INFLAMING DANGERS OF A FAT-LADEN MEAL

Newly discovered scientific information could help break the enduring links between obesity and heart disease or diabetes. A report in the February 24th edition of Science Translational Medicine has basically stated that a high-fat diet can cause macrophages in an obese person’s adipose tissue to produce proteins that help induce heart disease and possibly type 2 diabetes.
According to Preeti Kishore, an endocrinologist in at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, the levels of “free fatty acids, such as triglycerides, rise after a high-fat meal” and can even stay elevated to many-fold the normal level in an obese person. When the macrophages (part of the immune system) in these people’s adipose tissue detect these high levels of fatty acids, they respond by making proteins called plasminogen activator-inhibitor 1, or PAI-1. This protein is known to prevent blood clots from breaking up, essentially “cancelling out” the necessary amount of anti-coagulant in the blood. These unbroken clots can go on to cause heart attacks or strokes. Another negative effect of these proteins is the release of inflammatory proteins TNF-alpha and IL-6, which are “thought to play a role in type 2 diabetes in obese people” by making them more insensitive to insulin.

It has been known for some time that there are more macrophages in overweight peoples, but it has been a mystery as to what they actually do for quite a while. This study suggests that macrophages act as processors of information between the extracellular and intracellular environments. They monitor the levels of certain substances in the blood, and they in turn “ask” the cell in which they live how to “tell” the immune system to react.

Research done in Kishore’s lab has confirmed that the “disease-linked proteins” are indeed produced in excess and are prompted by fatty acid-rich diet after intravenously feeding a fatty acid solution to a group of people with an average BMI of 28. Biopsies showed that macrophages are definitely the source of the proteins. However, they also require a signal from the fat cells before they can make the protein, which is still a mystery to the researchers.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/56595/title/Inflaming_dangers_of_a_fat-laden_meal

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Trevor Lancon
VTPP 435-502