Blueberries protect against inflammation
Texas Women's University, March 14, 2021
In a recent study, researchers at Texas Woman’s University investigated the usefulness of polyphenols present in blueberries in controlling or reducing inflammation. Induced by oxidative stress, inflammation — especially if it becomes persistent — is closely linked to the development of...
Blueberries protect against inflammation
Texas Women's University, March 14, 2021
In a recent study, researchers at Texas Woman’s University investigated the usefulness of polyphenols present in blueberries in controlling or reducing inflammation. Induced by oxidative stress, inflammation — especially if it becomes persistent — is closely linked to the development of many chronic diseases, such as diabetes, metabolic syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease and rheumatoid arthritis (RA).
The researchers discussed the anti-inflammatory activities of BBPs in an article published in the Journal of Medicinal Food.
Blueberry polyphenols can be used for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis
RA is an autoimmune and chronic inflammatory disease that destroys joints and causes disability in older adults. The etiology of RA is poorly understood and there is no mainstream cure for this disease.
According to research, the accumulation and proliferation of fibroblast-like synoviocytes — non-immune cells that make up the membranous tissue that lines joint cavities — may be involved in the destruction of cartilage commonly observed in RA. On the other hand, in vivo and in vitro studies suggest that the anti-inflammatory properties of dietary polyphenols derived from fruits and vegetables could help prevent this destruction.
To examine the anti-inflammatory activities of blueberry polyphenols against RA, the researchers first stimulated rabbit synoviocytes with tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-a), a cell signaling protein (cytokine) released by immune cells that plays a huge role in systemic inflammation. They then treated the synoviocytes with different doses of blueberry polyphenols.
The researchers found that the pro-inflammatory cytokine, TNF-a, increased synoviocyte proliferation by around 19 percent, but treatment with blueberry polyphenols significantly decreased proliferation in a dose-dependent manner. The polyphenol-treated synoviocytes also showed decreased levels of interleukin (IL)-1B and nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-kB).
IL-1B is a cytokine required for activating the innate immune response. Its role is to mediate the release of other pro-inflammatory cytokines, especially in the presence of an infection. NF-kB, on the other hand, is a transcription factor that regulates the expression of genes involved in inflammation.
The researchers also reported that that the expression of matrix metalloproteinase 3, a key enzyme involved in the pathogenesis of RA, increased fivefold in the control TNF-a-stimulated group but decreased by threefold in the blueberry polyphenol-treated group, clearly showing the anti-RA activities of blueberry’s active components.
Based on these findings, the researchers concluded that blueberry polyphenols can reduce inflammation associated with RA by downregulating the expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines and the transcription factor, NF-kB.
Relationship between vitamin D deficiency and gestational and postpartum depression
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), March 16, 2021
According to news originating from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, research stated, “Vitamin D deficiency (VDD) has been associated with depressive symptoms in pregnancy and postpartum, which can result in increased adverse outcomes in the maternal-infant segment. A possible explanation in the literature is VDD relationship with genetic and neurological mechanisms.”
Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from Federal University Rio de Janeiro, “to evaluate VDD relationship with gestational and postpartum depression. this review followed the recommendations proposed by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis. Research was conducted in electronic databases, PubMed and LILACS, including studies of the analytical type (cross-sectional and longitudinal), systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and controlled clinical trials carried out in humans; inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied. in this systematic review, eight articles were analyzed comprising 8,583 women from seven different countries. Among the selected articles, six found an association between VDD and gestational and postpartum depression. Considering the data collection, it was possible to conclude that there is a probable relationship between VDD and a higher predisposition to gestational and postpartum depression.”
According to the news editors, the research concluded: “Also, we concluded that vitamin D supplementation has proven to be a promising strategy for reducing the risk of depressive symptoms.”
Lifestyle intervention is beneficial for most people with type 2 diabetes, but not all
Wake Forest Medical Center, March 11, 2021
For people who are overweight or obese and have type 2 diabetes, the first line of treatment is usually lifestyle intervention, including weight loss and increased physical activity. While this approach has cardiovascular benefit for many, it can be detrimental for people who have poor blood sugar control, according to a study conducted by researchers at Wake Forest School of Medicine.
In the study, published in the current issue of the journal Diabetes Care, the researchers re-evaluated the National Institutes of Health Action for Health in Diabetes (Look AHEAD) study that found intensive lifestyle intervention (ILI) neither helped nor hurt people with diabetes.
"Contrary to the initial findings of Look AHEAD, our work found that lifestyle interventions reduced potential cardiovascular harm and optimized benefits for 85% of those in the trial," said the study's lead investigator, Michael P. Bancks, Ph.D., assistant professor of public health sciences at Wake Forest School of Medicine, part of Wake Forest Baptist Health.
"However, for those who had poor blood sugar control, lifestyle intervention increased the risk of major cardiovascular events. Based on our findings, doctors may want to consider alternative options, such as glucose-lowering drugs, before trying lifestyle modification for those people."
Look AHEAD randomized 5145 participants with type 2 diabetes (T2D) who were overweight or obese to 10 years of ILI or a control group that received diabetes support and education. ILI focused on weight loss through decreased caloric intake and increased physical activity.
In the Wake Forest School of Medicine study, the researchers divided the study participants into four subgroups: diabetes onset at older age, poor glycemic control, severe obesity and younger age at onset. These subgroups were determined based on diabetes diagnosis, body mass index, waist circumference, measure of blood sugar value (glycemic control) and the age of diabetes onset.
Bancks and his team examined each group's response to the intensive lifestyle intervention and its association with major cardiovascular events. In the subgroup with poor glycemic control, the intervention was associated with 85% higher risk of having a cardiovascular event as compared to the control group. Among the three other diabetes subgroups analyzed, ILI was not associated with an increased risk of fatal and non-fatal cardiovascular events.
"Although the interest in diabetes subgroups is growing, our study is one of the first to apply it to lifestyle intervention," Bancks said. "So for clinicians, determining which subgroup their patient most closely resembles should help them determine the best treatment option and reduce any potential harm for that individual."
These results provide support for further investigation into whether these findings apply to other diabetes complications, including cognitive issues, and to assess what interventions would be beneficial for those individuals, Bancks said.
Depression doubles risk of death after heart attack, angina
Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute, March 8, 2021
Depression is the strongest predictor of death in the first decade following a diagnosis of coronary heart disease, according to a study scheduled for presentation at the American College of Cardiology's 66th Annual Scientific Session. The study found people with coronary heart disease who are diagnosed with depression are about twice as likely to die compared with those who are not diagnosed with depression.
"This study shows that it doesn't matter if depression emerges in the short term or a few years down the road—it's a risk factor that continually needs to be assessed," said Heidi May, PhD, a cardiovascular epidemiologist at the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute in Salt Lake City and the study's lead author. "I think the take-home message is that patients with coronary disease need to be continuously screened for depression, and if found to be depressed, they need to receive adequate treatment and continued follow-up."
The study focused on patients diagnosed with a heart attack, stable angina or unstable angina, all of which are caused by a reduced flow of oxygen-rich blood to the heart, typically as a result of plaque buildup in the heart's arteries. These conditions fall under the umbrella term coronary heart disease, which is the most common form of heart disease in the United States .
Researchers have long understood heart disease and depression to have a two-way relationship, with depression increasing the likelihood of heart disease and vice versa. Whereas previous studies have investigated depression occurring within a few months of a coronary heart disease diagnosis, the new study is the first to shed light on the effects of depression over the long term.
The researchers analyzed health records from almost 25,000 Intermountain Health System patients tracked for an average of nearly 10 years following a diagnosis of coronary heart disease. About 15 percent of patients received a follow-up diagnosis of depression, a substantially larger proportion than the estimated rate of 7.5 to 10 percent in the general population.
Out of 3,646 people with a follow-up diagnosis of depression, half died during the study period, compared to 38 percent of the 20,491 people who did not have a depression diagnosis. This means people with depression were twice as likely to die compared to those without depression.
After adjusting for age, gender, risk factors, other diseases, heart attack or chest pain, medications and follow-up complications, the results showed depression was the strongest predictor of death in this patient group. These results were consistent regardless of age, gender, the timing of depression onset, past history of depression or whether or not the patient had a heart attack.
Given the significant impact of depression on long-term survival, the researchers said clinicians should seek ways to better identify depression in patients with coronary heart disease, either by using patient questionnaires designed to screen for depression or by actively watching for signs of depression during follow-up examinations.
"It can be devastating to be diagnosed with coronary artery disease," May said. "Clinicians need to pay attention to the things their patients are expressing, in terms of both physical symptoms as well as emotional and nonverbal factors."
Signs of depression include persistent feelings of sadness, hopelessness or worthlessness; anxiety, irritability or restlessness; losing interest in hobbies and activities; fatigue or moving slowly; difficulty sleeping or concentrating; aches or pains without a clear physical cause; changes in appetite or weight; and thoughts of death or suicide. Depression is linked with behaviors that can be detrimental to cardiovascular health, such as reduced physical activity, poor diet, increased smoking or alcohol use and reduced compliance with medical treatment.
The study did not evaluate the impact of depression treatment on the risk of death.
Wild mint can prevent blood sugar spikes after meals, reports study
National Chemical Laboratory (India), March 12, 2021
Mentha arvensis, commonly known as wild mint, is a perennial flowering plant.
Wild mint leaves and essential oil are also traditionally used as natural medicines. The former is said to be a great remedy for liver inflammation, peptic ulcer, diarrhea, bronchitis, jaundice and skin diseases, while the latter is often used as an antiseptic. Because of the reported antioxidant activity of wild mint, Indian researchers decided to investigate if it also has antidiabetic properties.
In a recent study, which appeared in the Journal of Ayurveda and Integrative Medicine, the researchers looked at the potential of wild mint leaf extract to stop glycation. Glycation refers to the chemical reaction by which a sugar molecule attaches to a protein or lipid. This event is a consequence of hyperglycemia and is associated with the tissue damage often seen in diabetes. The researchers also explored the effect of wild mint extracts on the activity of two carbohydrate-digesting enzymes, as well as their influence on postprandial hyperglycemia.
Wild mint extract can prevent blood sugar spikes after meals
According to the researchers, interest in the use of alternative medicines to control diabetes, oxidative stress and related disorders has increased in recent years. This is due to the continuous rise in the number of people who develop diabetes around the world. In 2018, this number was estimated to be around 340 million, 70 million of which were from India.
Postprandial hyperglycemia, or the increase in blood glucose after eating, is strongly implicated in the development of Type 2 diabetes and diabetic complications. Researchers believe that reducing the postprandial release of glucose in the blood is a promising therapeutic approach to treat or prevent diabetes. To achieve this, two enzymes involved in the breakdown of carbohydrates into sugar are considered as good antidiabetic targets.
a-Amylase is a digestive enzyme that converts complex carbs like starch to simple sugars. Similarly, a-glucosidase hastens the digestion of oligosaccharides — three to 10 simple sugars linked together — and disaccharides (e.g., sucrose, maltose, lactose) into glucose molecules. Because of their functions, compounds that can inhibit a-amylase and a-glucosidase activity are used to reduce blood sugar levels in diabetics.
Wild mint is a medicinal herb with a long history of use in traditional medicine. Ancient healers considered it a promising natural remedy for diabetes. To investigate its ability to inhibit postprandial hyperglycemia, the researchers first derived wild mint extract from its leaves using methanol as solvent. They then tested the extract on male rats and performed various in vitro experiments to evaluate the extract’s antidiabetic activity.
The researchers reported that the wild mint extract showed a remarkable ability to scavenge free radicals, as well as great potential to inhibit glycation. They noted that it successfully inhibited more than 90 percent of advanced glycation end product (AGE) formation. The wild mint extract also showed high inhibitory activity against a-amylase and ?-glucosidase and significantly inhibited postprandial hyperglycemia in rats with starch-induced diabetes.
Based on these findings, the researchers concluded that wild mint has noninsulin-dependent antidiabetic activity and can be used to treat or prevent postprandial hyperglycemia.
Exercise during pregnancy may save kids from health problems as adults
University of Virginia, March 15, 2021
Exercise during pregnancy may let mothers significantly reduce their children's chances of developing diabetes and other metabolic diseases later in life, new research suggests.
A study in lab mice has found that maternal exercise during pregnancy prevented the transmission of metabolic diseases from an obese parent - either mother or father - to child. If the finding holds true in humans, it will have "huge implications" for helping pregnant women ensure their children live the healthiest lives possible, the researchers report in a new scientific paper.
This means that one day soon, a woman's first trip to the doctor after conceiving might include a prescription for an exercise program.
"Most of the chronic diseases that we talk about today are known to have a fetal origin. This is to say that the parents' poor health conditions prior to and during pregnancy have negative consequences to the child, potentially through chemical modification of the genes," said researcher Zhen Yan, PhD, a top exercise expert at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. "We were inspired by our previous mouse research implicating that regular aerobic exercise for an obese mother before and during pregnancy can protect the child from early onset of diabetes. In this study, we asked the questions, what if an obese mother exercises only during pregnancy, and what if the father is obese?"
Exercise and Pregnancy
Scientists have known that exercise during pregnancy helps lead to healthy babies, reducing the risk of pregnancy complications and premature delivery. But Yan, the director of the Center for Skeletal Muscle Research at UVA's Robert M. Berne Cardiovascular Research Center, wanted to see if the benefits continued throughout the children's lives. And his work, both previous and new, suggests it does.
To determine that, Yan and his collaborators studied lab mice and their offspring. Some of the adult mice were fed typical mouse chow before and during pregnancy, while other were fed a high-fat, high-calorie diet to simulate obesity. Some receiving the high-fat diet before mating had access to a voluntary running wheel only during pregnancy, where they could run all they liked, while others did not, meaning they remained sedentary.
The results were striking: Both mothers and fathers in the high-fat group could predispose their offspring to metabolic disorders. In particular, male offspring of the sedentary mothers on high-fat diets were much more likely to develop high blood sugar and other metabolic problems in adulthood.
To better understand what was happening, the researchers looked at the adult offspring's metabolism and chemical (epigenetic) modification of DNA. They found there were significant differences in metabolic health and how active certain genes were among the different groups of offspring, suggesting that the negative effects of parental obesity, although different between the father and the mother, last throughout the life of the offspring.
The good news is that maternal exercise only during pregnancy prevented a host of "epigenetic" changes that affect the workings of the offspring's genes, the researchers found. Maternal exercise, they determined, completely blocked the negative effects of either mother's or father's obesity on the offspring.
The results, they say, provide the first evidence that maternal exercise only during pregnancy can prevent the transmission of metabolic diseases from parent to child.
"The take-home message is that it is not too late to start to exercise if a mother finds herself pregnant. Regular exercise will not only benefit the pregnancy and labor but also the health of the baby for the long run," Yan said. "This is more exciting evidence that regular exercise is probably the most promising intervention that will help us deter the pandemic of chronic diseases in the aging world, as it can disrupt the vicious cycle of parents-to-child transmission of diseases."
Some veggies each day keeps the stress blues away
University of Sydney, March 15, 2021
Published in the British Medical Journal Open, the longitudinal study of more than 60,000 Australians aged 45 years and above measured participants fruit and vegetable consumption, lifestyle factors and psychological distress at two time points
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Psychological distress was measured using the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale, a 10-item questionnaire measuring general anxiety and depression. Usual fruit and vegetable consumption was assessed using short validated questions.
Key findings
People who ate 3-4 daily serves of vegetables had a 12 per cent lower risk of stress than those who ate 0-1 serves daily.
People who ate 5-7 daily serves of fruit and vegetables had a 14 per cent lower risk of stress than those who ate 0-4 serves daily.
Women who ate 3-4 daily serves of vegetables had an 18 per cent lower risk of stress than women who ate 0-1 serves daily.
Women who ate 2 daily serves of fruit had a 16 per cent lower risk of stress than women who ate 0-1 serves daily.
Women who ate 5-7 daily serves of fruit and vegetables had a 23 per cent lower risk of stress than women who ate 0-1 serves daily.
At the start of the study, characteristics associated with higher stress included: being female, younger, having lower education and income, being overweight/obese, a current smoker and being physically inactive.
Fruit consumption alone had no significant association with a lower incidence of stress. There was no significant association between higher levels of fruit and vegetable intake (greater than 7 daily serves) and a lower incidence of stress.
"This study shows that moderate daily fruit and vegetable consumption is associated with lower rates of psychological stress," said Dr Melody Ding of the University of Sydney's School of Public Health. "It also reveals that moderate daily vegetable intake alone is linked to a lower incidence of psychological stress. Moderate fruit intake alone appears to confer no significant benefit on people's psychological stress."
These new findings are consistent with numerous cross sectional and longitudinal studies showing that fruit and vegetables, together and separately, are linked with a lower risk of depression and higher levels of well-being assessed by several measures of mental health.
"We found that fruit and vegetables were more protective for women than men, suggesting that women may benefit more from fruit and vegetables," said first author and University of Sydney PhD student, Binh Nguyen.
The investigators say further studies should investigate the possibility of a 'threshold' between medium and higher levels of fruit and vegetable intake and psychological stress.
