The USDA daily intake requirements for calcium and magnesium, as well as other nutritionally related minerals, are not met by the majority of persons in Western society.
The findings were presented at the annual meeting of the American Society for Investigative Pathology, which was held in Philadelphia.
Isabelle Harber, an undergraduate researcher in Aslam’s lab said, “We are working to find out if a mineral supplement could provide a low-cost, low- to no-toxicity approach to mitigating the devastating consequences of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.”
The researchers fed mice a high-fat diet to generate non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, or NASH, in preliminary studies. The mice were observed for 15 to 18 months to see how they responded to a variety of liver disorders, such as fibrotic alterations and liver cancer. The researchers found a significant reduction in late-stage NASH symptoms in rats fed a high-fat diet and given a multi-mineral supplement, compared to animals that did not get the supplement.
In the long-term trials, they discovered that most mice on the high-fat diet had massive liver tumours, whereas animals on the same diet that took the mineral supplement developed no tumours. According to the findings, Aquamin, a multi-mineral dietary supplement, could be a simple and efficient strategy to minimise the long-term health effects of smoking (NAFLD).
The researchers’ major constraint was that the short- and long-term tests were conducted using different types of mice. However, they hope to do both sets of studies in the same animals in the future to allow for early protein alterations in individual animals that could predict future outcomes.
Parvathy Sukumaran 
