In a new study, researchers found that eating a high-fat diet may activate a response in the heart that is causing destructive growth and lead to a greater risk of heart attacks.
The research was conducted by a team from the University of Reading.
In the study, the team looked at the effect of a high-fat diet on oxidative stress levels on heart cells.
They focused on a key protein Nox2 which believed to be linked to increased oxidative stress in the heart.
The researchers found that the heart cells had twice the amount of oxidative stress, and led to heart cells being up to 1.8 times bigger due to cardiac hypertrophy which is linked to heart disease.
The finding shows one way in which a high-fat diet can cause damage to the muscle cells that make up the heart.
It appears that a switch happens at a cellular level when the mice were fed on a high-fat regimen which causes a normally harmless protein, Nox2, to become overactive.
The team says the precise nature of how the Nox2 protein goes onto cause oxidative damage and set off destructive hypertrophy is still being researched.
But the current study clearly demonstrates that high-fat diets have the potential to cause significant damage to the heart.
The study is published in Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications. One author of the study is Dr. Sunbal Naureen Bhatti.
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