Seaweed-origin minerals to help fight non-alcoholic fatty liver disease

A dietary supplement derived from seaweed could help rein in the long term negative consequences of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, says a study by Isabelle Harber, an undergraduate researcher from the University of Michigan.

Harber recently presented the findings of her study at the American Society for Investigative Pathology annual meeting during the Experimental Biology (EB) 2022 meeting in Philadelphia.

The trick, as per Harber, lies in Aquamin, produced from calcified red marine algae. Aquamin can act as a supplement that has plenty of calcium, magnesium and 72 other minerals and trace elements. It is Kosher- and Halal-certified and is suitable for vegetarians and vegans.

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is an important adversary as about one fourth of people in the United States are affected by it. It means that there is excess fat stored in the liver, which prevents it from functioning properly.

As the disease progresses, it could turn into a more aggressive form called non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) which comes with an inflamed liver. If kept untreated, it can turn into fibrosis, advanced scarring which is known as cirrhosis, finally manifesting as liver failure and cancer.

“Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is a growing public health challenge that is currently being addressed through an emphasis on lifestyle changes, especially diet, to prevent fat build-up in the liver,” says research team leader Muhammad Nadeem Aslam, MD, from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. “New approaches are needed because this doesn’t work for everyone.”

The Western diet, which is high in fat, can threaten people’s lives if kept up for a lifetime.

“Most people living in Western society do not meet the USDA [United States Department of Agriculture] daily intake guidelines for the intake of calcium and magnesium and, presumably, other minerals nutritionally associated with these minerals,” says Harber.

“We are working to find out if a mineral supplement could provide a low-cost, low- to no-toxicity approach to mitigating the devastat[ing] consequences of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.” 

The research team used mice as their trial subjects, feeding them a high-fat diet to make them obese and develop non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and NASH. For 15 to 18 months, half of the mice were on this diet and ended up with “the full spectrum of liver disease, including advanced fibrotic changes and liver cancer.”

The other half of the mice were fed the same diet but also received the multi-mineral supplement Aquamin. They fared much better.

“In the long-term studies, we observed that most of the mice on the high-fat diet had large liver tumours while the mice on the same diet had no tumours when they received the mineral supplement,” says Aslam. “These results confirmed our earlier findings that minerals may have the potential to reduce the downstream consequences of fatty liver disease.”

There were also short-term studies that lasted about 24 weeks where the research team “identified protein changes associated with the NASH and reduced tumour formation in the longer studies.”

One slight challenge in the studies came from the fact that the short- and long-term studies were being performed on different kinds of mice. The study team plans to perform both sets of studies on the same animals so that the results are comparable and more accurate. A news release notes that “this will allow them to identify early protein changes in individual animals that may predict later consequences or be associated with protection from such consequences.”

The researchers recently went through a 90-day pilot phase trial with 30 healthy patients who were at risk of developing colorectal cancer. Some randomly received Aquamin and the others received a placebo. The trial showed that the mineral supplement “didn’t pose any safety or tolerability issues, including any potential liver damage.”

The same team is also beginning to conduct pilot clinical studies to assess the mineral supplement for safety and tolerability for 180 days. They will be checking for liver injury and inflammation markers to see if Aquamin is beneficial.