Arq. Bras. Cardiol. 2023; 120(8): e20230612
Saturated Fatty Acids and Implications for Cardiovascular Disease
Matheus Augusto Callegari
, Ricardo Luiz Damatto, Priscila Portugal dos Santos
This Short Editorial is referred by the Research article "Stearic Acid, but not Palmitic Acid, is Associated with Inflammatory and Endothelial Dysfunction Biomarkers in Individuals at Cardiovascular Risk".
Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are the leading cause of mortality, accounting for 17.9 million deaths in 2019, 32% of all global deaths. It is important to detect CVD early to start treatment. For this, there are several standard risk factors in CVD prediction, but interest in finding more sensitive and accurate biomarkers is intense. Gonçalinho et al. propose that the use of inflammation and endothelial dysfunction biomarkers may reflect CVD and predict worse prognosis, regardless of traditional risk factors. Most CVDs can be prevented by addressing behavioral risk factors like diet. Dietary fat intake is one of the major modifiable risk factors implicated in the causation of CVD. Gonçalinho et al. showed that stearic acid (SA) is associated with inflammatory biomarkers and endothelial dysfunction in individuals at cardiovascular risk.
To study the association of fatty acids (FA) with cardiovascular risk factors, Gonçalinho et al. used FA from membrane phospholipids of red blood cells (RBC) as a biomarker of FA status. This analysis has been used since these FAs can be incorporated from the serum lipoproteins. Additionally, it offers an advantage over analysis of plasma because RBC last on average 120 days compared to 3 weeks for plasma lipids, reflecting better long-term dietary FA intake. However, it is important to highlight that the cost of preparing RBC exceeds the plasmatic method and that there are different analytical strategies., Therefore, for FA from RBC membrane phospholipids to become a biomarker of the nutritional status of dietary FA in clinical practice, there remains a need for investigations of cost-effectiveness and method standardization.
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