Being Fat can Harm Your Liver: Study
Obesity speeds up aging of liver, warns a study.
Obesity is a leading cause of death and hospitalization in the U.S. for diseases like hypertension, diabetes, cancer and stroke. A new research also found another reason why people must slim down and maintain a normal body weight. The study, led by experts from the University of California Los Angles (UCLA), discovered certain biomarkers of aging also called as the epigenetic clock in tissues of people with excessive body weight, reports the Business Standard.
The team investigated the effects of body weight on different tissue samples. It was observed that the epigenetic clock in tissues uses a separate time-keeping mechanism that helps assess the real age of organs, tissues and cells in humans. The tissue samples of obese people showed higher levels of methylation or aging process categorized by chemical alteration of the DNA. In tissues of subjects who were lean and had healthy body weight, both biological and chronological age was almost equal, while samples of obese subjects showed a great disparity between the two.
The biological age of liver tissues had higher biological age in those with too much body flab.
"This is the first study that evaluated the effect of body weight on the biological ages of a variety of human tissues. Given the obesity epidemic in the Western world, the results of this study are highly relevant for public health," said Steve Horvath, study author and professor of human genetics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA in a news release.
"The increased epigenetic age of liver tissue in obese individuals should provide insights into common liver-related comorbidities of obesity, such as insulin resistance and liver cancer. These findings support the hypothesis that obesity is associated with accelerated aging effects and stresses once more the importance of maintaining a healthy weight," write the authors in the study.
More information is available online in the journal Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences.
