Aspirin: New Evidence Is Helping Explain Additional Health Benefits and Open Potential for New Uses
Date: 23.4.2012
New evidence is helping explain additional health benefits of aspirin. Researchers in Canada, Scotland and Australia have discovered that salicylate, the active ingredient in aspirin, directly increases the activity of the protein AMPK (AMP-activated protein kinase), a key player in regulating cell growth and metabolism.
"We're finding this old dog of aspirin already knows new tricks," said Dr. Greg Steinberg, a co-principal investigator of the study. "In the current paper we show that, in contrast to exercise or metformin which increase AMPK activity by altering the cells energy balance, the effects of salicylate is totally reliant on a single Ser108 amino acid of the beta 1 subunit.
"We show that salicylate increases fat burning and reduces liver fat in obese mice and that this does not occur in genetically modified mice lacking the beta1 subunit of AMPK," he said.
