Warren symposium follows legacy of geneticist giant

If we want to understand how the brain creates memories, and how genetic disorders distort the brain’s machinery, then the fragile X gene is an ideal place to start. That’s why the Stephen T. Warren Memorial Symposium, taking place November 28-29 at Emory, will be a significant event for those interested in neuroscience and genetics. Stephen T. Warren, 1953-2021 Warren, the founding chair of Emory’s Department of Human Genetics, led an international team that discovered Read more

Mutations in V-ATPase proton pump implicated in epilepsy syndrome

Why and how disrupting V-ATPase function leads to epilepsy, researchers are just starting to figure Read more

Tracing the start of COVID-19 in GA

At a time when COVID-19 appears to be receding in much of Georgia, it’s worth revisiting the start of the pandemic in early 2020. Emory virologist Anne Piantadosi and colleagues have a paper in Viral Evolution on the earliest SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequences detected in Georgia. Analyzing relationships between those virus sequences and samples from other states and countries can give us an idea about where the first COVID-19 infections in Georgia came from. We can draw Read more
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Frank Anania

Leaky gut plus diet together drive liver disease

 

Frank Anania, MD

Lots of people in the United States consume a diet that is high in sugar and fat, and many develop non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, a relatively innocuous condition. NASH (non-alcoholic steatohepatitis) is the more unruly version, linked to elevated risk of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, and can progress to cirrhosis. NASH is expected to become the leading indication for liver transplant. But only a fraction of people with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease go on to develop NASH.

Thus, many researchers are trying to solve this equation:

High-sugar, high-fat diet plus X results in NASH.

Emory hepatologist Frank Anania and colleagues make the case in a recent Gastroenterology paper that a “leaky gut”, allowing intestinal microbes to promote liver inflammation, could be a missing X factor.

Anania’s lab started off with mice fed a diet high in saturated fat, fructose and cholesterol (in the figure, PrintHFCD). This combination gives the mice moderate fatty liver disease and metabolic syndrome (see this 2015 paper, and we can expect to hear more about this model soon from Saul Karpen). Leaky gut, brought about by removing a junction protein from intestinal cells, sped up and intensified the development of NASH.

The authors say that this model could be useful for the study of NASH, which has been difficult to reproduce in mice.

The researchers could attenuate liver disease in the mice by treatment with antibiotics or sevelamer, a phosphate binding polymer that soaks up inflammatory toxins from bacteria. Sevelamer is now used to treat excess phosphate in patients with chronic kidney disease, and is being studied clinically in connection with insulin resistance.
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Posted on August 29, 2016 by Quinn Eastman in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Reversing liver fibrosis via adiponectin

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is one of the most common liver conditions in the United States, affecting 30 percent of the population, and increasing — and likely to catch up in prevalence with obesity and diabetes. In NAFLD, fat content of the liver is elevated to 6 percent or more in people who drink in moderation or not at all. Patients will first present with elevated liver enzyme values in blood tests, but then an imaging test or tissue biopsy may be ordered to evaluate the extent of the damage. NAFLD is mostly asymptomatic and is variable in severity; a majority of those afflicted do not need drug treatments. However, NAFLD is thought to be a preliminary condition that can eventually progress to severe manifestations, such as cirrhosis, hepatocellular carcinoma, and end stage liver failure.

Progression of liver disease, from NIDDK. This article is a guest post from Kristina Bargeron Clark, a graduate student at Emory and communications chair for Women in Bio-Atlanta. Her website is www.inkcetera.org.

Progression of liver disease, from NIDDK.
This is a guest post from Kristina Bargeron Clark, a MMG graduate student at Emory and communications chair for Women in Bio-Atlanta. Her website is www.inkcetera.org.

At Emory, Frank Anania, director of the Department of Medicine’s Division of Digestive Diseases, and his colleagues are developing a tool to treat liver disease. A recent publication in the FASEB Journal describes their investigation into the potential for the hormone adiponectin to modulate liver fibrosis.

Adiponectin is produced by adipose tissue, but is known to decrease in overweight people with metabolic disease. Research by others indicates that it may prevent heart and kidney fibrosis. The Emory team’s studies were conducted to determine if adiponectin could also reduce liver fibrosis.

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Posted on July 14, 2015 by Quinn Eastman in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Spotlight on liver fibrosis

For a May explainer, we’d like to spotlight liver fibrosis. Two recent papers from Emory research teams in the journal Hepatology focus on this process.

Liver fibrosis is an accumulation of scar tissue and proteins outside cells that occurs as a result of chronic damage to the liver. It involves inflammation and immune cells, as well as activation of a type of cell in the liver (hepatic stellate cells), which usually stores fat and vitamin A. Fibrosis and cirrhosis are not the same. Think of it this way: cirrhosis is the late stage of the disease, but fibrosis is how someone can get there.

The liver has a remarkable, even mythical, ability to regenerate, but there is a long list of ways that someone can injure this most vital organ. Quickly – take too much acetaminophen (the most common cause of acute liver failure in the United States). More slowly – develop a hepatitis C infection. Drink large quantities of alcohol. Or something with more subtle effects: consume a diet high in sugar, which can lead to fatty liver. The relationship between fatty liver and more serious liver disease is currently under investigation.

One of the Hepatology papers comes at liver fibrosis from a malaria angle. Patrice Mimche, Tracey Lamb and colleagues show the involvement of EphB2 tyrosine kinase, a signaling molecule not previously known to be involved in liver fibrosis.

Malaria parasites have a complex life cycle, growing in the liver and then in the blood. Lamb says an important part of her paper was the finding that in mouse malaria infection, EphB2 is activated during the blood stage on immune cells infiltrating into the liver. EphB2 (an active drug discovery target) may be acting as a tissue-specific adhesion molecule, she says.

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Posted on May 14, 2015 by Quinn Eastman in Immunology Leave a comment