Fig. 1

Effect of FIR on hepatic lipid deposition in MAFLD mouse model. Liver tissues and serum were harvested from mice fed with NC (normal chow) or MCD diet and subsequently treated with FIR1 (39 °C) or FIR2 (41 °C), for 1 h every alternate day. (a) Weekly body weight; (b,c) final body weight, liver weight; (d) liver weight to body weight ratio; (e) gross livers, H&E staining and oil red O staining of liver sections; (f,g) hepatic levels of TG, TC; (h–k) serum levels of TG, TC, HDL-C and LDL-C; (l–p) mRNA expression of 5 genes normalized against Hprt; (q) protein levels of 6 proteins with β-tubulin as internal reference; (r,s) normalized ratio of phosphorylated to total protein fluorescence intensity in three independent experiments. Asterisks indicate statistical significance (*p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001, and ****p < 0.0001) compared to the MCD diet group.