRI to determine percent fat. HF mice weighed more (P<0.05) after week two, BMI and percent body fat was greater (P<0.05) in HF than CON at the end of wk 4. HF mice consumed more during the day (P<0.05) than CON mice after 1 week on diets. Hair corticosterone was higher in HF mice than in CON (P<0.05). Fecal circadian sampling over 48hr demonstrated that HF mice had elevated basal corticosterone, attenuated circadian rhythms, and a shift in amplitude. High fat feeding for diet induced obesity alters circadian eating pattern and corticosterone rhythms, indicating a need to consider the impact of circadian system disruption on reproductive competence.
Copyright: © 2023 Teeple et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.