Eating high-fat foods can contribute to impaired heart muscle growth and increase the risk of seizures. This was proved by scientists at the University of Reading, the results of the study are published in the journal Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications. Briefly about the scientific work is described in the press release on MedicalXpress.
According to experts, they were able to demonstrate that a fatty diet clearly damages muscle cells through oxidative stress, while the negative effect is mediated through the Nox2 protein, whose activity becomes excessive. However, the exact mechanism by which Nox2 causes pathological hypertrophy of cardiac tissue remains unknown.
In the course of the experiments, the scientists fed the mice a high-fat diet. As a result, the activity of Nox2 in rodents doubled, which also led to twice the amount of reactive oxygen species involved in oxidative stress. In mice with a knocked-out gene encoding Nox2, which were also fed a fatty diet, the level of oxidative stress did not increase.