Sunday, April 24, 2011

Fatty Acid Trafficking

Here's an interesting recent study that LynMarie Daye of Adipo-Insights blog brought to my attention a while ago.  The link below is to the full text I'm sharing through GoogleDocs.

Downregulation of Adipose Tissue Fatty Acid Trafficking in Obesity, A Driver for Ectopic Fat Deposition?

Fats are continually being cycled in and out of our fat cells.  In the obese, circulating free fatty acids (or non-esterified fatty acids), NEFA, are often elevated.  These are often accompanied by deposition of fat in non-adipose tissues, aka ectopic fat deposition.  This ectopic fat is implicated in various impairments of cell function and even cell death (apoptosis) that result in insulin resistance, beta-cell dysfunction, etc.  This is often referred to as lipotoxicity.  

This study sought to determine if this lipotoxicity is due to excessive release of NEFA from adipose tissue or from impaired trapping by adipose tissue of the NEFA released from dietary fat.  This work is from Keith Frayn's group.  It might be worthwhile to read my blog post on Frayn's paper on adipose tissue as lipid buffer.
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