Mediterranean Foods For Lower Alzheimer’s Disease Risk

Mediterranean foods are good for preventing Alzheimer’s

Individuals whose diet includes more salad dressing, nuts, fish, poultry and certain fruits and vegetables and fewer high-fat dairy products, red meats, organ meats and butter appear less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease, according to a report posted online today that will appear in the June print issue of Archives of Neurology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

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“Epidemiological evidence linking diet, one of the most important modifiable environmental factors, and risk of Alzheimer’s disease is rapidly increasing,” the authors write as background information in the article. “However, current literature regarding the impact of individual nutrients or food items on Alzheimer’s disease risk is inconsistent, partly because humans eat meals with complex combinations of nutrients or food items that are likely to be synergistic.”

Yian Gu, Ph.D., of Columbia University Medical Center, New York, and colleagues studied 2,148 older adults (age 65 and older) without dementia living in New York. Participants provided information about their diets and were assessed for the development of dementia every 1.5 years for an average of four years. Several dietary patterns were identified with varying levels of seven nutrients previously shown to be associated with Alzheimer’s disease risk: saturated fatty acids, monounsaturated fatty acids, omega-3 fatty acids, omega-6 fatty acids, vitamin E, vitamin B12 and folate.

Paralysed limbs revived by hacking into nerves!

Interesting article can be read here

Schiefer is describing an experiment in which pulses of electricity are used to control the muscles of an unconscious patient, as if they were a marionette. It represents the beginnings of a new generation of devices that he hopes will allow people with paralysed legs to regain control of their muscles and so be able to stand, or even walk again.

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Limb Regrowth Around the Corner?

Interesting article about the potential for re-growing lost limbs. Its implications for future medicine are self explanatory.

A quest that began over a decade ago with a chance observation has reached a milestone: the identification of a gene that may regulate regeneration in mammals. The absence of this single gene, called p21, confers a healing potential in mice long thought to have been lost through evolution and reserved for creatures like flatworms, sponges, and some species of salamander. In a report published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from The Wistar Institute demonstrate that mice that lack the p21 gene gain the ability to regenerate lost or damaged tissue.

Full Genome Sequenced

The cost of genome sequencing has now fallen enough for scientists to be able to sequence the entire genome of people with rare genetic diseases to identify the causes of those diseases.

James Lupski, a physician-scientist who suffers from a neurological disorder called Charcot-Marie-Tooth, has been searching for the genetic cause of his disease for more than 25 years. Late last year, he finally found it–by sequencing his entire genome. While a number of human genome sequences have been published to date, Lupski’s research is the first to show how whole-genome sequencing can be used to identify the genetic cause of an individual’s disease.

The project, published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, reflects a new approach to the hunt for disease-causing genes–an approach made possible by the plunging cost of DNA sequencing. Part of a growing trend in the field, the study incorporates both new technology and a more traditional method of gene-hunting that involves analyzing families with rare genetic diseases. A second study, the first to describe the genomes of an entire family of four, confirmed the genetic root of a rare disease, called Miller syndrome, afflicting both children. That study was published online yesterday in Science.

For some genetic diseases there’s not just one mutation that causes them.

Sequencing could drop to as low as $250 within 5 years

It took 13 years and an investment of nearly $1 billion to sequence the first human genome in the early 2000s. When the Seattle team launched its analysis in 2009, the cost had plummeted to $20,000 per genome. The lab work took a month.

Today, the price is approaching $10,000. Lifton predicts $250 genomes within five years — cheaper than many medical tests.

Dropping Cancer Death Rates

The Death rates from cancer declined in the US between 1970 – 2006

ATLANTA–A new American Cancer Society study finds progress in reducing cancer death rates is evident whether measured against baseline rates in 1970 or in 1990. The study appears in the open access journal PLos ONE, and finds a downturn in cancer death rates since 1990 results mostly from reductions in tobacco use, increased screening allowing early detection of several cancers, and modest to large improvements in treatment for specific cancers.

Temporal trends in death rates are the most reliable measure of progress against cancer, reflecting improvements in prevention, early detection, and treatment. Although age-standardized cancer death rates in the U.S. have been decreasing since the early 1990s, some reports have cited limited improvement in death rates as evidence that the “war on cancer”, which was initiated in 1971, has failed. Many of these analyses fail to account for the dominant and dramatic increase in cancer death rates due to tobacco-related cancers in the latter part of the 20th century.

To investigate further, researchers led by American Cancer Society epidemiologist Ahmedin Jemal, Ph.D., used nationwide cancer mortality data for the years 1970 through 2006 from the SEER*Stat database, which defines major cancer sites consistently over time in order to facilitate reporting of long term mortality trends. They found for all cancers combined, death rates (per 100,000) in men increased from 249.3 in 1970 to 279.8 in 1990, and then decreased to 221.1 in 2006, yielding a relative decline of 21% from 1990 (peak year) and a drop of 11% since 1970 (baseline year). Similarly, the death rate from all-cancers combined in women increased from 163.0 in 1970 to 175.3 in 1991, and then decreased to 153.7 in 2006, a relative decline of 12% and 6% from the 1991 (peak year) and 1970 rates, respectively.

The full report is here.

During the most recent time period, death rates decreased for cancers of the oral cavity, stomach, bladder, kidney, brain, and Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and leukemia in both males and females and for cancers of the esophagus and ovary and melanoma and Hodgkin lymphoma in females. In contrast, rates increased for esophagus cancer and melanoma in men, liver cancer in both men and women, and pancreas cancer in women. Death rates stabilized for pancreatic cancer and Hodgkin lymphoma in men and for cervix and corpus and uterus cancers in women. Notably, the 2006 death rates for Hodgkin lymphoma in men, cervical cancer in women, and stomach cancer in both men and women were less than one-third of the 1970 rates.

There are many reasons the death rates have dropped: improved treatment, less smokers, and early detection. I expect future treatments to come in the form of delivery methods that more accurately target only the cancer cells with toxins or with pieces of regulatory RNA delivered into cells instructing the cancer cells to either die or stop multiplying. The future looks very bright in medical technology!

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Nanoparticles Target Cancer Cells

Nanotechnology was the technologies of the future. Now the future is looking more and more like the present as Cornell researchers have attached antibodies to nanoparticles to attack colorectal cancer cells.

ITHACA, N.Y. – Another weapon in the arsenal against cancer: Nanoparticles that identify, target and kill specific cancer cells while leaving healthy cells alone.

Led by Carl Batt, the Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor of Food Science, the researchers synthesized nanoparticles – shaped something like a dumbbell – made of gold sandwiched between two pieces of iron oxide. They then attached antibodies, which target a molecule found only in colorectal cancer cells, to the particles. Once bound, the nanoparticles are engulfed by the cancer cells.

To kill the cells, the researchers use a near-infrared laser, which is a wavelength that doesn’t harm normal tissue at the levels used, but the radiation is absorbed by the gold in the nanoparticles. This causes the cancer cells to heat up and die.

“This is a so-called ‘smart’ therapy,” Batt said. “To be a smart therapy, it should be targeted, and it should have some ability to be activated only when it’s there and then kills just the cancer cells.”

One can imagine a variety of ways to activate toxins once those toxins have entered cancer cells. The challenge is that to just come up with antibodies that will target all the cancer in a body is a major challenge.

I am wondering whether cancer will ultimately be stopped by precisely delivered poisons or by pieces of RNA delivered into cancer cells to suppress and activate selected genes in the DNA. It is like the difference between bombs and software. Blow up the cells up or regain control over them?

Gene Therapy Improves Mouse Genetic Nerve Disorder

About 1 in 6000 babies is born with a genetic disorder of the nervous system called Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). The equivalent of SMA in mice has now been treated using gene therapy with substantial improvement.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Reversing a protein deficiency through gene therapy can correct motor function, restore nerve signals and improve survival in mice that serve as a model for the lethal childhood disorder spinal muscular atrophy, new research shows.

This muscle-wasting disease results when a child’s motor neurons – nerve cells that send signals from the spinal cord to muscles – produce insufficient amounts of what is called survival motor neuron protein, or SMN. This reduced protein in motor neurons specifically – rather than in other cells throughout the body that contain the protein – is caused by the absence of a single gene.

Better ways to deliver gene therapy will eventually enable many types of human body repair. The gene therapy delivered inside a virus reached almost half of mouse neurons which is an impressive delivery rate. The result was better functioning nervous systems and better muscle control.

The researchers used an altered virus to deliver a portion of DNA that makes the SMN protein into the veins of newborn mice ranging in age from 1 to 10 days old. The SMN-laced viral vector injected into the youngest mice reached almost half of their motor neurons, resulting in improved muscle coordination, properly working electrical signals to the muscles and longer survival than in untreated mice, scientists said.

The superiority of gene therapy should not be surprising because the gene therapy fixes the root cause. Fix the gene that causes the disease and the disease gets better.

“We’re replacing what we know is lost. And we have shown that when you put the protein in postnatally, it will rescue the genetic defect,” said Arthur Burghes, professor of molecular and cellular biochemistry at Ohio State University and a senior co-author of the study. “This technique corrects the mice considerably more than any drug cocktails being studied as a potential treatment in humans.”

We need better carriers of gene therapy into cells. Viruses elicit an immune response and they do not reach all the cells that need the gene therapy payload they carry. Plus, once genes reach inside cells they are at risk of integrating into the genome in locations that can cause cancer. But solve all those problems and then we can do some serious updating of our genetic software.

Inflamation Seen in Obese 3 Year Olds

Another sign that we need to watch what we feed our children.

CHAPEL HILL – A study by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers found that obese children as young as 3 years old have elevated levels of C-reactive protein, a marker of inflammation that in adults is considered an early warning sign for possible future heart disease.

In addition, the study found elevated levels of two other inflammatory markers – the ratio of ferritin/transferrin saturation (F/T) and the absolute neutrophil count (ANC) – in obese children. Elevated F/T levels started at age 6 and elevated ANC levels were found starting at age 9.

High fructose corn syrup in baby foods is probably contributing to this, but parents with overweight toddlers should take notice.