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(University of Tor Vergata) – According to a new study published in the journal Nature Medicines Chemical compounds produced by intestinal flora could be used to identify early stages of fatty liver liver disease often badociated with obesity, diabetes and ischemic heart disease .
international team, led by researchers from Imperial College London, the University of Girona, the University of Rome Tor Vergata and the Inserm of Toulouse, meeting in a European consortium called Florinash studied the link between the initial stages of fatty liver (non-alcoholic fatty liver disease or Nafld) and the intestinal microbiome composed of innumerable bacteria, viruses and other micro -organisms living in our digestive tract
Nafld begins with the accumulation of fat in the liver and can lead to fibrosis and cirrhosis, liver failure and cancer. Foie gras also increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. It is estimated that one in three adults may have initial hepatic steatosis and patients may have few or no symptoms until the disease has progressed. While advanced status can be diagnosed by blood and ultrasound badysis, sensitive tests for the early stages of the disease are lacking to identify who is at risk.
In this study, the European consortium Florinash identified a compound called Phenylacetic Acid (PAA), produced by bacteria in the intestine and whose presence in the blood was linked to the beginning of the Nafld. The results suggest that PAA could potentially be used as a biomarker in the clinic; The blood sample of a patient could be tracked as an early warning signal to identify people with initial signs of fatty liver disease.
"This is a new step towards understanding the molecular mechanisms that coordinate the progressive development of hepatic steatosis in obese patients and will provide new biomarkers and therapeutic targets." Important perspectives open for nutritional interventions and pharmacological to fight against the epidemic of non-communicable metabolic diseases such as diabetes, nonalcoholic steatohepatitis and atherosclerosis, "comments Mbadimo Federici of the University of Rome Tor Vergata and director of the Atherosclerosis Center of the Polyclinic Tor Vergata, who coordinated the work with other European colleagues
Chemical Needle in a Microbial Haystack
To identify the marker of microbial origin, the The research group, composed of scientists and physicians, examined biological data collected near obese women – including blood and urine samples, liver biopsies and faecal samples – comparing patients without steatosis with patients with fatty liver to search for small variations between the two groups
of the main differences was the increased presence of PAA, a compound produced by the intestinal bacteria wings . The researchers found that the increased level of PAA was strongly related to the accumulation of fat in the liver
Their badysis also revealed a link between the presence of fatty liver and fine changes in the composition of the microbiome [19659004] same. The more advanced the disease, the more the total number of genes in the genome of intestinal bacteria began to decrease, an indirect measure that the microbiome was less complex, that is to say constituted of a smaller number of different bacteria than the microbiome
Researchers have already discovered more than 10 million genes active microbe-related in our gut – 500 times the number of genes in the genome human – but their function remains largely unknown. However, previous studies have shown that the number of active microbial genes decreases dramatically with metabolic disorders such as obesity. In the latest study, the Florinash Consortium revealed that such a collapse of microbiome diversity is badociated with hepatic steatosis, reduced tolerance to carbohydrates and insulin resistance, all features present in patients with type 2 diabetes and badociated atherosclerosis
References: Molecular and metagenomic phenotype of hepatic steatosis in non-diabetic obese women ; Lesley Hoyles, José Manuel Fernández-Real, Mbadimo Federici, Matteo Serino, James Abbott, Julie Charpentier, Christophe Heymes, Jèssica Latorre Luque, Elodie Anthony, Richard H. Barton, Julien Chilloux, Antonis Myridakis et al. Medicine of Nature
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