| Research Links High Fat Intake to Liver Disease
May 06, 2005
A recent study has found that extra fat could end up in the liver.
The research is the first to link dietary fat to a condition called
nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, or NALFD. The condition is one
of several included in the metabolic syndrome -- a collection of
conditions that put people at higher risk for heart disease and
strokes. Although scientists knew that people with NALFD are not
able to clear fat from their livers, as is normally the case, but
they haven’t been sure whether the fat comes from eating fatty
foods or is simply produced by the body.
The researchers tagged the food containing fat with deuterium --
a form of hydrogen which they used to identify where the fat ended
up in the body. Obese people with NALFD who were already scheduled
to undergo liver biopsies ate the food, then the researchers examined
the biopsies for evidence of the deuterium to determine if the dietary
fat had, indeed, traveled to the liver and gotten stuck there.
Results showed it did. About 20 percent of the fat found in the
livers of these patients came from dietary fat.
The study made a clear implication that a higher fat intake results
in the deposition of fat in the liver that consequently leads to a
kind of liver toxicity. Source: http://www.ivanhoe.com/channels/p_channelstory.cfm?storyid=11198
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