In a new study, researchers found that people eating foods with saturated fats may have fewer symptoms if they develop pancreatitis.
Pancreatitis is inflammation of the pancreas.
The research was conducted by a team from the Mayo Clinic and elsewhere.
For many years, medical scientists have been grappling with the obesity paradox in which some obese patients appear to fare better when being treated for certain conditions than non-obese patients.
In this study, the researchers aimed to find out why this may happen at times by focusing on pancreatitis.
They examined the link between pancreatitis and consumption of fat—either saturated or unsaturated.
Saturated fats are the kind of fats found in meat, butter, cheese, and other foods. Unsaturated fats are found in plants and fish.
Previous research has found people would be healthier if they reduced saturated fat consumption and ate more unsaturated fats. Saturated fat has been linked to heart disease and obesity.
The team analyzed data from 20 clinical reports across 11 countries.
They found that patients who ate diets heavy in saturated fats who also developed pancreatitis experienced less severe symptoms than patients who ate a diet with more unsaturated fats.
The researchers then ran experiments with test mice—they fed some of them a diet heavy in saturated fats and others unsaturated fats—they then induced pancreatitis in all of them.
They found that the mice fed the saturated fats developed less severe symptoms.
Taking a closer look, the researchers found that saturated fats did not interact very well with pancreatic triglyceride lipase, which helped reduce symptoms of pancreatitis.
One author of the study is Biswajit Khatua.
The study is published in the journal Science Advances.
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