United States: Researchers believe they have figured out why diabetes and heart health issues are common in patients who have had a spinal cord injury. A recent study on animals has found that belly fat seems to be broken down into substances that leak and pool in the liver and other organs due to neuron activity that occurs after the damage.
Investigating the Link Between Spinal Cord Injury, Belly Fat Breakdown, and Metabolic Complications
It seems like the neuron activity following the injury causes the belly fat to break down into the compounds that leak and pool in the liver and other organs, a new animal study has discovered
Andrea Tedeschi who is an assistant professor of neuroscience in Ohio State University said that “ These are quite rapid changes. As soon as we disrupt sensory processing as a result of spinal cord injury , we see changes in the fat”
According to a university news release, Tedeschi said, this sets off a “chain of reactions — triglycerides start breaking down into glycerol and free fatty acids that are released in circulation and taken up by the liver, the heart, the muscles, and accumulate, setting up conditions for insulin resistance.”
The Role of Gabapentin in Mitigating Metabolic Consequences
Additionally, the group has discovered a possible remedy to prevent diseases brought on by this phenomenon: In lab mice with spinal cord injury, the detrimental metabolic consequences were avoided by the seizure drug gabapentin.
Researchers said that gabapentin suppresses a neurotransmitter that, after nervous system injury, becomes hyperactive and creates communication issues throughout the body. “We were able to restore metabolic function by administering gabapentin,”
Translating Laboratory Findings to Clinical Applications
Tedeschi stated though they also noted in background notes that among the top causes of mortality for individuals with spinal cord injuries are heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Because belly fat plays a complicated role in metabolism, researchers hypothesized that these illnesses may be linked to abnormalities in the control of belly fat. And such fat are also called adipose tissue which also stores energy and releases fatty acids as needed for the fuel and helping to keep sugar level maintained in blood.
Sensory nerves which regularly send messages to the fat tissue under healthy conditions, so researchers suspected they might play a role in these health problems.
The spinal cords of lab mice were injured in a way that just impacted the sensory nerves, leaving the sympathetic nervous system—which activates the fight-or-flight response—unaffected.
Seven days following the damage, experiments showed a cascade of aberrant activity, with the sensory neurons sending messages to the fat tissue. It is referred to as “a maladaptive reorganization of the sensory system” by Tedeschi.
These signals cause the fat to begin to break down, which rapidly spirals out of control and floods the blood and organs with fatty acids and glycerol.
According to Tedeschi, “a vicious cycle is established—it’s almost like you’re pressing the gas pedal to let your car run out of gas, but someone else keeps filling up the tank, so it never runs out.”
Considerations and Caution:
Gabapentin has been demonstrated in the past to improve stroke recovery and to restore limb function in animals following a spinal cord injury, according to researchers.
Researchers discovered that giving lab mice a high dose of gabapentin and then gradually reducing it prevented fatty acid build-up in the liver, enabling the mice’s metabolism to return to normal.
As a result of the medication, the mice’s metabolism returned to normal after four weeks.
“In this manner, we managed to restore metabolism to a state significantly closer to that of control mice,” stated Debasish Roy, the primary study author and postdoctoral scholar in Tedeschi’s laboratory. This implies that we maintain the drug’s positive effects and stop lipid spillover in the liver after we stop administering it. That was so thrilling.
According to Tedeschi, the results imply that giving gabapentin quickly after a spinal cord injury may help prevent the health issues that frequently arise. Of However, as outcomes in animals may not necessarily translate to people, care must be used when interpreting these data.