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Texas A&M University College of Medicine and Central Texas Veterans Health Care System researchers have discovered a potential new lead for treating chronic liver diseases. The research focuses on melatonin, a hormone associated with maintaining circadian rhythms. Receptors for this hormone can be found in the liver and other parts of the body, previous experiments using mice have shown that melatonin reduces the processes that cause liver fibrosis.
Researchers bred mice that were incapable of expressing different kinds of melatonin receptors, the mice showed different rates of liver fibrosis. Fibrosis was significantly decreased in mice incapable of expressing one receptor in particular, known as MT1. This shows that drugs designed to block MT1 activity could potentially slow liver disease progression.
Steatohepatitis is a type of fatty liver disease that can lead to cirrhosis and liver cancer, it can occur in people who drink little or no alcohol, it is very common and may leads to liver cancer in people with alcoholism. A new study by researchers at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center reveals how the expression of certain proteins in the liver differs between patients with non-alcoholic steatohepatitis and alcoholic steatohepatitis.
The researchers investigated 10 proteins that are known to play a role in cancer development. Both patient groups showed increased levels of most of the proteins compared to healthy people, but the protein levels were much higher in those with alcoholic steatohepatitis, which helps explain why these patients face such a high risk of liver cancer.
Excess intake of acetaminophen can cause serious liver damage and even death. In a new study, researchers at the Central Texas Veterans Health Care System and Texas A&M University Health Science Center identify a way to interfere with the process by which acetaminophen damages liver cells. The research focuses on the role a protein, transforming growth factor beta 1 (TGFβ1), plays in the cascade of events that leads to cell death.
They discovered that the damage caused by acetaminophen was reversed in mice bred without the ability to produce TGFβ1 and in genetically normal mice that were treated with a TGFβ1-disabling agent. The results suggest that interrupting TGFβ1’s activity could prevent or treat acetaminophen-related liver injury. A tiny segment of RNA known as microRNA-21 has been found to play a role in cancer and heart disease.
New research from the University of Connecticut suggests the molecule also influences the processes involved in alcoholic liver disease, a leading cause of cirrhosis. While microRNA-21 does not itself code for cellular functions the way DNA does, it can interfere with how other genes are expressed. In the study, mice fed a diet spiked with alcohol produced significantly higher amounts of microRNA-21 in the liver compared to mice on a normal diet.
Tissue samples from human volunteers also found microRNA-21 levels were markedly increased in people with alcohol-related cirrhosis compared to healthy individuals. The researchers gained additional insights about the ways microRNA-21 affects liver health by breeding mice that were incapable of producing microRNA-21 in their livers.
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