Captopril treatment does not affect inflammatory and autophagy signaling in skeletal muscle of Zucker diabetic fatty rat

Skeletal muscle plays a key role in the development of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) as its large capacity to sequester glucose and contribute to the regulation of energy metabolism is compromised. Previous studies indicate that in skeletal muscle, T2DM drives inflammatory signaling and impairs autophagy. Captopril (Cap), an angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor, is a common treatment for hypertension in T2DM patients; however, the impact of Cap on inflammatory signaling and autophagy in insulin resistant skeletal muscle remains ill-defined. We hypothesized that inflammatory signaling would be elevated and degradation of autophagosomes would be impaired in obese Zucker diabetic fatty (ZDF) rats, which are hyperphagic as they lack the leptin receptor. We further hypothesized that daily Cap treatment would attenuate these disturbances. At 14 weeks of age, the absolute weights of gastrocnemius (p<0.0001), tibialis anterior (p<0.0001), soleus (p=0.002), and extensor digitorum longus (EDL, p<0.0001) muscles were decreased by 23-34% in ZDF compared to lean rats but were not altered by 8 weeks of Cap treatment (0.5g/kg/day). Immunoblotting revealed that in soleus and EDL, inflammatory signaling proteins TLR4, phosphorylated (p)IKK α/β (ser176/180), pNFkB p65 (Ser 536), IkBα, TNFα, and AP1 were similar amongst all groups, whereas MyD88 was elevated in ZDF soleus (p=0.03) but was not corrected by Cap. The autophagy protein, LC3A/B I was increased 32% (p=0.01) in EDL from ZDF rats compared to Con; however, PI3K III, pBeclin1 (ser 93), pULK1 (ser555), LAMP2, LC3A/B II, and the LC3A/B II/I ratio were similar amongst groups in the soleus and EDL and were not altered by Cap. Compared to control, P62, a key autophagy adapter protein, was similar in soleus and decreased 27% in EDL (p<0.01) from ZDF rats and was not altered by Cap. Counter to our expectations, although muscle mass was lower in ZDF groups, obesity and insulin resistance in young ZDF rats were not suffcient to drive inflammatory signaling or disrupt autophagy in glycolytic or oxidative skeletal muscle, and these processes appeared to be resistant to Cap treatment in ZDF rats. USDA-NIFA awarded to MJR (2021-67017-33937). This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2024 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.