chronic caffeine ingestion down-regulates liver and visceral adipose tissue inflammatory gene expression in high-fat diet-induced obesity

Background & objective: beverages containing caffeine have an anti-obesity function. reduction of visceral adipose tissue (vat) inflammation is considered an important strategy to ameliorate obesity compilations such as insulin resistance. this study aimed to investigate the effect of 8-week caffeine supplementation on the messenger rna (mrna) expression of fetuin-a (feta) in the liver and nuclear factor kappa b (nf-κb) and toll-like receptor 4 (tlr4) in the vat of rats with a high-fat diet (hfd).materials & methods: a total of 40 male wistar rats were randomly divided into control, caffeine, hfd, and hfd+caffeine supplement groups. after 2 weeks of acclimatization, the rats were randomly fed with hfd (46% fat) and a normal diet (5% fat) for 8 weeks. the rats in the caffeine groups were gavaged with 6 mg of the caffeine solution per kg of body weight. feta mrna of the liver, nf-κb, and tlr4 mrna of vat were determined using real-time polymerase chain reaction (pcr).results: the results indicated that feta mrna expression and weight gain in hfd+caffeine were significantly reduced compared to the other groups. nf-κb mrna expression was significantly higher in the hfd group than in the caffeine groups. no statistically significant differences were found in tlr4 mrna expression between the groups.conclusion: : these findings suggest that consuming caffeine can prevent hfd-induced liver and adipose tissue (at) inflammation.