Antioxidants Can Prevent Heart Disease Caused by Alcohol
Antioxidants Can Prevent Heart Disease Caused by Alcohol
An antioxidant may prevent liver damage or liver caused by excessive alcohol consumption, according to research from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
These findings could indicate how treatments to reverse steatosis, or fatty deposits in the liver that can lead to sirkosis and cancer. The research team led by Victor Darley-Usmar, Ph.D., professor of pathology at UAB, introduced an antioxidant called mitochondria-targeted ubiquinone, or MitoQ, to the mitochondria rats given alcohol every day for five to six weeks in an amount sufficient to Excessive alcohol consumption is equal to humans.
Chronic alcoholics, those who drink excessively every day, experiencing accumulation of fat in liver cells. When alcohol is metabolized in the liver, he creates free radicals that damage mitochondria in liver cells and prevent them to use a sufficient amount of oxygen to produce energy. Moreover, the low oxygen condition called hypoxia worsens mitochondrial damage and support the formation of fatty deposits that can lead to sirkosis.
Darley-Usmar and his colleagues say that the antioxidant MitoQ was able to prevent and neutralize free radicals before they damage the mitochondria, preventing a series of effects that ultimately leads to steatosis.
"There is not a promising pharmaceutical approaches to the prevention and reversal of long-term damage associated with the deposition of fat in the liver resulting from excessive alcohol consumption," said Darley-Usmar. "Our findings tell that MitoQ could be a useful tool for the treatment of liver damage by alcohol use that old habits."
"Previous studies have shown that MitoQ can be safely administered to humans for a long time," said Balu Chacko, Ph.D., co-researcher and initiator of the study. "Antioxidants could have the potential to improve the early stages of fatty liver disease in patients with alcoholic liver disease and non-alcoholics."
Annual records of Hepatology estimates that alcohol abuse cost $ 185 billion each year in the United States, and that 2 million people suffer from some form of alcoholic liver disease. As many as 90 percent of heart sirkosis connected with alcohol abuse and 30 percent of liver cancer.
Darley-Usmar, who is also a director of the Center for Free Radical Biology at UAB, said the team discussed with the National Institutes of Health to develop a whole family of drugs based on interaction with mitochondria. He said that such drugs may be effective in the treatment of cardiovascular disease, kidney disease and neurodegenerative disorders.
"We know that free radicals play a role in human disease, and we have developed antioxidants that can eliminate free radicals in the laboratory," he said. "Unfortunately, previous trials using antioxidants in humans have not been satisfactory. Difference with our findings is that we are targeting specific parts of the cell mitochondria. This is a unique approach, and this is one of the few pre-clinical trials that demonstrate effectiveness."
Darley-Usmar said the findings could also have a significant impact on the treatment of metabolic syndrome, a condition which grew so fast that affects approximately 50 million Americans, according to the American Heart Association.
"Metabolic syndrome is described as a complex interaction of factors that include obesity is caused by damage to the liver due to an increase in free radicals, hypoxia and deposition of fat," said Darley-Usmar. "It is quite similar to alcohol dependence hepatotoksisiti. Would be nice to see if an antioxidant such as MitoQ has therapeutic effect in preventing liver damage in those with metabolic syndrome."
The findings were published on April 21, 2011 in the journal Hepatology.
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