Bernat Soria, scientific co-author and patient of an international study of fatty liver

Scientific co-author and patient has been the dual role of the former socialist Minister of Health Bernat Soria in an international study where he has made his research side compatible with that of a patient by voluntarily undergoing a liver biopsy to demonstrate that the Mediterranean diet prevents and reverses non-fatty liver. alcoholic.

The work of scientists from Spain, Israel and Italy has been published by the prestigious British Journal of Medicine with Manuel Romero Gómez, from the Virgen del Rocío hospital and the Institute of Biomedicine of Seville, as principal investigator and the former minister among the co-authors in his as professor of Physiology at the Miguel Hernández University (UMH) of Elche.

The most striking thing is that one of the scientists also participates as a patient, a very unusual situation that debuted in the middle of the 20th century, the 1956 Nobel Prize winner in Medicine, the German Werner Forssmann, when undergoing his then pioneering technique of catheterization of the human heart.

Bernat Soria’s biopsy to help support the thesis

Soria (Carlet, Valencia, 1951) is among the 30 percent of the adult population in advanced countries who suffer from fatty liver disease in a person who does not drink alcohol, which is closely related to obesity and metabolic disorders, and which can be the preamble to fibrosis as a preliminary step to cirrhosis that could end in liver cancer or a transplant.

And to set an example, he voluntarily underwent a biopsy to help support the thesis that fatty liver is reversed after a period of a Mediterranean diet based on fruit, vegetables, legumes and fish, along with moderate physical exercise, which in his case It consisted of walks and ballroom dancing with his wife between two and three days a week, according to what the former minister told EFE.

Soria, who boasts that he now has an analysis more typical of “a 14-year-old kid,” sees it positively and even believes that it should be a “social commitment” that public people who suffer from an illness “start saying so.”

He believes that in this way other patients and relatives can be psychologically helped to normalize this bad experience, and he is pleased that this study has been published in the prestigious British Journal of Medicine, due to the impact it has on the world scientific community.

The prevention of the Mediterranean diet

The work concludes that a healthy Mediterranean-style diet prevents fat retention in the liver of individuals who consume little or no alcohol, as is the case of the former minister, who has insisted that “the scientific evidence accumulated to date shows that Diet plays a crucial role in this disease, which has already become a growing public health problem.

Soria has warned that a poor diet, with too many saturated fatty acids and sugars, typical of processed products and sugary drinks, contributes to liver damage and disorders in adipose tissue, as well as systemic inflammation and an imbalance in the microbiota. intestinal.

A previous study by scientist Soria had already demonstrated the beneficial effects of extra virgin olive oil on insulin action and another more recent study on the benefits of the same oil in cell therapy to delay the onset of type 1 diabetes.

The scientific work led by Romero Gómez and in which Bernat Soria has participated twice advocates a comprehensive approach that involves the entire society through awareness, education and policy changes, so that to prevent obesity and fatty liver A lifestyle is promoted from a young age, while, among other initiatives, the advertising of unhealthy foods is regulated and more taxes are imposed on sugary drinks. With EFE

Related