Headlines (Scroll down for complete
stories):
1. Five Foods Prevent Heart Attacks
2.
Drug Pressure Drug Helps Diabetes
3. Men Should Get HPV Vaccine
4. Cardio Workouts Build Stronger Hearts in Women
5.
Antioxidant to Retard Wrinkles Discovered
1. Five Foods Prevent Heart Attacks
Cardiovascular disease is American’s top killer, but five foods
have been proven to prevent heart attacks.
While it’s well-known that a diet high in fruits, vegetables and
whole grains, and low in saturated animal fats, lowers the risk of
heart disease, these five foods go a step further. Bonnie T.
Jortberg, Registered Dietician and senior instructor in the
department of family medicine at University of Colorado at Denver
and Health Sciences Center, told “Bottom Line/Personal” that these
five super heart-healthy foods have been shown to be particularly
effective in preventing heart disease.
The five foods proven to fight cardiovascular disease are:
- Spinach — Spinach is high in folate
which helps prevent the accumulation of homoscysteine in the
blood. Homoscysteine is a major risk factor for heart disease.
- Salmon — Salmon is high in omega-3 fatty
acids which reduce inflammation and help prevent plaque from
blocking arteries.
- Tomatoes — Tomatoes are rich in lycopene
which lowers cholesterol.
- Oatmeal — Oatmeal is a great source of
soluble fiber which absorbs excess cholesterol and removes it from
your body.
- Pomegranates — Pomegranates are rich in
polyphenols, which are antioxidants that keep hearts healthy by
neutralizing cell-damaging free radicals, and may also reduce LDL
“bad” cholesterol.
Editor's Note:
2. Blood Pressure Drug Helps Diabetes
Vitamin C may benefit people with type-1 diabetes, but new
research found that a blood pressure drug called telmisartan did the
same thing as vitamin C and might be safer! The research team said
both help remove free radicals that damage tissue.
The team from the University of Warwick in the UK found that high
blood-sugar levels often experienced by type-1 diabetics can trigger
changes to the mitochondria, which are the energy-producing
components of cells. When such changes occur, the mitochondria can
begin churning out high levels of free radicals. Even after blood
sugar is normalized, the team found, free radicals are produced long
afterwards.
The study team then found that the free radicals are neutralized
by vitamin C. In addition, they also found that telmisartan
stimulates cells to remove the free radicals naturally. Both
treatments must be continued long-term in order to be effective.
However, lead researcher Professor Antonio Ceriello said that
long-term treatment with vitamin C “could be dangerous,” and for
that reason telmisartan might be more useful. The team is currently
looking for other drugs that will permanently stop free radical
production.
Editor's Note:
3. Men Should Get HPV Vaccine
Men should be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted wart
virus to protect them against a type of mouth and throat cancer,
U.S. researchers said on Monday.
They said the rate of oropharyngeal cancers — mostly cancers
of the tonsil and base of tongue — appears to be rising in
certain populations and the human papilloma virus or HPV transmitted
by oral sex is likely to blame.
New vaccines that target HPV may help turn the trend around, the
researchers reported in this week's issue of the journal Cancer. The
vaccines are recommended for young women in Europe and the United
States.
But young men should be offered the vaccines too, said Dr. Erich
Sturgis and Paul Cinciripini of the University of Texas M. D.
Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
"(We) encourage the rapid study of the efficacy and safety of
these vaccines in males and, if successful, the recommendation of
vaccination of young adult and adolescent males," Sturgis and
Cinciripini wrote.
There are several strains of HPV, which cause ordinary warts but
also genital warts. These in turn can cause cancer in some cases.
The researchers looked at various studies and concluded that HPV 16
was especially likely to be linked with certain cancers of the
tonsil and base of tongue.
Smoking is a well known risk factor but rates of these cancer are
staying fairly steady, despite declines in tobacco use.
In one study cited by Sturgis and Cinciripini, Dr. Maura Gillison
of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and colleagues studied 100
patients with oral or throat cancer and compared them to 200 healthy
people. They found those who had six or more oral sex partners had a
high risk of the cancer.
They found evidence of HPV-16 in 72 percent of the tumors.
U.S. health officials estimate that more than a quarter of U.S.
girls and women aged 14 to 59 are infected with HPV.
Two vaccines protect people against HPV infection — Merck
and Co's. Gardasil and GlaxoSmithKline's Cervarix. The U.S. Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended vaccination for
30 million women and girls aged 11 to 26 to prevent cervical cancer,
which kills about 300,000 women worldwide each year.
Head and neck cancers, which include cancers of the larynx, nose
and nasal passages, mouth, pharynx, and salivary glands, are three
times more common in men than women, and 45,000 new cases are
expected in 2007 in the United States alone.
© 2007 Reuters. All rights reserved.
Editor's Note:
4. Cardio Workouts Build Stronger Hearts in Women
The results of a new study may help explain why women's hearts
benefit more from physical exercise than men's hearts do. Studies in
exercising male and female mice found that moderate, long-term
exercise provokes a sex-dependent cardiac change that is different
for females.
The findings, reported at an American Physiological
Society-sponsored meeting in Austin, Texas, may eventually lead to
improved treatment strategies for women and men with heart disease.
Dr. Sebastian Brokat and colleagues from the Center for
Cardiovascular Research, Charite Berlin, had male and female mice
exercise for a little more than 5 weeks and they looked for
structural and physiological changes in the animal's hearts in
response to the physical activity.
They found that regularly exercising female mice showed a much
higher level of exercise performance than their male counterparts.
Compared with male mice, female mice ran on a running wheel farther,
faster, and for longer periods of time.
"Surprisingly," Brokat said, the female mice developed bigger and
stronger hearts than the male mice. This type of beneficial heart
enlargement or "hypertrophy" frequently occurs with exercise. It
differs from pathological hypertrophy, an abnormal enlargement that
leads to problems such as heart failure, which is irreversible.
The study also found that only the female mice experienced a
20-percent decrease in a protein that is usually found in people
with heart disease. "Also, a certain marker of fibrosis, which is
normally increased in heart disease, was decreased in our exercising
females compared to exercising males," Brokat noted.
Heart enlargement in the exercising female mice was inversely
correlated with decreased expression of these two protein markers.
It is possible that women have a lower level of these two markers
of heart disease to start with, Brokat noted.
While more research is needed, the current findings, Brokat
concluded, "bring us a step closer to explaining the sex bias in
physical activity that protects the heart."
Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited.
Editor's Note:
5. Antioxidant to Retard Wrinkles Discovered
A new method for fighting skin wrinkles has been developed at the
Hebrew University Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environmental
Quality Sciences.
In her doctoral research at the university, Dr. Orit Bossi
succeeded in isolating a plant-based antioxidant that delays the
aging process by countering the breakdown of collagen fibers in the
skin. Dr. Bossi conducted her research under the supervision of
Zecharia Madar, the Karl Bach Professor of Agricultural Biochemistry
at the Hebrew University, and Prof. Shlomo Grossman of Bar-Ilan
University.
Antioxidants operate against free radicals which cause a
breakdown of many tissues in the body, including the skin. When
found in small quantities in the body, free radicals are not harmful
and are even involved in various physical processes. When there is
an excess of free radicals, however, as occurs during normal aging
or as a result of excessive exposure to ultra-violet radiation from
the sun, the result, among other things, is a breakdown of the
collagen and elastin fibers in the skin. When this happens, there is
a loss of skin elasticity and the formation of wrinkles.
“A problem with many of the commercial antioxidants found today
in the market that are said to retard the aging process is that they
oxidize quickly and therefore their efficiency declines with time,”
said Dr. Bossi. “Vitamin C, for example, oxidizes rapidly and is
sensitive to high temperatures. This is also true of the antioxidant
EGCG which is found in green tea, and vitamin E. As opposed to
these, the antioxidant which I used in my research is able to
withstand high temperatures, is soluble in water, and does not
oxidize easily and thus remains effective over time.”
Dr. Bossi is looking towards a new generation of cosmetic
products which will not only combat wrinkles but will be more
effective against deeper levels of skin wrinkles than current
products. Dr. Bossi did not reveal the plant source she used to
derive the antioxidant, since the research is in the process of
being patented.
In her research, Dr. Bossi conducted experiments on mice skin
tissue, which, she says, resembles that of humans. She applied her
antioxidant on two skin cell groups – those which had been exposed
to the sun’s rays and received her antioxidant and those which also
had been exposed to sun but did not receive the antioxidant. The
untreated cells showed a rise in free radicals causing wrinkles,
while those cells which had been treated showed no significant
increase in the free radicals level.
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