Amazing Foods That Help Prevent Fatty Liver

Have you been suffering from abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, fatigue and loss of appetite quite often?

Then, you need to watch out, as these could be the symptoms of a fatty liver disease. In case of fatty liver disease, one tends to develop excess fats within the liver.

Liver is one of the most important vital organs of our body. A certain amount of fat in the liver is normal, but when it increases above the normal (above 5 per cent of the organ's weight), then the person could be at the risk of developing fatty liver disease.

Read more: Amazing Foods That Help Prevent Fatty Liver

Source: boldsky

Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease: Scientists Identify Trigger and Treatment

Apart from lifestyle changes and weight loss, there are currently no effective or safe treatments for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Now, for the first time, researchers find that a protein called cdk4 occurs at higher levels in mouse models and human patients with the disease. Also, when they blocked the protein in mice, using drugs, it significantly reduced development of hepatic steatosis - the first stage of the disease.

The study, by Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center in Ohio, is published in the journal Cell Reports.

Senior author Nikolai Timchenko, a professor in the department of surgery at the University of Cincinnati and head of the Liver Tumor Biology Program at Cincinnati Children's, says:

"This is the first study to show that cdk4 triggers development of NAFLD [non-alcoholic fatty liver disease] and that inhibiting this enzyme can both prevent and reverse the first step of the disease."

Read more: Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease: Scientists Identify Trigger and Treatment

The researchers found high levels of a protein called cdk4 in people with fatty livers.

Source: medicalnewstoday

Liver Regeneration — Mechanisms and Models to Clinical Application

Liver regeneration has been studied for many decades and the mechanisms underlying regeneration of the normal liver following resection or moderate damage are well described. A large number of factors extrinsic (such as bile acids and circulating growth factors) and intrinsic to the liver interact to initiate and regulate liver regeneration. Less well understood, and more clinically relevant, are the factors at play when the abnormal liver is required to regenerate. Fatty liver disease, chronic scarring, prior chemotherapy and massive liver injury can all inhibit the normal programme of regeneration and can lead to liver failure. Understanding these mechanisms could enable the rational targeting of specific therapies to either reduce the factors inhibiting regeneration or directly stimulate liver regeneration. Although animal models of liver regeneration have been highly instructive, the clinical relevance of some models could be improved to bridge the gap between our in vivo model systems and the clinical situation. Likewise, modern imaging techniques such as spectroscopy will probably improve our understanding of whole-organ metabolism and how this predicts the liver's regenerative capacity. This Review describes briefly the mechanisms underpinning liver regeneration, the models used to study this process, and discusses areas in which failed or compromised liver regeneration is clinically relevant.

Key points

• Liver regeneration occurs efficiently in the normal liver to restore architecture, size and function; chronic injury severely impairs liver regeneration through excess inflammation, scarring and epithelial abnormalities, and is less well-studied but clinically important
• New experimental models are emerging; zebrafish are an excellent new tool to study liver regeneration and enable large-scale chemical screening assays
• A gap exists between current animal models of liver regeneration and clinically important scenarios of severe liver injury and impaired liver regeneration
• Understanding and promoting regeneration and repair of the failing liver is a key challenge of major clinical importance
• Modern imaging techniques will enable noninvasive real-time assessment of liver structure and function
• Cell therapies that have been successful in animal models are now being trialled in the more challenging clinical arena

Read more: Liver Regeneration — Mechanisms and Models to Clinical Application

Figure 2: Schematic of normal and abnormal liver regeneration.

Source: NatureReviewsGastroenterology&Hepatology

Hepatocellular carcinoma

Liver cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths globally and has an incidence of approximately 850,000 new cases per year. Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) represents approximately 90% of all cases of primary liver cancer. The main risk factors for developing HCC are well known and include hepatitis B and C virus infection, alcohol intake and ingestion of the fungal metabolite aflatoxin B1. 

Additional risk factors such as non-alcoholic steatohepatitis are also emerging. Advances in the understanding of the molecular pathogenesis of HCC have led to identification of critical driver mutations; however, the most prevalent of these are not yet druggable targets. The molecular classification of HCC is not established, and the Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer staging classification is the main clinical algorithm for the stratification of patients according to prognosis and treatment allocation. Surveillance programmes enable the detection of early-stage tumours that are amenable to curative therapies — resection, liver transplantation or local ablation. At more developed stages, only chemoembolization (for intermediate HCC) and sorafenib (for advanced HCC) have shown survival benefits. There are major unmet needs in HCC management that might be addressed through the discovery of new therapies and their combinations for use in the adjuvant setting and for intermediate- and advanced-stage disease. Moreover, biomarkers for therapy stratification, patient-tailored strategies targeting driver mutations and/or activating signalling cascades, and validated measurements of quality of life are needed. Recent failures in the testing of systemic drugs for intermediate and advanced stages have indicated a need to refine trial designs and to define novel approaches.

Read more: Hepatocellular carcinom

Source: NatureReviews