Cranberry powder (CR) is reported to be effective against lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) and recurrent urinary tract infections. Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) in men older than 50 years is a common cause of LUTS. Here, we attempted to evaluate if CR is also effective for treating BPH using a BPH-induced rat model, which was orally administered CR. Male Sprague-Dawley rats weighing 200–250 g were randomly divided into the following six groups (n = 9): noncastration group; castration group; BPH group; BPH and cranberry for 8-week (CR8W) group; BPH and cranberry for 4-week (CR4W) group; and BPH and saw palmetto group (saw palmetto). Compared with the BPH group, the CR8W group showed a significant decrease in prostate weight (by 33%), dihydrotestosterone (DHT) levels (by 18% in serum and 28% in prostate), 5-alpha reductase levels (18% reduction of type 1 and 35% of type 2), and histological changes. These results indicate that CR could attenuate BPH by inhibiting 5-alpha reductase and by reducing other biomarkers such as prostate weight and DHT levels. Thus, CR may be an effective candidate for the development of a functional food for BPH treatment. IACUC (USW-IACUC-R-2015-004).
In our investigation, the administration of CP significantly prevented the progression of BPH by reducing the 5AR levels, and consequently reducing DHT levels in the serum and prostate, along with reduction of the prostate size.
This study demonstrated that CR exerts positive effects against BPH, based on biochemical and histological changes in BPH-induced rats. Although further investigation and validation is required, our study provides evidence, for developing a potential treatment for BPH from natural products.
Psychedelic spurs growth of neural connections lost in depression
Yale University, July 5, 2021
The psychedelic drug psilocybin, a naturally occurring compound found in some mushrooms, has been studied as a potential treatment for depression for years. But exactly how it works in the brain and how long beneficial results might last is still unclear.
In a new study, Yale researchers show that a single dose of psilocybin given to mice prompted an immediate and long-lasting increase in connections between neurons. The findings are published July 5 in the journal Neuron.
"We not only saw a 10% increase in the number of neuronal connections, but also they were on average about 10% larger, so the connections were stronger as well," said Yale's Alex Kwan, associate professor of psychiatry and of neuroscience and senior author of the paper.
Previous laboratory experiments had shown promise that psilocybin, as well as the anesthetic ketamine, can decrease depression. The new Yale research found that these compounds increase the density of dendritic spines, small protrusions found on nerve cells which aid in the transmission of information between neurons. Chronic stress and depression are known to reduce the number of these neuronal connections.
Using a laser-scanning microscope, Kwan and first author Ling-Xiao Shao, a postdoctoral associate in the Yale School of Medicine, imaged dendritic spines in high resolution and tracked them for multiple days in living mice. They found increases in the number of dendritic spines and in their size within 24 hours of administration of psilocybin. These changes were still present a month later. Also, mice subjected to stress showed behavioral improvements and increased neurotransmitter activity after being given psilocybin.
For some people, psilocybin, an active compound in "magic mushrooms," can produce a profound mystical experience. The psychedelic was a staple of religious ceremonies among indigenous populations of the New World and is also a popular recreational drug.
It may be the novel psychological effects of psilocybin itself that spurs the growth of neuronal connections, Kwan said.
"It was a real surprise to see such enduring changes from just one dose of psilocybin," he said. "These new connections may be the structural changes the brain uses to store new experiences."
How long can a person live? The 21st century may see a record-breaker
University of Washington, July 2, 2021
The number of people who live past the age of 100 has been on the rise for decades, up to nearly half a million people worldwide.
There are, however, far fewer "supercentenarians," people who live to age 110 or even longer. The oldest living person, Jeanne Calment of France, was 122 when she died in 1997; currently, the world's oldest person is 118-year-old Kane Tanaka of Japan.
Such extreme longevity, according to new research by the University of Washington, likely will continue to rise slowly by the end of this century, and estimates show that a lifespan of 125 years, or even 130 years, is possible.
"People are fascinated by the extremes of humanity, whether it's going to the moon, how fast someone can run in the Olympics, or even how long someone can live," said lead author Michael Pearce, a UW doctoral student in statistics. "With this work, we quantify how likely we believe it is that some individual will reach various extreme ages this century."
Longevity has ramifications for government and economic policies, as well as individuals' own health care and lifestyle decisions, rendering what's probable, or even possible, relevant at all levels of society.
The new study, published June 30 in Demographic Research, uses statistical modeling to examine the extremes of human life. With ongoing research into aging, the prospects of future medical and scientific discoveries and the relatively small number of people to have verifiably reached age 110 or older, experts have debated the possible limits to what is referred to as the maximum reported age at death. While some scientists argue that disease and basic cell deterioration lead to a natural limit on human lifespan, others maintain there is no cap, as evidenced by record-breaking supercentenarians.
Pearce and Adrian Raftery, a professor of sociology and of statistics at the UW, took a different approach. They asked what the longest individual human lifespan could be anywhere in the world by the year 2100. Using Bayesian statistics, a common tool in modern statistics, the researchers estimated that the world record of 122 years almost certainly will be broken, with a strong likelihood of at least one person living to anywhere between 125 and 132 years.
To calculate the probability of living past 110 -- and to what age -- Raftery and Pearce turned to the most recent iteration of the International Database on Longevity, created by the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. That database tracks supercentenarians from 10 European countries, plus Canada, Japan and the United States.
Using a Bayesian approach to estimate probability, the UW team created projections for the maximum reported age at death in all 13 countries from 2020 through 2100.
Among their findings:
- Researchers estimated near 100% probability that the current record of maximum reported age at death -- Calment's 122 years, 164 days -- will be broken;
- The probability remains strong of a person living longer, to 124 years old (99% probability) and even to 127 years old (68% probability);
- An even longer lifespan is possible but much less likely, with a 13% probability of someone living to age 130;
- It is "extremely unlikely" that someone would live to 135 in this century.
As it is, supercentenarians are outliers, and the likelihood of breaking the current age record increases only if the number of supercentenarians grows significantly. With a continually expanding global population, that's not impossible, researchers say.
People who achieve extreme longevity are still rare enough that they represent a select population, Raftery said. Even with population growth and advances in health care, there is a flattening of the mortality rate after a certain age. In other words, someone who lives to be 110 has about the same probability of living another year as, say, someone who lives to 114, which is about one-half.
"It doesn't matter how old they are, once they reach 110, they still die at the same rate," Raftery said. "They've gotten past all the various things life throws at you, such as disease. They die for reasons that are somewhat independent of what affects younger people.
"This is a very select group of very robust people."
Dried Plum Consumption Improves Total Cholesterol and Antioxidant Capacity and Reduces Inflammation in Healthy Postmenopausal Women
San Diego State University, June 27, 2021
Dried plums contain bioactive components that have demonstrated antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects. The objective of this study was to determine if dried plum consumption reduces the risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD) in postmenopausal women, specifically examining lipid profiles, oxidative stress, antioxidant capacity, and inflammation in a dose-dependent manner. We conducted a 6-month, parallel-design controlled clinical trial, where 48 postmenopausal women were randomly assigned to consume 0, 50, or 100 g of dried plum each day. After 6 months of intervention, total cholesterol (TC) in the 100 g/day treatment group (P = .002) and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol in the 50 g/day treatment group (P = .005) improved significantly compared to baseline. Inflammatory biomarkers interleukin-6 (P = .044) and tumor necrosis factor-α (P = .040) were significantly lower after 6 months within the 50 g/day dried plum group compared to baseline. Moreover, total antioxidant capacity increased significantly within the 50 g/day group (P = .046), and superoxide dismutase activity increased significantly within both 50 and 100 g/day groups (P = .044 and P = .027, respectively) after 6 months compared to baseline. In addition, plasma activities of alanine transaminase (P = .046), lactate dehydrogenase (P = .039), and creatine kinase (P = .030) were significantly lower after 6 months in the 50 g/day dried plum group. These findings suggest that daily consumption of 50–100 g dried plum improves CVD risk factors in postmenopausal women as exhibited by lower TC, oxidative stress, and inflammatory markers with no clear dose dependence.
Regular physical activity linked to more 'fit' preteen brains
Childrens Hospital Boston, July 2, 2021
We know exercise has many health benefits. A new study from Boston Children's Hospital adds another benefit: Physical activity appears to help organize children's developing brains.
The study, led by Dr. Caterina Stamoulis, analyzed brain imaging data from nearly 6,000 9- and 10-year-olds. It found that physical activity was associated with more efficiently organized, robust, and flexible brain networks. The more physical activity, the more "fit" the brain.
"It didn't matter what kind of physical activity children were involved in," says Dr. Stamoulis, who directs the Computational Neuroscience Laboratory at Boston Children's. "It only mattered that they were active."
Crunching the data
Dr. Stamoulis and her trainees, Skylar Brooks and Sean Parks, tapped brain imaging data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, a long-running study sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. They used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data to estimate the strength and organizational properties of the children's brain circuits. These measures determine how efficiently the brain functions and how readily it can adapt to changes in the environment.
"The preteen years are a very important time in brain development," notes Dr. Stamoulis. "They are associated with a lot of changes in the brain's functional circuits, particularly those supporting higher-level thought processes. Unhealthy changes in these areas can lead to risky behaviors and long-lasting deficits in the skills needed for learning and reasoning."
The team combined these data with information on the children's physical activity and sports involvement, supplied by the families, as well as body mass index (BMI). Finally, they adjusted the data for other factors that might affect brain development, such as being born before 40 weeks of gestation, puberty status, sex, and family income.
Healthy brain networks
Being active multiple times per week for at least 60 minutes had a widespread positive effect on brain circuitry. Children who engaged in high levels of physical activity showed beneficial effects on brain circuits in multiple areas essential to learning and reasoning. These included attention, sensory and motor processing, memory, decision making, and executive control (the ability to plan, coordinate, and control actions and behaviors).
In contrast, increased BMI tended to have detrimental effects on the same brain circuitry. However, regular physical activity reduced these negative effects. "We think physical activity affects brain organization directly, but also indirectly by reducing BMI," Dr. Stamoulis says.
Analyzing brain effects
In the analyses, the brain was represented mathematically as a network of "nodes": a set of brain regions linked by connections of varying strength. Physical activity had two kinds of positive effects: on the efficiency and robustness of the network as a whole, and on more local properties such as the number and clustering of node connections.
"Highly connected local brain networks that communicate with each other through relatively few but strong long-range connections optimizes information processing and transmission in the brain," explains Dr. Stamoulis. "In preteens, a number of brain functions are still developing, and they can be altered by a number of risk factors. Our results suggest that physical activity has a positive protective effect across brain regions."
Could Sumac Be Effective on COVID-19 Treatment?
Fırat University Medicine Faculty (Turkey), June 11, 2021
Sumac is an herbal product, commonly consumed as a spice and was used for medical treatment for centuries. The phytochemical structure of Sumac was studied extensively, and it was established that the herb contained tannins, polyphenols, flavonoids, organic acids, and essential oils. Various scientific studies demonstrated that Sumac had a free oxygen radical-scavenging effect, a protective effect against liver damage, antihemolytic, leukopenia, and antifibrogenic effects, along with its antiviral, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant properties. Recently, several scientific studies described the pathophysiology, clinical course, and the treatment of COVID-19 infection. The examination of the characteristics of COVID-19 infection revealed via the clinical studies suggests that Sumac extract could be useful in the treatment of COVID-19. Given the scientific studies focusing on the beneficial effects of Sumac, the present review aims to provide an encouraging viewpoint to investigate whether Sumac is effective in treating COVID-19 infection.
Antiviral Effect
SARS-CoV2 virus, which causes COVID-19 infection, is a highly infectious RNA virus. There are no scientific studies on whether Sumac is effective against the SARS-CoV2 virus. On the contrary, the medications currently being used for treatment were directly administered in clinics, without scrutinizing whether they were effective against the novel coronavirus. Subsequently, several medications were identified to be useful during the clinical course of the disease. Yet, there are scientific in vitro and in vivo studies that investigated the antiviral effects of Sumac against several viruses. In a study, bioflavonoids isolated from Sumac were evaluated for their antiviral activities. Sumac presented inhibitory activities against respiratory viruses (influenza A, influenza B, and measles) and herpes viruses (HSV-1, HSV-2, and varicella zoster virus [VZV]).2 Another study found that Sumac extract exhibited significant antiviral activity against fish pathogenic infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus, and viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus. Furthermore, it was considered that Sumac was a potential antiviral therapeutic against fish viral diseases.3 In a study conducted in 2015, it was established that urushiol obtained from Sumac exhibited reverse transcriptase inhibitory activity for human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1). It was specified that Sumac could be used as a biological resource due to such inhibitory activity.4
Another study focusing on HIV found that Sumac extracts exhibited anti-HIV activity due to inhibiting the HIV-1 reverse transcriptase and protease activity. It was also demonstrated that Sumac inhibited the viral load in HIV-infected CEM-GFP (a CD4+ T-lymphocytic reporter cell line expressing green fluorescent protein [GFP] under HIV-1 LTR promoter) cells and human peripheral blood lymphocytes.5 Another study reported that Sumac extract presented strong antiviral activity against HSV-1 and HSV-2. The study also revealed that Sumac extract did not only interact with the viral envelope but also interacted with the surface of the host cells of the viruses, thus, disrupted the ability of the virus to adsorb and penetrate the host cells.6
The above-mentioned studies indicated the antiviral effects of Sumac extracts. The review of the viruses, on which Sumac is effective, such as influenza, HSV-1, HSV-2, VZV, and HIV-1 demonstrated that the common point between these viruses was the fact that they are all enveloped viruses, contain dense lipids in their envelopes, and are sensitive to ether.7 Coronaviruses share the same common features.7 Sumac is likely to affect the lipid layer in the virus envelope, disrupting the adsorption to the host cell and preventing the virus from penetrating the host cell, positively contributing to the infection. Naturally, this hypothesis should be evidenced in future studies. However, its effectiveness on the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV2) should be clarified first through animal testing and subsequently should be tested through human subjects.
Conclusion
An evaluation of the up to date knowledge, revealed by the clinical studies, on the characteristics of COVID-19 infection, its pathophysiology, clinic, and treatment, suggests that the use of Sumac extracts could be beneficial. Based on the beneficial effects indicated by the scientific studies on Sumac extracts, the present review could be encouraging to investigate its effectiveness for COVID-19 treatment. The authors of the present study believe that the benefits of Sumac extract can be tested by adding the adverse-effect-free Sumac extract to treatment and protecting the existing treatment protocols.
Sugar intake during pregnancy is associated with allergy and allergic asthma in children
University of Bristol (UK), July 5, 2021
High maternal sugar intake during pregnancy may increase the risk of allergy and allergic asthma in the offspring, according to an early study led by Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) involving almost 9,000 mother-child pairs.
While some research has reported an association between a high consumption of sugar-containing beverages and asthma in children, the relation between maternal sugar intake during pregnancy and allergy and asthma in the offspring has been little studied.
The team, which included researchers from University of Bristol, used data from a world-leading birth cohort study, the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), also known as 'Children of the 90s'. The cohort recruited mothers who were pregnant in the 1990s and has been following up their offspring ever since.
The current study, which is published in the European Respiratory Journal, analysed associations between maternal intake of free sugars in pregnancy and allergy (defined by positive skin tests to common allergens, namely dust mite, cat and grass) and asthma at seven years of age.
While there was only weak evidence for a link between free sugar intake in pregnancy and asthma overall, there were strong positive associations with allergy and allergic asthma (where the child was diagnosed with asthma and had positive skin tests to allergens).
When comparing the 20 per cent of mothers with the highest sugar intake versus the 20 per cent of mothers with the lowest sugar intake, there was an increased risk of 38 per cent for allergy in the offspring (73 per cent for allergy to two or more allergens) and 101 per cent for allergic asthma. The team found no association with eczema or hay fever.
Lead researcher Professor Seif Shaheen from QMUL said: "We cannot say on the basis of these observations that a high intake of sugar by mothers in pregnancy is definitely causing allergy and allergic asthma in their offspring. However, given the extremely high consumption of sugar in the West, we will certainly be investigating this hypothesis further with some urgency.
"The first step is to see whether we can replicate these findings in a different cohort of mothers and children. If we can, then we will design a trial to test whether we can prevent childhood allergy and allergic asthma by reducing the consumption of sugar by mothers during pregnancy. In the meantime, we would recommend that pregnant women follow current guidelines and avoid excessive sugar consumption."
The team speculate that the associations may be explained by a high maternal intake of fructose causing a persistent postnatal allergic immune response leading to allergic inflammation in the developing lung.
The researchers controlled for numerous potential confounders in their analyses, such as background maternal characteristics, social factors and other aspects of maternal diet, including foods and nutrients that have been previously linked to childhood asthma and allergy.
Importantly, the offspring's free sugar intake in early childhood was found to have no association with the outcomes seen in the analysis.
As the study is observational, it does not prove a causal link between maternal sugar intake and allergies or asthma. A randomised controlled trial would be needed to definitively test causality.
