Zinc restriction promotes β-cell hyper-hormonemia and endocrine pancreas degeneration in mice

Zinc is a key component of proteins, including interaction with varying pancreatic hormones, including insulin and amylin. Zinc is key in insulin crystallinity in ZnT8 knock-out mice models, although the dietary role of zinc restriction over both energetic metabolism and {beta}-pancreatic hormonemia and morphology remained unexplored. We aimed to test whether dietary zinc restriction on swiss male mice would impact over endocrine pancreas and metabolic phenotype. We evaluated the role of dietary zinc restriction on {beta}-pancreatic hormonemia on non-transgenic Swiss male mice weaned onto a control or low-zinc diet for 4 weeks. Growth, glycemia, insulinemia, amylinemia and pancreatic islet were smaller in intervention group despite insulin crystallinity in secretory granules. We have found overlabelling for insulin, amylin and toxic oligomers in apoptotic pancreatic islet. High production of {beta}-pancreatic hormones in zinc-restricted animals counteract the decreasing islet size due to their apoptotic cells. We conclude that zinc deficiency is sufficient to promote islet {beta}-cell hormonal disruption and degeneration.