Diet-Coffee and Tea May Contribute to a Healthy Liver
Coffee and Tea May Contribute to a Healthy Liver
Aug. 16, 2013 — Surprise! Your
morning cup of tea or coffee may be doing more than just perking you up before
work.
An international team of researchers
led by Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School (Duke-NUS) and the Duke University
School of Medicine suggest that increased caffeine intake may reduce fatty liver in people with
non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).
Worldwide, 70 percent of people
diagnosed with diabetes and obesity have NAFLD, the major cause of fatty liver not due to excessive alcohol
consumption. It is estimated that 30 percent of adults in the United
States have this condition, and its prevalence is rising in Singapore. There are no effective treatments for
NAFLD except diet and exercise.
Using cell culture and mouse models,
the study authors -- led by Paul Yen, M.D., associate professor and research
fellow, and Rohit Sinha, Ph.D of the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School's
Cardiovascular and Metabolic Disorders Program in Singapore -- observed that caffeine stimulates the
metabolization of lipids stored in liver cells and decreased the fatty liver of
mice that were fed a high-fat diet. These findings suggest that
consuming the equivalent caffeine intake of four cups of coffee or tea a day may be beneficial in
preventing and protecting against the progression of NAFLD in humans.
The findings will be published in
the September issue of the journal Hepatology.
"This is the first detailed
study of the mechanism for caffeine action on lipids in liver and the results
are very interesting," Yen said. "Coffee and tea are so commonly
consumed and the notion that they may be therapeutic, especially since they
have a reputation for being "bad" for health, is especially
enlightening."
The team said this research could
lead to the development of caffeine-like drugs that do not have the usual side
effects related to caffeine, but retain its therapeutic effects on the liver.
It could serve as a starting point for studies on the full benefits of caffeine
and related therapeutics in humans.
In addition to Yen and Sinha,
collaborators included Christopher Newgard, PhD, director of the Sarah W.
Stedman Nutrition and Metabolism Center at Duke University School of Medicine,
where the metabolomics analysis of the data was conducted.
The study was supported by funding
from Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology, and Research; the Ministry of
Health; and the Ministry of Education.
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