In C57Bl6 Mice, Obesity and Subsequent Weight Loss Negatively Affected the Skeleton and Shifted the Cortical Bone Metabolome

Obesity and calorie restriction each negatively affect skeletal health. Despite the negative effects of weight loss on the skeleton, obese patients are advised to lose weight via calorie restriction. Additionally, obesity and weight loss individually alter both whole-body and local metabolism. Little is known about bone quality and changes to the cortical metabolome following calorie restriction in obese preclinical models. We hypothesized that caloric restriction would worsen bone quality in obese mice by shifting the cortical bone metabolome. To induce obesity, 8-week-old male and female C57BL6/J mice received 60% high-fat diet for 12 weeks. From 20 to 30 weeks of age, mice either remained obese or lost weight through 30% caloric restriction. Control animals received a 10% low-fat diet. Bodyweight and fat mass were increased by obesity and decreased with calorie restriction. Similarly, glucose and insulin tolerance were worsened with obesity but improved by weight loss. Compared to obesity, calorie restriction elicited more bone loss in both cortical and trabecular compartments. Weight loss also reduced bone formation. Both obesity and subsequent calorie restriction altered the cortical bone metabolome in a sex-dependent manner. Metabolic pathways altered with diet generally mapped to amino acid or fatty acid metabolism. In males, weight loss was associated with a downregulation of pathways related to tryptophan, tyrosine, ubiquinone, and fatty acids. In females, calorie restriction downregulated taurine and hypotaurine metabolism but upregulated pyrimidine metabolism, nicotinate and nicotinamide metabolism, and pantothenate and CoA biosynthesis. Our findings highlight the negative effects of obesity and subsequent caloric restriction on the skeleton. Despite improvements in components of systemic metabolism, caloric restriction in obese preclinical models did not restore bone morphology or the cortical metabolome to control conditions.