Liver Injury Can Be Caused By High Fat Diet

Mayo · Silver Member Joined: 03 Mar 2006 Posts: 325

New study found that a high fat diet can kill T cells in liver and allow simple fatty liver called steatosis to grow into steatohepatitis which represents fatty inflamed liver.

A disease called NAFLD (Non – alcoholic fatty liver disease) is related to obesity and it could be represented in the wide range form simple hepatic steatosis to non – alcoholic steatohepatitis and even to cirrhosis that can lead to death. Scientists haven’t yet found out how is the progression of this disease happening.

However, scientists suspect that the first step of developing this disease is nutrition. First cause is related to fat accumulation in the liver. Second cause involves oxidative stress or inflammatory cytokine production that involves T cells called Tregs and they suspect that regulation by Tregs is decreased in fatty liver and that makes inflammation process to start and then the liver is exposed to secondary injury.

Researchers conducted a study on mice and found that the level of
hepatic Tregs decreased during the high fat diet and at the end of the research after 8 weeks the level of Tregs were half of the level in mice who ate normal diet. Mice who were on high fat diet suffered from greater liver injury than the one who ate normally.

One more thing that’s very important is fact that the level of Tregs were reversed when mice switched form high fat to low fat diet.

Conclusion of the study is that Tregs play critical role in controlling hepatic inflammation and the results suggest that Tregs should be more examined to improve the prognosis of non – alcoholic fatty liver disease.

Liver Injury Can Be Caused By High Fat Diet

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