Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (
NAFLD), the most common cause of chronic
liver disease, consists of fat deposited (steatosis) in the liver due to causes besides excessive alcohol use. The folding activity of
heat shock protein 60 (HSP60) has been shown to protect mitochondria from proteotoxicity under various types of stress. In this study, we investigated whether HSP60 could ameliorate experimental high-fat diet (HFD)-induced
obesity and
hepatitis and explored the potential mechanism in mice. The results uncovered that HSP60 gain not only alleviated HFD-induced
body weight gain, fat accumulation, and hepatocellular steatosis, but also
glucose tolerance and
insulin resistance according to intraperitoneal
glucose tolerance testing and
insulin tolerance testing in HSP60 transgenic (HSP60Tg) compared to wild-type (WT) mice by HFD. Furthermore, overexpression of HSP60 in the HFD group resulted in inhibited release of mitochondrial dsRNA (mt-dsRNA) compared to WT mice. In addition, overexpression of HSP60 also inhibited the activation of
toll-like receptor 3 (TLR3),
melanoma differentiation-associated gene 5 (MDA5), and phosphorylated-
interferon regulatory factor 3 (p-IRF3), as well as inflammatory
biomarkers such as
mRNA of il-1β and
il-6 expression in the liver in response to HFD. The in vitro study also confirmed that the addition of HSP-60 mimics in HepG2 cells led to upregulated expression level of HSP60 and restricted release of mt-dsRNA, as well as downregulated expression levels of TLR3, MDA5, and pIRF3. This study provides novel insight into a hepatoprotective effect, whereby HSP60 inhibits the release of dsRNA to repress the TLR3/MDA5/pIRF3 pathway in the context of
NAFLD or hepatic
inflammation. Therefore, HSP60 may serve as a possible therapeutic target for improving
NAFLD.