2019_09_26_CIE_ezquerro

Silvia Ezquerro, PhD from the University of Navarra, has studied in her doctoral thesis the positive role that the hormone ghrelin plays in obese patients, once they have undergone bariatric surgery. "Our research has focused on studying the beneficial effect of acylated and deacylated ghrelin in the resolution of fatty liver in patients with obesity, after having undergone bariatric surgery."

As the young researcher points out, although the hormone ghrelin favors food intake and the accumulation of fat in the abdominal area, "it also has anti-inflammatory and cardioprotective properties".

Some researchers from the Clínica Universidad de Navarra and CIBEROBN -including Dr. Ezquerro-, and in partnership with researchers from the University of Manchester, conducted a preclinical study in which they observed how ghrelin contributes to the improvement of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease "by reducing inflammation and liver cell death". This hepatoprotective effect of the hormone ghrelin was published in the International Journal of Obesity.

According to Ezquerro, the detection of ghrelin in blood can help to identify cases of success and failure once bariatric surgery has been performed, which would make it possible to adjust medical treatment "moving towards a more personalized medicine".

For Silvia Ezquerro, progress in this line of research should be oriented towards the study of the impact that ghrelin has on the liver in patients with more advanced manifestations of fatty liver disease, such as fibrosis, cirrhosis or liver cancer.

According to the World Health Organization, obesity is a disease that is on the rise and patients who suffer from it can develop other metabolic diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease or non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Bariatric surgery is a weight loss treatment for patients with obesity who are unable to lose weight after improving their diet, increasing their physical activity or taking specific anti-obesity drugs. "The benefits of bariatric surgery are due in part to changes in hormones produced in the digestive system after the surgical process, among which ghrelinstands out," says Dr. Ezquerro.