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Antioxidants in Soil, Human Breast Milk Can Reduce Fatty Liver

Antioxidants in Soil, Human Breast Milk Can Reduce Fatty Liver

by Julia Samuel on Jan 9 2017 1:31 PM
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Highlights

  • Pyrroloquinoline quinone (PQQ) is a natural antioxidant found in soil, enriched in human breast milk, and essential for development in mammals.
  • Supplemental dose of PQQ in a mouse model of diet-induced obesity during pregnancy, could protect obese offspring from progression of NAFLD.
  • PQQ treatment reduced both liver and body fat in obese offspring.
A certain antioxidant, Pyrroloquinoline quinone (PQQ) naturally found in human breast milk, kiwi fruit, celery and soy can be a cure for NAFLD or non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.
The study from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus points out that these substances provide the reduction of fat in the liver and decrease the inflammation in the liver as caused by the liver disease.

Karen Jonscher, Ph.D., an associate professor of anesthesiology and a physicist at CU Anschutz explains how 20 to 30 percent of adults in the US have liver diseases, making it one of the most common diseases in the world.

Early exposure to maternal obesity or Western-style diet (WD) increases steatosis and oxidative stress in fetal liver and is associated with lifetime disease risk in the offspring.

A supplemental dose of PQQ, provided prenatally in a mouse model of diet-induced obesity during pregnancy, could protect obese offspring from progression of NAFLD.

PQQ treatment given pre- and postnatally in WD-fed offspring had no effect on weight gain but increased metabolic flexibility while reducing body fat and liver lipids compared with untreated obese offspring.

"When given to obese mouse mothers during pregnancy and lactation, we found it protected their offspring from developing symptoms of liver fat and damage that leads to NAFLD in early adulthood," says Karen Jonscher.

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Indices of NAFLD including hepatic ceramide levels, oxidative stress and expression of proinflammatory genes (Nos2, Nlrp3, Il6, and Ptgs2) were decreased in WD PQQ-fed mice, concomitant with increased expression of fatty acid oxidation genes and decreased Pparg expression.

Notably, these changes persisted even after PQQ withdrawal at weaning. Our results suggest that supplementation with PQQ, particularly during pregnancy and lactation, protects offspring from WD-induced developmental programming of hepatic lipotoxicity and may help slow the advancing epidemic of NAFLD in the next generation.

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Karen Jonscher, said, "Perhaps supplementing the diet of obese pregnant mothers with PQQ, which has proven safe in several human studies, will be a therapeutic target worthy of more study in the battle to reduce the risk of NAFLD in babies." The author; however, cautioned that pregnant women should always check with their physician before taking any supplements.

Reference
  1. Karen R. Jonscher et al., Early PQQ supplementation has persistent long-term protective effects on developmental programming of hepatic lipotoxicity and inflammation in obese mice, The Official Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (2016) 10.1096/fj.201600906R fj.201600906R.


Source-Medindia


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