Effect of Dorsomorphin Homolog 1 (DMH1) against Diabetic Dyslipidemia in Streptozotocin-induced Diabetic Rats

Dyslipidemia is usually observed in both types of diabetes and, particularly, “atherogenic dyslipidemic triad” is strongly linked to a higher risk of adverse cardiovascular outcome. On the other hand, bone morphogenetic proteins (BMP) are a group of wide variety of proteins which were found overexpressed and implicated in contribution and acceleration of atherosclerotic calcification. So, the present study aimed to assess effect of DMH1, a selective BMP inhibitor, in a rat model of diabetic-induced dyslipidemia.

Methods: STZ-induced diabetes in Wistar rats was used as a model to assess the

antihyperlipidemic effect of DMH1(5mg/kg) for a period of 8 weeks. Rats were divided intonormal control (C=10), diabetic control (DC=10), diabetic+vehicle (DV=10) and diabetic DMH1-treated rats (DT=10). Fasting blood glucose (FBG) level was measured on weekly bases. Then, at the end of the experiment, rats were anesthetized and blood samples were collected for the determination of total cholesterol (TC), triglyceride (TG), LDL and HDL levels using the appropriate ELISA assay.

Results: FBG levels for all diabetic groups were significantly high, during the experiment period, compared to the control (P< 0.001). While dyslipidemia was remarkable in the diabetic non-treated groups, DMH1 treatment showed a significant decrease in TC (P< 0.001), TG (P< 0.05) and LDL levels (P< 0.001) compared to the non-treated groups (DC & DV). Concurrently, HDL levels for DT group were significantly increased compared to DC or DV groups (P< 0.01).

Conclusion: The present experiment showed that DMH1 possessed encouraging activityagainst dyslipidemia in STZ-induced diabetic rats. Our results are promoting for more interest and investigation regarding antihyperlipidemic effect of DMH1 and BMP/Smad pathway in further experimental studies.