Health Scare Story Du Jour

This story was in today's Metro but the only place I could track it down was DNA India. It's full of long words and technical terms so "it must be true". I'll leave it to the experts (i.e. you) to point out all the half-truths, inconsistencies and inherent contradications:

Washington, DC: Asthma patients should keep their hands away from heavy, high-fat meals, suggests a new study. People with asthma who consumed a high-fat meal showed increased airway inflammation just hours after the binge, according to Australian researchers who conducted the study. The high fat meal also appeared to inhibit the response to the asthma reliever medication Ventolin (albuterol).

"Subjects who had consumed the high-fat meal had an increase in airway neutrophils and TLR4 mRNA gene expression from sputum cells, that didn't occur following the low fat meal. The high fat meal impaired the asthmatic response to albuterol. In subjects who had consumed a high fat meal, the post-albuterol improvement in lung function at three and four hours was suppressed," said Dr Lisa Wood, research fellow of the University of Newcastle.

Asthma prevalence has increased dramatically in western countries in recent decades, which indicates that environmental factors such as dietary intake may play a role in the onset and development of the disease.

Westernised diets are known to be relatively higher in fat than more traditional diets. High dietary fat intake has previously been shown to activate the immune response, leading to an increase in blood markers of inflammation. However, the effect of a high fat meal on airway inflammation, which contributes to asthma, had not been investigated.

Researchers recruited 40 asthmatic subjects who were randomised to receive either a high-fat, high-calorie "food challenge", consisting of fast food burgers and hash browns containing about 1,000 calories, 52% of which were from fat; or a low-fat, low-calorie meal consisting of reduced fat yogurt, containing about 200 calories, and 13% fat.

Sputum samples were collected before the meal and four hours afterward, and analysed for inflammatory markers. Subjects who had consumed the high-fat meal had a marked increase in airway neutrophils and TLR4 mRNA gene expression.

TLR4 is a cell surface receptor that is activated by nutritional fatty acids: TLR4 'senses' the presence of saturated fatty acids, and prompts the cell to respond to the fatty acids as if they were an invading pathogen, releasing inflammatory mediators. While the study didn't definitively distinguish between high fat and high energy, this increase in TLR4 activity suggests that dietary fat is important to the effects.

Subjects who had consumed the high fat meal also had reduced bronchodilator response as measured by FEV1 percent predicted and FEV1/FVC percent, when compared to those had consumed the low-fat meal.

"This is the first study to show that a high fat meal increases airway inflammation, so this is a very important finding. The observation that a high fat meal changes the asthmatic response to albuterol was unexpected as we hadn't considered the possibility that this would occur," said Wood.

The research will be presented at the ATS 2010 International Conference in New Orleans.