Areca catechu-(Betel-nut)-induced whole transcriptome changes associated with diabetes, obesity and metabolic syndrome in a human monocyte cell line

Abstract

Betel-nut consumption is the fourth most common addictive habit globally and there is good evidence to link it with obesity, type 2 diabetes and the metabolic syndrome. We adopted a genome-wide transcriptomic approach in a human monocyte cell line incubated with arecoline and its nitrosated products to identify gene expression changes relevant to obesity, type 2 diabetes and the metabolic syndrome. The THP1 monocyte cell line was incubated separately with arecoline and 3-methylnitrosaminopropionaldehyde (MNPA) in triplicate for 24 hours and pooled cDNA indexed paired-end libraries were sequenced (Illumina NextSeq 500). After incubation with arecoline and MNPA, 15 and 39 genes respectively had significant changes in their expression (q<0.05, log fold change 1.5). Eighteen of those genes have reported associations with type 2 diabetes and obesity in humans; of these genes there was strong evidence to implicate CLEC10A, MAPK8IP1, NEGR1, NQ01 and INHBE. In summary, these pilot studies have identified a large number of genes whose expression was changed significantly in human TPH1 cells following incubation with arecoline or with 3-methylnitrosaminopropionaldehyde. These findings suggest that further investigation of these genes in betel-quid chewers with obesity and/or type 2 diabetes is warranted.