Fat or precisely cholesterol has been known to cause various health issues apart from obesity. For a change, this piece sheds light on the positive aspects of a specific artificial fat. A UCLA research has revealed that, a man-made fat known as Intralipid seems to have a shielding effect for patients facing heart attacks.
This fat is presently used as a constituent for intravenous nutrition and also for treating unusual overdoses of local anesthetics. Recent therapies for heart attack focus on restricting the time frame of ischemic period. The latter is when tissues don’t receive sufficient blood supply followed by the opening of arteries to ensure that the flow is normal. Also another condition related to heart attack is reperfusion injury that occurs when oxygen and nutrients revert to the deprived cells. Professionals have been working towards reducing this problem.
A preclinical analysis unfolded the fat Intralipid which is an emulsion comprising a combination of soy bean oil, egg phospholipids and glycerin. These substances apparently provides basic fatty acids that prohibit substantial heart attacks and also aid in conserving heart function during the process of returning blood flow to the heart just after an episode of attack.
As per the lead author Dr. Siamak Rahman, the aforesaid fat may boost cell integrity and function whenever the body encounters stress, especially during a heart attack. This protective effect presents a new method to prominently reduce impairment of the heart muscle due to reperfusion injury. It also presumably increases the tissue or organ tolerance to shortage of oxygen. Scientists believe that these revelations will seemingly be of use in future applications. Notably, this outcome is not limited just to the heart. It can supposedly be of help to any ischemic organ that faces barriers in blood flow or during transplantation.
The findings are published in the journal Anesthesiology.