Ceramide-clearing enzyme
Ceramidase↑
Also searched as Ceramidase.
You want it working. Turning it up in liver or fat prevents steatosis, improves insulin action and specifically lowers the sixteen-carbon ceramide. Adiponectin receptors carry this activity, which is how adiponectin opposes lipotoxicity.
In depth
Ceramidase — removes the fatty acid from ceramide, converting it to sphingosine and clearing it from the pool.
What drives it
Fat-burning hormone increases it.
PMC3134999 — Adiponectin signaling activates ceramidase activity, lowering ceramide and raising sphingosine-1-phosphate. This is the body's own clearance arm and part of why insulin sensitivity and ceramide levels move together. Shown predominantly in rodent and cell work. PMC3134999
What it drives
It reduces Ceramide load.
Ceramidase hydrolyzes ceramide to sphingosine - the clearance step, and the only arrow on this board pointing away from ceramide. Important and often misstated: this is not a simple exit. The sphingosine released is largely re-acylated by ceramide synthase straight back into ceramide - the salvage or recycling route, which accounts for a majority of sphingolipid biosynthesis. Clearance therefore depends on what happens to sphingosine next, not on ceramidase activity alone. Walnut consumption (PMID 31087608, randomized double-blind controlled inpatient crossover) reduced ceramides while raising sphingosines, which the authors read as enhanced ceramidase activity. PMID 31087608
Blends that modulate it
Each blend page names this pathway and carries the study behind its claim.
See it on the map
Open the causal map to follow this pathway upstream and downstream, arrow by arrow, each with its study.