#Cancer biologists find DNA-damaging toxins in common plant-based foodsin a laboratory study pairing food chemistry
and cancer biology scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center tested the potentially harmful effect of foods and flavorings on the DNA of cells.
and green teas and coffee activated the highest levels of a well-known cancer-linked gene called p53.
and how they affect cells in our bodies says Scott Kern M d. the Kovler Professor of Oncology and Pathology at the Johns hopkins university School of medicine.
For the study published online February 8 in Food and Chemical Toxicology Kern and his team sought advice from scientists at the U s. Department of agriculture about food products and flavorings.
To do this study well we had to think like food chemists to extract chemicals from food
which was on par with their tests of p53 activity caused by a chemotherapy drug called etoposide.
Funding for the study was provided by the National institutes of health's National Cancer Institute (CA62924) and the Everett and Marjorie Kovler Professorship in Pancreas Cancer Research.
The above story is provided based on materials by Johns Hopkins Medicine. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
In the study published today (27 march 2013) in Nature Communications the University of Dundee's Dr Christopher Connolly
It was prompted by the work of collaborators Dr Geraldine Wright and Dr Sally Williamson at Newcastle University who found that combinations of these same pesticides affected learning and memory in bees.
Their studies established that when bees had been exposed to combinations of these pesticides for 4 days as many as 30%of honeybees failed to learn
Dr Geraldine Wright said: Pollinators perform sophisticated behaviours while foraging that require them to learn
Together the researchers expressed concerns about the use of pesticides that target the same area of the brain of insects and the potential risk of toxicity to non-target insects.
Dr Christopher Connolly said: Much discussion of the risks posed by the neonicotinoid insecticides has raised important questions of their suitability for use in our environment.
The Identification and prevention of dietary-and lifestyle-induced health effects in children and infants (IDEFICS) study includes data from 14426 children aged between two and nine from eight European countries:
The results published in the journal Public health Nutrition confirm that parents with a lower level of education feed their children food rich in sugars
and economic groups in order to minimise inequalities in health concludes Fernã¡ndez Alvira. Childhood nutritionchildhood from two to fourteen years old is a growth period during which the requirements for energy and nutrients increase.
Nevertheless the World Health Organisation warns of the importance of monitoring the diet of the youngest members of society as almost 40 million children under the age of five suffered from overweight in 2010.
Dieticians and nutritionists recommend that parents offer children a wide variety of foods and avoid using food as a method to award
#Functional ovarian tissue engineered in laba proof-of-concept study suggests the possibility of engineering artificial ovaries in the lab to provide a more natural option for hormone replacement therapy for women.
In Biomaterials a team from Wake Forest Baptist Medical center's Institute for Regenerative Medicine report that in the laboratory setting engineered ovaries showed sustained release of the sex hormones estrogen and progesterone.
Although there are medications that can compensate for the loss of female sex hormone production the drugs are recommended often not for long-term use due to the increased risk of heart disease and breast cancer.
-or cell-based hormone therapy--essentially an artificial ovary-to deliver sex hormones in a more natural manner than drugs said Emmanuel C. Opara Ph d. professor of regenerative medicine and senior author.
A bioartificial ovary has the potential to secrete hormones in a natural way based on the body's needs rather than the patient taking a specific dose of drugs each day.
Ovaries are the female reproductive organs that produce eggs that are fertilized for pregnancy as well as secrete hormones important to bone and cardiovascular health.
The loss of ovarian function can be due to surgical removal chemotherapy and radiation treatments for certain types of cancer and menopause.
The effects of hormone loss can range from hot flashes and vaginal dryness to infertility and increased risk of osteoporosis and heart disease.
This research project is interesting because it offers hope to replace natural ovarian hormones in women with premature ovarian failure
and section head of reproductive medicine at Wake Forest Baptist. The graft format would bring certain advantages:
but would prevent the patient from rejecting the cells. With this scenario functional ovarian tissue from donors could be used to engineer bioartificial ovaries for women with non-functioning ovaries.
The study was supported in part by the National institutes of health (award#R01dk080897. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Wake Forest Baptist Medical center.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference e
#Regulation recommendations so that biofuel plants don t become weedsin the United states only species listed on state
study findsa new study looking at the potential health benefits of organic versus nonorganic food found that fruit flies fed an organic diet recorded better health outcomes than flies fed a nonorganic diet.
The study from the lab of SMU biologist Johannes H. Bauer Southern Methodist University Dallas found that fruit flies raised on diets of organic foods performed better on several tests for general health.
While these findings are certainly intriguing what we now need to determine is why the flies on the organic diets did better especially
since not all the organic diets we tested provided the same positive health outcomes said Bauer principal investigator for the study.
Fruit flies on organic diets showed improvements on the most significant measures of health namely fertility
But this is a start toward understanding potential health benefits said Chhabra a student at Clark High school in Plano Texas who led the experiment.
whether it's worth it to buy organic foods to achieve possible health benefits. Bauer an assistant professor in SMU's Department of Biological sciences mentored Chhabra by helping guide
The research focus of Bauer's fruit fly lab is nutrition and its relationship to longevity health and diabetes.
The findings Organically grown food provides health benefits to Drosophila melanogaster have been published in the open access journal PLOS One.
Flies on organic food performed better on some health teststhe data demonstrated that flies raised on organic food extracts by and large-large performed better on the majority of health tests reported the researchers.
It remains unclear why organic diets delivered better health the researchers said. The Bauer lab results come at a time
when the health effects of organic food are debated widely. Prior studies by other researchers have found conflicting results
and lower pesticide contamination levels in organic food a recent publication reporting a large-scale analysis of all available studies concluded no clear trend was apparent.
Because of the low costs associated with fly research and the fly's short life cycle researchers use fruit flies to study human diseases from diabetes to heart function to Alzheimer's disease.
The health tests measured longevity fertility stress and starvation resistance. Findings suggest beneficial health effects dependent on specific foods Some negative
or neutral results were obtained using diets prepared from organic raisins which suggests the beneficial health effects of organic diets are dependent on the specific food item Bauer said.
That might explain some of the inconsistent results in the published studies in the scientific literature he said noting some studies suggest there is a nutritional benefit from organic food
To our surprise in the majority of our tests of flies on organic foods the flies fed organic diets did much better on our health tests than the flies fed conventional food Bauer said.
and quality by increasing genetic diversity and analyzing key traits related to its resistance to cold drought and disease.
Tauschii's enhanced disease resistance. Remarkably a higher number of genes for the cytochrome P450 family were identified in Ae tauschii (485) than sorghum (365) rice (333) Brachypodium (262) and maize (261.
This family of genes has been found to be important for abiotic stress response especially in biosynthetic and detoxification pathways.
At least one species--the grey mouse lemur (Microcebus murinus)--develops a neurological disease that is strikingly similar to human Alzheimer's so the animals are considered important models for understanding the aging brain.
whether a particular genetic variant in mouse lemurs is associated with Alzheimer's we need to know
#Research provides clues to alcohol addiction vulnerabilitya Wake Forest Baptist Medical center team studying alcohol addiction has new research that might shed light on why some drinkers are more susceptible to addiction than others.
Jeff Weiner Ph d. professor of physiology and pharmacology at Wake Forest Baptist and colleagues used an animal model to look at the early stages of the addiction process
Their findings may lead not only to a better understanding of addiction but to the development of better drugs to treat the disease as well Weiner said.
We know that some people are much more vulnerable to alcoholism than others just like some people have a vulnerability to cancer
or heart disease Weiner said. We don't have a good understanding of what causes this vulnerability and that's a big question.
But if we can figure it out we may be able to better identify people at risk as well as gain important clues to help develop better drugs to treat the disease.
The findings are published in the March 13 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience. Weiner who directs the Translational Studies on Early-Life Stress
and Vulnerability to Alcohol addiction project at Wake Forest Baptist said the study protocol was developed by the first author of the paper Karina Abrahao a graduate student visiting from the collaborative lab of Sougza-Formigoni Ph d of the Department
of Psychobiology at the Federal University of Sao paulo Brazil. Weiner said the study model focused on how individual animals responded to alcohol.
Typically when a drug like alcohol is given to a mouse every day the way the animals respond increases--they become more stimulated
In high doses alcohol is a depressant but in low doses it can have a mellowing effect that results in greater activity he said.
Prior studies with other drugs such as cocaine and amphetamine have suggested that animals that show the greatest increases in locomotor sensitization are also the animals most likely to seek out
or consume these drugs. However the relationship between locomotor sensitization and vulnerability to high levels of alcohol drinking is established not as well Weiner said.
Usually when researchers are studying a drug they give it to one test group while the other group gets a control solution
A control group received a saline injection while another was injected with the same amount of alcohol every day for three weeks.
and others showing no more of a change in locomotor activity than control mice given daily saline injections Weiner said.
and discovered that mice that showed robust locomotor sensitization had deficits in a form of brain neuroplasticity--how experiences reorganize neural pathways in the brain--that has been linked with cocaine addiction in other animal models.
What this suggests for the first time in the alcohol addiction field is that this particular deficit may represent an important brain correlate of vulnerability to alcoholism.
Funding support for the research came from the National institutes of health (AA 21099 AA 17531 AA 10422 and AA 14445) Coordenadoria de Aperfeic¸oamento de Pessoal de NÃ vel
The Translational Studies on Early-Life Stress and Vulnerability to Alcohol addiction project is funded an NIH collaborative grant which supports rodent nonhuman primate
and human studies investigating neurobiological mechanisms associated with vulnerability and resilience to alcohol addiction. Co-authors include:
The above story is provided based on materials by Wake Forest Baptist Medical center. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
#Higher soy intake prior to lung cancer diagnosis linked to longer survival in womensummary of a study being published online March 25 2013 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology reports that Chinese women who consumed more soy before being diagnosed with lung cancer
New results from a large observational follow-up study conducted in Shanghai China indicate that women with lung cancer who consumed more soy food prior to their cancer diagnosis lived longer than those who consumed less soy.
The study published March 25 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology provides the first scientific evidence that soy intake has a favorable effect on lung cancer survival.
To our knowledge this is the first study to suggest an association between high soy consumption before a lung cancer diagnosis
and better overall survival said lead study author Gong Yang MD MPH a research associate professor at Vanderbilt University Medical center.
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death among women worldwide with only one in seven patients surviving for five years after diagnosis. Emerging evidence suggests that female hormones particularly estrogens
may affect lung cancer outcomes. Soy contains isoflavones estrogen-like substances that are known also to affect molecular pathways involved in tumor development and growth.
A recent study by the same research team showed that high intake of soy food was associated with a 40 percent decrease in lung cancer risk.
This new study assessed the impact of soy intake on lung cancer survival among participants of the Shanghai Women's Health Study which tracked cancer incidence in 74941 Shanghai women.
Information on usual dietary intake of soy food (soy milk tofu fresh and dry soybeans soy sprouts and other soy products) was collected in-person at study enrollment
During the course of the study 444 women were diagnosed with lung cancer. The median time between the first dietary assessment and cancer diagnosis was 5 8 years.
In this analysis patients were divided into three groups according to soy food intake prior to lung cancer diagnosis. The highest and lowest intake levels were equivalent to approximately 4 oz or more and 2 oz or less tofu
per day respectively. Patients with the highest soy food intake had markedly better overall survival compared with those with the lowest intake 60 percent of patients in the highest intake group and 50 percent in the lowest intake group were alive
at twelve months after diagnosis. The risk of death decreased with increasing soy intake until the intake reached a level equivalent to about 4 oz of tofu per day.
Researchers found no additional survival benefit from consuming higher amounts of soy. Similar trends were observed
The findings may not necessarily apply beyond this study's population which has a very low prevalence of cigarette smoking a known risk factor for the development of lung cancer
and postmenopausal hormone replacement therapy use a factor that may negatively affect lung cancer prognosis. In addition the overall soy food intake is higher in Chinese women than in Western women.
whether consumption of soy food after diagnosis of lung cancer affects survival particularly among patients with early-stage disease who may benefit most from a nutritional intervention.
This research was supported by the U s. National Cancer Institute and conducted by investigators at Vanderbilt University in collaboration with those from the Shanghai Cancer Institute and NCI.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference e
#Decreased water flow may be trade-off for more productive forestbubbling brooks and streams are a scenic and much loved feature of forest ecosystems
Long-term ecological research is important to understanding the health and sustainability of the nation's forests said Michael T. Rains Director of the Northern Research Station.
The state of the lesser prairie chicken is an indicator of prairie health he said. A general decline shows that the ecosystem as a whole faces uncertainty
. and Abu dhabi Falcon Hospital have completed the genome sequencing and analysis of two iconic falcons the peregrine (Falco peregrinus) and saker (Falco cherrug).
Dr Nelson Turyahabwe explained Food insecurity is a real problem across the world. In Uganda the families most at risk tended to have younger
and the latter can affect an'adopted'chick's health suggesting nurture is involved. Taking two mothers with different patterning
and swapping their chicks researchers from Palacky University in the Czech republic were able to investigate the growth and health of the infants and the'ornamentation'of their mothers.
The immaculateness of both genetic and foster mother's white cheek patch was related to the strength of chick's immune response suggesting that this was due to both nurture and genetics.
however neither the cheek patch nor the stripe in males affected the health of the babies.
Talking about how the ornaments can have evolved to signal reproductive fitness Vladimã r Remeå¡and Beata Matysiokovã¡
and a member of the Advanced Diagnostics & Therapeutics initiative (AD&T) at the University of Notre dame. And for these flies it can sometime turn out to be a difficult thing to do.
#Adults with mental illness or substance use disorder more likely to smokeadults aged 18 or older who experienced any mental illness
or who have had a substance use disorder in the past year are more likely to smoke and to smoke more heavily than others according to a new report by the Substance abuse and Mental health Services Administration (SAMHSA).
According to the report adults experiencing any mental illness or a substance use disorder in the past year represent 24.8 percent of the adult population
but that same group used 39.6 percent of all cigarettes smoked by adults. In terms of rates of cigarette smoking 38.3 percent of adults experiencing mental illness
or substance use disorders were current smokers as opposed to 19.7 percent of those adults without these conditions.
That means that the rate of current cigarette smoking among adults experiencing mental illness or substance use disorders is 94 percent higher than among adults without these disorders.
The report reveals that although people with substance use disorders and no mental disorder constitute only 4. 9 percent of adults over age 18 they smoked 8. 7 percent of all cigarettes.
Similarly although those who had experienced both mental illness and a substance use disorder represented only 3. 8 percent of the population in the past year they smoked 9. 5 percent of all cigarettes.
The report defines any mental illness as any diagnosable mental behavioral or emotional disorder other than a substance use disorder.
The report defines a substance use disorder as dependence on or abuse of alcohol or illicit drugs.
It has long been a public health priority to develop effective smoking prevention and cessation programs said SAMHSA Administrator Pamela S. Hyde.
This report highlights a clear disparity. It shows that people dealing with mental illness or substance abuse issues smoke more and are less likely to quit.
We need to continue to strengthen efforts to figure out what works to reduce and prevent smoking for people with mental health conditions said Administrator Hyde.
To address the high rates of tobacco use among people with mental or substance use disorders SAMHSA in partnership with the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center (SCLC) has developed a portfolio of activities designed to promote tobacco cessation efforts in behavioral health care.
SAMHSA and the SCLC launched the 100 Pioneers for Smoking Cessation Campaign which provides support for mental health
and substance abuse treatment facilities and organizations to undertake tobacco cessation efforts. This program has been expanded in conjunction with state Leadership Academies for Wellness and Smoking Cessation
whose goal is to reduce tobacco use among those with behavioral health needs. Participating states bring together policymakers
and stakeholders (including leaders in tobacco control mental health substance abuse public health and consumers) to develop a collaborative action plan.
The report Adults with Mental illness or Substance Use Disorder Account for 40 Percent of All Cigarettes Smoked is based on the findings of SAMHSA's 2009-2011 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH.
NSDUH is the primary source of statistical information on the use of illegal drugs alcohol and tobacco by the civilian noninstitutionalized population of the United states aged 12 years or older.
The full report can be viewed at: http://www. samhsa. gov/data/spotlight/Spot104-cigarettes-mental-illness-substance-use-disorder. pdf.##SAMHSA is a public health agency within the Department of health and human services.
Its mission is to reduce the impact of substance abuse and mental illness on America's communities.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Substance abuse and Mental health Administration (SAMHSA. Note:
Materials may be edited for content and length h
#In triplicate, genes make maize tolerant to toxic soilrendering some of the world's toxic soils far less unfriendly the U s. Department of agriculture Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research
and Cornell researchers are learning to grow stress-tolerant crops on formerly non-farmable land.
In this effort when plant scientists searched the maize genome for clues as to why some plants can tolerate toxic aluminum in soil they found three copies of the same gene known to affect aluminum tolerance according to new USDA/Cornell-led research.
Aluminum toxicity comes close to rivaling drought as a food security threat in critical tropical food-producing regions.
Acidic soils dissolve aluminum from clays in the soil making it toxic to plant roots in half the world's arable lands.
The MATE1 gene which was found in triplicate in aluminum-tolerant maize turns on in the presence of aluminum ions
and expresses a protein that transports citric acid from root tips into the soil which binds to
and locks up aluminum thereby preventing it from harming roots. We found three functional copies that were said identical senior author Leon Kochian director of the U s. Department of agriculture--Agriculture Research Service Plant Soil and Nutrition Laboratory at Cornell.
This is one of the first examples of copy number variation contributing to an agronomically important trait.
He added that the extra gene copies had a cumulative effect of coding for more protein that transports aluminum-binding citric acid into the soil.
The study Aluminum tolerance in maize is associated with higher MATE1 gene copy number appeared online March 11 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
#Financial benefits of plant-based, Mediterranean dietresearchers from The Miriam Hospital and the Rhode island Community Food bank report individuals who participated in a six-week cooking program
Mary Flynn Ph d. RD LDN the study's lead author and a research dietitian at The Miriam Hospital designed the study with Andrew Schiff Ph d. the chief executive officer of Rhode island Community Food bank
I had a number of people--mainly women from my breast cancer weight loss study--say how inexpensive a Mediterranean-style diet was approached so
However by changing the focus to the elimination of foods not needed to improve health--such as meat snacks desserts
Following a plant-based diet also yielded some unexpected health benefits Flynn adds. Approximately half of all participants lost weight which was not a study objective
Our results also suggest that including a few plant-based meals per week is an attainable goal that will not only improve their health
and diet but also lower their food costs Flynn says Flynn is also an associate professor of medicine at The Warren Alpert Medical school of Brown University.
#Toxicity map of brain may help protect cognition for cancer patientsnew research from Wake Forest Baptist Medical center is giving radiation oncologists who treat brain tumors a better understanding of how to preserve the brain's functions while still killing cancer.
Ann M. Peiffer Ph d. assistant professor of radiation oncology at Wake Forest Baptist and colleagues looked at how radiation treatment to different brain areas impacts function to help protect cognition
for patients during and after radiation therapy and beyond. Radiation treatment of organs with cancer is designed to give enough of a dose to be toxic to the cancer tumor with minimal impact to the surrounding tissue
and avoid normal tissue death. For treatment of organs like the lung kidney or liver doctors know exactly how much radiation to give before organ function is affected.
However the same isn't true for brain tissue so the researchers worked to develop a toxicity map of the brain to preserve function.
Peiffer said this is the first attempt to relate treatment dose to brain function as opposed to brain tissue death.
While avoiding normal tissue death is important it doesn't necessarily help prevent the cognitive and functional problems associated with cancer treatments.
The issue is the toxicity to the brain and its function which is cognition or how you think
The toxicity map was created by taking advantage of data from larger clinical trials held at Wake Forest Baptist.
In one of those trials 57 brain cancer survivors returned six months or more after their radiation treatment to determine
whether Donepezil a drug normally used to improve mental function for those with early Alzheimer's disease was effective at improving their cognition.
Participants completed cognitive testing upon enrollment and their scores provided the performance data for the toxicity map.
The researchers then went back into the medical records to match participants to their individual radiation dose levels
or the ability of the patients to think and perform tasks such as remembering a grocery list
and be able to predict the threshold that we need to maintain to prevent treatment toxicities in function Peiffer said.
Advances in cancer treatment have increased survivorship rates and the length of time individuals are able to live following treatment Peiffer said
and quality of life becomes a very important issue for these patients. More research is necessary to validate these data she said.
The research was supported by grant R01nr009675 from NINR/NIH and U10ca 81851 from NCI/NIH.
Individuals were supported also by Wake Forest School of medicine Medical student Research Program Louis Argenta Physician-Scientist Scholarship Fund NIH T32 CA113267 and the Department of Radiation Oncology.
The above story is provided based on materials by Wake Forest Baptist Medical center. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
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