The cientificWorldJOURNAL Research Article Diet-Induced Swine Model with Obesity/Leptin Resistance

Copyright © 2012 L. Torres-Rovira et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The objective of the present study was to determine the suitability of a swine breed with leptin resistance and predisposition to obesity (the Iberian pig) as model for studies on metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes. Thus, six Iberian sows had ad libitum access to food enriched with saturated fat (SFAD group; food consumption was estimated to be 4.5 kg/animal/day) whilst four females acted as controls and were fed with 2 kg/animal/day of a commercial maintenance diet. After three months of differential feeding, SFAD animals developed central obesity, dyslipidemia, insulin resistance and impaired glucose tolerance, and elevated blood pressure; the five parameters associated with the metabolic syndrome. Thus, the current study characterizes the Iberian pig as a robust, amenable, and reliable translational model for studies on nutrition-associated diseases. 1