Effect of Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT) on Insulin Resistance Associated with Abdominal Obesity in Wistar Rats with Dietary Sucrose-Induced Metabolic Syndrome

Metabolic syndrome (MS) is a combination of risk factors related to the development of mainly type 2 diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular disease (CVD) and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Its prevalence has increased worldwide, and healthcare systems will face major challenges in addressing this problem. The aim of this work was to evaluate the effect of hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) on insulin resistance (IR) and obesity associated with MS in Wistar rats. The experimental design consisted of three groups of sucrose-induced MS rats: the MS group that consumed sucrose (MS-Suc; n=5), the MS group that ingested sucrose and HBOT (MS-Suc-HBOT; n=5), the MS group that did not consume sucrose and that received HBOT (MS-HBOT; n=5) and the control group. The rats received HBOT for 20 d at 2.4 atmospheres absolute (ATA) for 60 min. Subsequently, the rats were euthanized, and body fat weight, serum biochemical parameters and microscopic analysis of adipose tissue were determined. Rats with hyperoxia had decreased body weight, adipose tissue hypertrophy, and abdominal and epididymal fat. Likewise, markers of insulin resistance (glucose, insulin and HOMA-IR), biochemical parameters of dyslipidemia (cholesterol and triglycerides) and nonalcoholic fatty liver (AST and ALT) decreased; in contrast, compared to the control group, HBOT increased the 1/HOMA-IR, HOMA-βCell and McAuley indexes, which were related to the improvement in insulin sensitivity (p