A multidisciplinary team of scientists from the University of Granada, La Paz University Hospital (Madrid), and the University of Texas (USA) takes an important step forward in the fight against non-alcoholic liver steatosis, an illness closely linked with obesity and diabetes
A study in rats–published in the prestigious Journal of Pineal Research–confirms that melatonin administration combats obesity and diabetes
Scientists from the University of Granada, the La Paz University Hospital (Madrid), and the University of Texas (USA) has taken an important step forward in the fight against non-alcoholic liver steatosis, an illness closely linked with obesity and diabetes.
In a study using Zucker rats–published recently in the prestigious Journal of Pineal Research–the researchers have shown that administering melatonin (a natural hormone segregated by the human body but also synthesized artificially) for six weeks helps reduce the accumulation of fat in the non-alcoholic liver. Following this successful study in rats, the next step will be to conduct clinical trials in order to prove its effectiveness in humans.
The scientists have proved that the administration of melatonin (10 mg/Kg/day) reduces the accumulation of fat (steatosis) in the liver of obese rats. Liver steatosis constitutes the first stage of non-alcoholic fatty liver illness, in which mitochondrial dysfunction (the cellular oven) plays a critical role in the development and pathogenesis of steatosis, closely linked with obesity and diabetes. Given that the prevalence of these two pathologies continues to increase, non-alcoholic fatty liver has become a health problem affecting millions of people around the world.
This new finding is also associated with an improvement in hepatic inflammation that appears because of a reduction of the transaminase in serum (ALT) and improvement in the histopathology of the liver and mitochondrial function in obese rats treated with melatonin. These results are in line with those previously obtained by the same researchers over the last four years, showing that administration of melatonin combats obesity and diabetes in Zucker rats.
The study was conducted by a multidisciplinary team of researchers, led by the Department of Pharmacology and the Institute for Neuroscience of the University of Granada, and directed by Profesor Ahmad Agil. Other contributors include Dr G. Fernández Vázquez, of the Endocrinology and Nutrition Service of the La Paz University Hospital (Madrid), and Profesor R. Reiter, of the Department of Structural Biology of the University of Texas at San Antonio (USA).
The study has been financed by project SAF 2013-45752-R of the Spanish Ministry of Economics and Competition and research group CTS-109 of the Andalusian regional government.
Reference:
Agil A, El-Hammadi M, Jiménez-Aranda A, Tassi M, Abdo W, Fernández-Vázquez G, Reiter R J. Melatonin Reduces Hepatic Mitochondrial Dysfunction in Diabetic Obese Rats.
J Pineal Res. 2015 Apr 22. doi: 10.1111/jpi.12241
In the photo, the University of Granada’s Ahmad Agil, who leads the study, in the laboratory with some of his team.
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Contact details:
Ahmad Agil
Department of Pharmacology University of Granada
Phone: +34 958 248 794 – +34 958 243 539
E-mail address: aagil@ugr.es
