Zosimo T. Literatus, R.M.T.
Breakthroughs
“IT'S hard enough to go through puberty,” Charmed witch Alyssa Milano once said.
It could be harder later on, I might say, should insulin resistance syndrome (IRS) begin right here. IRS has been referred to as a metabolic syndrome, a rather popular subject for research among health scientists lately, and we have partly covered in another research in a previous article. And researcher found that uric acid level can be an indicator of IRS.
Many of us know already that uric acid is an established cause of gout, kidney stones, even diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
The normal serum level of uric acid, generally, runs between 6.5-7.0 mg per 100 ml for men, and 6.0-6.5 mg for women (reference values vary as test methods vary). At 7.0 mg, uric acids no longer dissolves in body fluids, causing an increase of its elimination through the urine (hyperuricemia).
Recently, a team of four researchers from the Reina Sofia University Hospital (Cordova, Spain) Unit of Pediatric Endocrinology noted that obese pre-pubertal children had much higher uric acid levels (5.2 mg) than children with normal weight (3.8 mg). M. Gil-Campos led the team include C. M. Aguilera and A. Gil of the University of Granada Center for Biomedical Research (Granada, Spain).
Obese children showed much higher intake of energy and major nutrients compared to normal-weight children, making them vulnerable to malnutrition unless increased dietary intake of these constituents also increased accordingly.
The results, published in Nutricion Hospitalaria (May 2009), suggest that obesity in pre-pubertal age may hasten changes in uric acid metabolism that would occur usually at puberty. In obese children, levels in the blood increase at the beginning of puberty, instead of at the end in normal-weight children.
More than five years ago before this study, uric acid was considered not a risk factor in obesity. But that’s understandable because few researchers bother to study this on pubertal children either.
“We found elevated plasma levels of fatty acids in obese children, which would condition higher levels of acyl-CoA in peripheral tissues and therefore a rise in plasma uric acid,” Gil-Campos explained.
“Equipped with his five senses, man explores the university around him and calls the adventure Science,” wrote Edwin Powell Hubble in The Nature of Science (1954).
Discoveries like this can be as adventure-like even when you simply read it.