Heena Sharma Blog

Turns out, a high cholesterol diet can trigger changes in the immune system that can lead to a serious form of fatty liver disease . Known as non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), it eventually progresses to cirrhosis or liver cancer, especially in those with obesity or Type 2 diabetes . Researchers at Keck School of Medicine found how a toxic combination of dietary fat and cholesterol impacts the behaviour of macrophages, a type of white blood cell, in the liver. The findings of the study are published in the Journal of Hepatology. Using a mouse model, the study detailed the cascade of events in the immune system that eventually leads to the type of liver inflammation and scarring that is commonly seen in patients with NASH. "Despite its increasing prevalence and burden to the health care system, there are currently no food and drug administration-approved therapies for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease," said Hugo Rosen, study's corresponding author...

Cottonseed can drastically improve cholesterol profiles in young adult men, a recent study suggests. The researchers conducted a five-day outpatient feeding trial of 15 healthy, normal weight men to test the effects of diets enriched with cottonseed oil and olive oil on lipid profiles. The researchers found that a high-fat diet enriched with cottonseed oil drastically improved cholesterol profiles in young adult men. Participants showed significant reductions in cholesterol and triglycerides in the cottonseed oil trial compared to minimal changes on the olive oil-enriched diet . The results appear in the journal Nutrition Research. Jamie Cooper, the corresponding author of the study said, "One of the reasons these results were so surprising is because of the magnitude of change observed with the cottonseed oil diet. To see this amount of change in such a short period of time is exciting." The subjects, all healthy men between the ages of 18 and 45, were pr...