In a recent study published in Hepatology, researchers found a new way to treat fatty liver disease.
The study is from the University of Southern California and was conducted by Sanda Win, et al.
About 80 million Americans have fatty liver disease unrelated to alcohol abuse.
Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease is associated with obesity and diabetes and can lead to more severe liver damage such as nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), cirrhosis and liver cancer.
Heart disease, colorectal cancer and breast cancer actually are the major causes of death in patients with fatty liver disease.
Several drugs in advanced stages of development have failed because of the complexity of the disease, low efficacy, or the toxicity of drugs.
Although several clinical trials were conducted in past decades, currently there is no FDA-approved pharmaceutical therapy for NASH.
In the study, the team explored the molecular mechanism in experimental NAFL/NASH. The project led to the discovery of a plausible therapeutic target gene, SH3BP5, also known as SAB.
The level of SAB determines the severity of liver damage. SAB leads to impaired mitochondrial function and an increase in toxic reactive oxygen species.
Interestingly, SAB gene activation and protein levels increase in a diet-induced fatty liver and correlate with the progression of the disease in experimental models and human fatty liver disease.
The team says they could prevent that whole progression by knocking out the SAB gene in the liver early on they were then fed a high-fat diet.
The long-term feeding of a high-fat, high-sugar diet causes obesity, diabetes and fatty liver diseases.
The researchers show just how much damage to the liver—from dietary choices—could be avoided through modest changes in behavior. They suggest that this is a strong potential therapeutic target.
If you care about fatty liver disease, please read studies that many adults have this dangerous liver disease but they don’t know it, and what you eat plays a big role in chronic liver disease, liver cancer.
For more information about liver health, please see recent studies about which drug are most toxic to the liver, and results showing that common diabetes drug may reverse liver inflammation.
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