Palmitic acid: the horror never ends

Chris forwarded me a link to this study. Read about inflammasones in tissue culture and quake. Here is the relevant line:

"These findings provide insights into the association of inflammation, diet and T2D."

It gets even better. Here is the best line from the press release:

"These results support the idea that inflammation plays a role in chronic disease," says Ting. "The simple message is to avoid fatty foods as much as possible."

OK, you take isolated cells, bathe them in 2mmol palmitic acid and they become unhappy. This is supposed to have something to do with eating a high fat diet?????

Just for fun I'm going, in my head, to eat some (gasp, horror) palmitic acid. Please don't do this at home, you probably don't want to inflame your inflammasomes.

I'm looking through my refrigerator for some palmitic acid but I notice that all there is in my fridge is Food. Bugger. What comes closest? Maybe butter??? Butter is undoubtedly Food, but it does have rather a lot of palmitic acid. Let's give it a try.

Half a pound of butter, here I come. Mmmmmmm. Nice. Yummie.

Now let's measure my blood palmitic acid levels . OOOOOh, post prandial triglycerides are up! Right on, I'm gonna die, some time soon. But what about the acid, the pamitic acid?

Ah, FFAs are also up up up. Success! 500, 600, 700, yes, 800micromol/l. If I really am in luck I might make that 2000micomol/l hit and drop right in to the inflammasome mediated diabetes zone. You know, that palmitic acid trip to nowhere.

Oh, but except for feeling a bit nauseous from all that butter in one go, I feel fine. Perhaps because I don't really have 2mmol/l palmitate in my blood stream after all. Double bugger. It seems like there is major, like MAJOR, contamination of my blood palmitate with oleate. Some is from the butter, some is from my own bloody liver cocking up the experiment. Using delta 9 desaturase to drop the occasional double bond in to long chain saturated fats ensures normal physiology.

Now, if I wasn't such a cheapskate I'd shell out the ackers to see if Ting et al used mixes of palmitate and oleate as well as either fatty acid in isolation. We know from the abstract that oleate does not inflame your inflammasomes... But I am a cheapskate, so I won't. Instead I'll go to this study:

"Low concentrations of oleate (0.1mM) completely inhibited palmitate-induced oxidative stress, SAPK activation, and apoptosis."

That's it, one tenth of one millimole of oleate completely negates the adverse effects of isolated palmitate.

Maybe check this one:

"Oleate alone did not cause mtROS generation and mtDNA damage, and its addition to palmitate prevented palmitate-induced mtDNA damage, increased total ATP levels and cell viability, and prevented palmitate-induced apoptosis and inhibition of insulin-stimulated Akt (Ser(473)) phosphorylation."

I could go on. No one, ever, at any time, has 2mmol/l of isolated palmitate in their bloodstream. A whiff of oleate is completely protective against the evil intentions of a researcher with a block of palmitate when viewed from the bottom of a test tube. It's called physiology. We are evolved to work this way. Knock out delta 9 desaturase and things become quite fun, but that's another story!

Citing the existing literature doesn't get you a Nature publication. Nor does it allow you to write press releases of utter stupidity to support low fat eating while simultaneously keeping yourself off the dole.

Peter