Quercetin Attenuates Metabolic Dysfunction and Reshapes Hypothalamic m6A-Related, Leptin-Insulin, and Melanocortin-Associated Transcription in High-Fat-Diet-Fed Rats

Background/Objectives: High-fat diet (HFD) feeding disrupts systemic metabolism and hypothalamic mechanisms that coordinate energy balance. Whether quercetin modifies coordinated hypothalamic transcription linking m6A-related regulation with leptin-insulin- and melanocortin-associated biology remains unclear. We examined the metabolic and hypothalamic transcriptional response to quercetin during chronic HFD exposure.

Methods

Male Wistar rats were studied for 16 weeks in a 2 × 2 factorial design: Control (n = 8), Control + quercetin (n = 5), HFD (n = 5), and HFD + quercetin (n = 6). Quercetin was administered orally at 100 mg/kg/day. Body weight, fasting glucose, food/fluid intake, calculated energy intake, oral glucose tolerance, terminal adiposity, lipids, and a 21-transcript hypothalamic RT-qPCR panel were evaluated. Analyses included factorial models with HC3 inference and FDR control, PCA/PERMANOVA, predefined transcriptional modules, bootstrap and leave-one-sample-out sensitivity analyses, treatment-adjusted covariance, and shrinkage regularization.