Healthy fat in olive oil may repair
failing hearts
New York: 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.
Source: www.zeenews.india.com
01.10.2014
3-year-old organ donor saves 5 lives
in China
Beijing: A three-year-old Chinese girl from
died of a brain tumour but
helped save the lives of five other persons when her heart, liver, kidneys and
corneas were donated.
The donor, Liu Jingyao, was diagnosed
with a malignant brain tumour earlier this year after she was observed walking
unsteadily.
Her parents visited multiple hospitals
in several cities, but each doctor said the condition was terminal, state-run
Xinhua news agency reported.
The girl's head swelled and she began
to have trouble speaking, eventually becoming confined to bed.
Her father, Liu Xiaobao, discussed the possibility of
donating her organs.
"The word
'donation' was difficult for her to understand, so I tried to explain that if
we would give something from her body, she could save the lives of others. She
agreed to this," said Xiaobao. The girl's physical condition deteriorated
earlier last week and she died on September 23 in the People's Hospital of
Jiangxi Province in east China.
Her organs were soon
removed for transplantation.
"She was too young and some of the organs were very
small. But we were able to transplant her kidneys into one patient. Her heart,
liver and corneas were given to four other patients, respectively,"said
doctor Zhang Ming.
Doctors said the five recipients were in stable condition,
indicating that the transplants were successful.
"You lit up five people's lives. You are the most
beautiful princess in the world," Xiaobao said to his deceased
daughter.
Source: www.zeenews.india.com
01.10.2014
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