DHEA Protects Rat Livers on a High Fat Diet

First of all, rats are not a particularly good model for DHEA metabolism in human beings. Nevertheless, the results of a study by Magyar et al. (Magyar. 2010) would warrant further investigations into the effectiveness of high dose DHEA supplementation on total scavenger capacity and liver fat content in men. In the course of a 28 day intervention the scientists fed rats on either a normal or a high fat diet and supplemented their drinking water with no DHEA (Control), 400µg DHEA (DHEA) and 150µg DHEA-Sulfate (DHEA-S).

Table 1: Fresh frozen liver fat content, SOD, catalase and GST activity results on Day 28

As the figures in Table 1 indicate both, DHEA and DHEA-S were able to reduce the negative effect of the high fat diet on liver fat content and oxidant status (as measured by SOD-, Catalase and GST activity). This is an interesting result, of which the scientists write:

Our results support the hypothesis that DHEA and DHEAS supplementation can improve the antioxidant status in lipid-rich dietary habits.

Regular readers of the SuppVersity will remember that the verdict on DHEA-supplementation is still out. My personal take on the whole situation is that there would be much more research into that domain, if DHEA were patentable and the pharma industry had a financial interest in getting to the bottom of the hitherto equivocal research-results. There certainly is a reason that DHEA based products such as Dermacrine sell very well and have established a very loyal fan-base.