Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), the most common type of chronic liver disease in China, currently affecting more than 150 million people in the country, can progress to non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), which can lead to liver fibrosis, cirrhosis and even hepatocellular carcinoma.
There are no drugs approved to treat nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, and patients can only intervene with diet changes and exercise.
Flaxseed, a nutrient-rich food rich in alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), lignans, and dietary fiber, is believed to have a variety of health benefits such as improving blood lipids, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant.
In view of the abundance of bioactive substances in flaxseed, the National Cancer Institute has listed it as one of the six anti-cancer plants.
At present, research on flaxseed is mainly based on its single component, and it is not clear what effect whole flaxseed has on fatty liver.
Recently, researchers from the School of Public Health of Southeast University published a paper in the journal Food & Function entitled "Flaxseed powder supplementation in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease: a randomized controlled clinical trial ".
This clinical study showed that only supplementing flaxseed powder for 3 months can significantly reduce liver fat content in patients with fatty liver disease, improve liver function, lipid metabolism, and regulate intestinal flora, increasing the abundance of beneficial bacteria and reducing the abundance of harmful bacteria.
The study highlights the important potential of flaxseed as a dietary intervention in the prevention and treatment of fatty liver disease.
In this study, the researchers conducted a 12-week randomized controlled clinical trial involving 50 NAFLD patients, who were randomly divided 1:1 into flaxseed group and control group, and flaxseed group took 30 grams of flaxseed powder orally before lunch or dinner every day to analyze the effects of flaxseed on liver fat, liver function, and glycolipid metabolism. The changes of intestinal flora were also analyzed.
The results found that after the 12-week intervention, participants in the flaxseed group had reduced their liver fat content by an average of 5.28% compared to baseline, while the control group had reduced it by only 1.23%.
In patients with moderate fatty liver, the benefits of flaxseed were even more significant, with an average reduction of 8.87 percent in liver fat content.
Analysis of body composition found that compared with baseline, after 12 weeks of intervention, participants in the flaxseed group had significant decreases in body weight, BMI, body fat percentage, and visceral fat area, with an average weight loss of 2.4 Kg, body fat percentage decreased by 6.4%, and visceral fat area decreased by 28.9 square centimeters.
Compared with the control group, the liver function of flaxseed group was significantly improved, the levels of aspartate aminotransferase (AST), total cholesterol (TC) and triglyceride (TG) were significantly decreased, and the levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) and apolipoprotein A1 were significantly increased.
The researchers also analyzed changes in the gut microbiota, and the flaxseed intervention significantly changed the composition of the gut microbiota, increasing the abundance of beneficial bacteria and decreasing the abundance of harmful bacteria, including increasing the abundance of Bacteroidetes and actinomycetes, and decreasing the abundance of firmicutes.
Correlation analysis showed that changes in intestinal flora were significantly correlated with glycolipid metabolism and liver function indicators, suggesting that multiple components of whole flaxseed may work together to positively affect fatty liver by improving intestinal flora and metabolic pathways.
Still, the study emphasizes that only one dose of flaxseed powder was used in this study and the intervention duration was short, and future studies with more and larger samples are needed to determine the recent intake of flaxseed powder and the long-term effects in patients with NAFLD.
In summary, this clinical trial showed that a 3-month flaxseed intervention significantly reduced liver fat content and improved body composition, liver function, and lipid metabolism in patients with NAFLD, while increasing the abundance of beneficial bacteria in the gut flora and decreasing the abundance of harmful bacteria.
This study provides a new basis for dietary intervention in the treatment of fatty liver disease and emphasizes the important potential of dietary intervention in the prevention and treatment of NAFLD.
References: https://doi.org/10.1039/D4FO05847J
