Antioxidants Can Prevent Liver Diseases Caused Alcohol
An antioxidant may prevent liver damage or liver caused by excessive alcohol consumption, according to research from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
This discovery could point the way treatments to reverse steatosis, or hoard fat 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 of rats given alcohol every day for five to six weeks in an amount sufficient to equaling excessive alcohol consumption in humans.
Chronic alcoholics, those who drink excessively on a daily basis, experiencing the accumulation of fat in liver cells. When alcohol is metabolized in the liver, she creates free radicals that damage mitochondria in the liver cells and prevents them from using 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 along with his collaborators say that the antioxidant MitoQ is able to prevent and neutralize free radicals before they can damage the mitochondria, preventing the series of effects that ultimately leads to steatosis.
"There are no promising pharmaceutical approach to the prevention and reversal of long-term damage associated with fatty deposits in the liver resulting from excessive alcohol consumption," said Darley-Usmar. "Our findings tell that MitoQ might be a useful tool for the treatment of liver damage by alcohol use old habits."
"Previous studies have shown that MitoQ can be safely administered to humans in the long term," said Balu Chacko, Ph.D., co-investigator and initiator of the study. "Antioxidants may have the potential to improve the early stages of fatty liver disease in patients with alcoholic liver disease and non-alcoholics."
Note Annual Hepatology estimate that alcohol abuse costs $ 185 billion annually in the United States, and that 2 million people suffer from some form of alcoholic liver disease. As many as 90 percent of the liver sirkosis linked to alcohol abuse and up to 30 percent of liver cancer.
Darley-Usmar, who is also the director of the Centre Free Radical Biology at UAB, said that his discussions with the National Institutes of Health to develop a whole family of drugs based on interaction with mitochondria. He said drugs like it 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. The difference with our invention is that we target specific section that cell mitochondria. This is a unique approach, and this is one of the few pre-clinical trials that demonstrate the effectiveness."
Darley-Usmar said the findings could also have a significant impact on the treatment of metabolic syndrome, a condition that is growing very quickly that affects approximately 50 million Americans, according to the American Heart Association.
"Metabolic syndrome is described as a complex interaction of factors caused by obesity which includes damage to the liver due to an increase in free radicals, hypoxia and deposition of fat," said Darley-Usmar. "It is quite similar to hepatotoksisiti alcohol dependence. It 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.
