FAT IN OLIVE OIL MAY HELP FIX HEART FAILURE
Oleate, a common
dietary fat found in olive oil, may help restore proper metabolism of fuel that
gets disturbed in case of heart failure, a study suggests.
“This gives more proof
to the idea that consuming healthy fats like oleate can have a significantly
positive effect on cardiac health even after the disease has begun,” said
senior study author E. Douglas Lewandowski from the University of Illinois –
Chicago, US.
Failing hearts are
unable to properly process or store the fats they use for fuel, which are
contained within tiny droplets called lipid bodies in heart muscle cells.
The inability to use
fats, the heart’s primary fuel source, causes the muscle to become starved of
energy.
Fats, not metabolised
by the heart, break down into toxic intermediary by-products that further
contribute to heart disease.
In addition to
balancing fat metabolism and reducing toxic by-products in hyper-trophic
hearts, oleate also restored the activation of several genes for enzymes that
metabolise fat, the findings of the study showed.
“These genes are often
suppressed in hyper-trophic hearts,” Lewandowski added.
“The fact that we can
restore beneficial gene expression, as well as more balanced fat metabolism,
plus reduce toxic fat metabolites, just by supplying hearts with oleate – a
common dietary fat – is a very exciting finding,” Lewandowski pointed out.
For the study, the
researchers looked at how healthy and failing rat hearts reacted to being
supplied with either oleate or palmitate, a fat associated with the Western
diet and found in dairy products, animal fats and palm oil.
When the researchers
perfused failing rat hearts with oleate they saw an immediate improvement in how
the hearts contracted and pumped blood.
The findings were
reported in the journal Circulation.
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