Acorbine as a supplement?

General Discussion
#1

Hi everyone,

I guess this is a case of me sating my scientific curiosity, so I would be curious to hear what the @ScienceExperts have to say on the content of this post.

So, living in South East Asia now, I’ve been eating a lot of local food (and am loving it by the way). I spoke to a Japanese friend about having HBV and he suggested Sijimi clams. Upon researching, Sijimi clams are the only (as far as I researched) natural source of Acorbine. Both natural and synthesised acorbine has been shown to suppress ethanol-induced liver injury in the liver according to this paper by this group of Japanese scientists.

Acorbine, a Corbicula japonica-derived tripeptide containing non-proteinogenic amino acids, suppresses ethanol-induced liver injury

(If anyone can find the full paper, could they drop a link, please? I would love to read the entire thing)

I guess what this post boils down to is this: If Acorbine has been shown to suppress liver injury in ethanol-induced hepatoxicity (I probably didn’t use that word correctly, I apologise, and feel free to correct me :sweat_smile:) then can it hyptothetically be used to help suppress injury caused by viral infection such as HBV, or even something like fatty liver disease?

Essentially, is it worth me bulk buying a shit ton of Shijimi clams and snacking on them willy nilly, or at least trying to incorporate them into my diet despite my hatred for mollusks as a food source in an “eating healthy for the sake of eating healthy” kind of way?

Ta muchly,

EH1999 :heart:

#2

Dear EH1999,

The mechanisms of liver injury from chronic ethanol exposure or steatosis (fatty liver) are different from that caused by chronic viral hepatitis. I would be careful of making generalizations.

However Shijimi clams are a pretty common part of traditional Japanese diet. If you like Shijimi clams no issue with adding them to your diet in moderation. (yummy)

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#3

Thanks for your response! Yeah, no generalisations here, I was just genuinely curious in a hypothetical sense. Thanks for the information :slight_smile:

#4

Dear @EH1999

I just had a quick look at this paper and this is a completely test-tube/cell-culture based experiment. Just as mentioned in the previous thread about HBV and foods such as turmeric/curcurmin (Lifestyle changes, nutrition, and supplements for hep b - #16 by ThomasTu), there’s a big big gap between showing something sort of works in a cell-culture experiment to eating something being beneficial.

I think it’s important to note that, for the most part, food is not medicine. Yes, healthy food will be better for you than unhealthy food on a metabolic level. But when it comes to treating disease, with few exceptions, food will not cure it because it is broken down relatively finely by your digestive system.

Oral medications have to be very carefully formulated to avoid being inactivated by your gut and make sure that enough active compound actually reaches the place where it’s needed.

Better to eat the clams because they’re tasty!

Hope this helps,
Thomas

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#5

Thanks for taking the time to respond and for always taking the time to make sure everything is in basic layman’s terms :rofl:

Yeah, I’m just finding all of this research very interesting and because I gave up studying science as soon as I could (I’m sorry, I was always more in liberal arts :sweat_smile:) I don’t understand how much of all of this works and what the current research into things like this means.

Honestly, my takeaway from this is I’ll probably stay away from the clams because all mollusks remind me of boogers and I’d rather not face trying to gulp them down :joy:

EH1999 :heart:

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