High-Fat Diet Mouse Model for Obesity

Male C57BL/6J wild-type (WT) mice were obtained from The Jackson Laboratory (Bar Harbor, ME). Mice were fed normal chow diet (ND; 12% kcal from fat; Picolab Rodent Diet 5010, Purina Mills) after weaning until 8 weeks old. Starting at 8 weeks of age mice were fed western high-fat diet (HFD) (41% kcal from fat; Dyet 112734, Dyets Inc.) for 2–24 weeks or maintained on ND for the same period. CD11a-deficient (CD11a−/−)^{42 (link)} and C57BL/6NHsd control mice (Harlan Laboratories) were fed ND or HFD for 16 weeks. Animal studies and procedures were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of Baylor College of Medicine. For micro–computed tomography (micro-CT) studies, C57BL/6J mice fed ND or 60%HFD (60% kcal fat; D12492, Research Diets) for 12 weeks were donated by Willa Hsueh (Houston Methodist Research Institute, Houston, TX). No randomization was used to allocate the animals to experimental groups. The investigator was not blinded to the group allocation.