Coffee may help combat obesity

A new study has demonstrated that a compound found in coffee may help prevent obesity-related disease.

The study conducted in University of Georgia found out that chlorogenic acid, or CGA, significantly reduced insulin resistance and accumulation of fat in the livers of mice who were fed a high-fat diet.

Yongjie Ma, a postdoctoral research associate in UGA's College of Pharmacy and lead author of the paper, said that previous studies have shown that coffee consumption may lower the risk for chronic diseases like Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease and their study expands on this research by looking at the benefits associated with this specific compound, which is found in great abundance in coffee, but also in other fruits and vegetables like apples, pears, tomatoes and blueberries.

Researchers fed a group of mice a high-fat diet for 15 weeks while also injecting them with a CGA solution twice per week to test the therapeutic effects of CGA.

The researchers found that CGA was not only effective in preventing weight gain, but it also helped maintain normal blood sugar levels and healthy liver composition.

Ma, who works in the laboratory of professor Dexi Liu in the department of pharmaceutical and biomedical sciences, said that CGA was a powerful antioxidant that reduced inflammation and a lot of evidence suggested that obesity-related diseases are caused by chronic inflammation, so if they could control that, they could hopefully offset some of the negative effects of excessive weight gain.

The study is published in Pharmaceutical Research.