Study connects fatty diet, liver disease

OHSU Primate Center research focuses on ‘typical unhealthy diet’ for pregnant women

By Peter Korn

The Portland Tribune, Jan 19, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (1 Reader comment)

Pregnant women who eat a typical unhealthy American diet are likely to deliver babies who already have liver disease at birth, according to a new study from Oregon Health & Science University’s Oregon National Primate Research Center.

Scientists at the Primate Center fed macaque monkeys a typical American diet with corn syrup and 35 percent of calories derived from fat. A second group of pregnant monkeys were fed a more healthy diet.

All of the monkeys who were fed the high-fat diet produced babies with fatty liver disease-triglyceride levels four to five times the normal rate, and damaged liver cells. According to researchers, it is likely that all those monkeys would at some point experience liver failure.

Lead researcher Kevin Grove said that the similar physiologies of humans and macaque monkeys leads him to believe the same effect produced in the Primate Center lab will be found in humans.

“We’re very confident that it is directly applicable to humans,” Grove said.

The diet fed the monkeys was the same diet two thirds of the U.S. population consume, Grove said. And he pointed out that most women actually increase the amount of food they eat during pregnancy.

Grove said that there has been a tripling in the rate of fatty liver disease in U.S. children during the past 20 years, and that until now, scientists had thought it was primarily due to children eating unhealthy diets and not exercising enough. But his new study indicates that the disease might have begun while children were still in the womb.

“These studies would point to an earlier programming effect,” Grove said.

Grove said he was particularly interested in finding that the effect occurred whether the mother monkeys were obese during pregnancy or not. Lean mothers on an unhealthy diet produced offspring with the same liver disease as obese mothers.

“If anything, (liver disease in babies) might be a greater concern for women who are naturally lean and feel like they can eat whatever they want and cannot gain weight,” Grove said.

peterkorn@portlandtribune.com

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