obesity tagged posts

Intrahepatic IFN-I signaling and responsive CD8+ T cells promote metabolic disease in mice and correlate to worsened NAFLD in humans.

A high-fat diet and obesity turn “hero” virus-fighting liver immune cells “rogue”, leading to insulin resistance, a condition that often results in type 2 diabetes, according to research published today in Science Immunology. Using cells from mice and human livers, Toronto General Hospital Research Institute researchers demonstrated for the first time how under specific conditions, such as obesity, liver CD8+ T cells, white blood cells in the control of viral infections, become highly activated and inflammatory, reprogramming themselves into disease-driving cells.

Scientists have been trying for many years to discover why the liver continues to pump out too ...

This image shows the impact of saturated fatty acids on the liver, muscles and fatty tissue. Credit: © DDZ

The global proliferation of overweight and obese people and people with type 2 diabetes is often associated with the consumption of saturated fats. Scientists at the German Diabetes Center and the Helmholtz Center in Munich (HMGU) have found that even the one-off consumption of a greater amount of palm oil reduces the body’s sensitivity to insulin and causes increased fat deposits as well as changes in the energy metabolism of the liver. The results of the study provide information on the earliest changes in the metabolism of the liver that in the long term lead to fatty liver disease in overweight persons as well as in those with type 2 diabetes.

DZD researchers working at the Germa...

Multiple sensors and multiple downstream effectors of gut sensory systems, using the L cell as an example

A team of scientists from King’s College London and Imperial College London tested a high-fat diet, containing a fermentable carbohydrate, and a control diet on mice and looked at the effect on food intake of those with and without the FFAR2 receptor.

The results showed that mice fed the diet containing fermentable carbohydrate were protected against obesity. This protection was lost however, when the FFAR2 receptor was not present. Indeed, those with the receptor showed an increase of 130% in the satiety inducing gut hormone peptide YY, as well as an increased density of cells containing PYY, leading to an increased feeling of fullness.

Lead author of the study, Gavin Bewick from King...

DNA methylations occur when methyl groups bind to the DNA. These can either activate or inactivate genes. Epigenetic factors modify histone tails by e.g. transferring methyl or acetyl groups on lysine side chains. This can complicate or facilitate the activation of a gene. The direct methylation of the DNA changes the gene expression permanently if it takes place in the control regions of genes (so-called CpG islands), that have been made accessible by the modification of the histones. Credit: Copyright: DIfE

Scientists have shown in a mouse model that the epigenetic* modification of the Igfbp2** gene observed in the young animal precedes a fatty liver in the adult animal later in life...