The Eurecat technology centre is studying the effectiveness of a new therapy based on a multi-ingredient amino acid to ameliorate the impact of obesity and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in the health of menopausal women.
Specifically, Eurecat’s Nutrition and Health Unit is to run a three-month nutritional intervention with menopausal women to investigate how this nutraceutical ingredient can help reduce visceral fat and hepatic steatosis in the volunteers.
At present, 29 percent of deaths a year in Spain are related to cardiovascular disease, which is strongly associated with obesity that affects 30 percent of the population, and to fatty liver disease, which one in four people have.
“Eurecat’s multi-ingredient is a combination of amino acids from the histidine metabolism,” says Xavier Escoté, a researcher in Eurecat’s Nutrition and Health Unit and the project’s coordinator. “Hence opting for this treatment lessens the side effects of current therapies and this means health benefits for people.”
“Histidine is an essential amino acid and thus we can only get it from our diet,” he adds. “So we have seen that in people with a fatty liver, gut microbiota degrades histidine more intensely, thereby hindering its beneficial action in the fatty liver or adipose tissue.”
“In the tests carried out so far, therapy with this nutraceutical has proven to be highly effective as it reduces visceral fat by more than 15 percent and liver disease by more than 70 percent,” points out Andrea Costa, a researcher in Eurecat’s Nutrition and Health Unit.
Accordingly, “Eurecat is putting in place an intervention to study its effectiveness in menopausal women with these cardiovascular diseases.”
The study will be run as part of the Fathis+ project in partnership with the Girona Biomedical Research Institute Dr. Josep Trueta (IDIBGI).
The Eurecat technology centre developed this nutraceutical ingredient and the strategy for treating obesity and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease with this product under the Fathis project “with a view to enhancing the quality of life and life expectancy of people affected by both diseases,” notes Nadia Ortega, director of Eurecat’s Nutrition and Health Unit.