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Aronia berry supplementation supports gut, arterial health
King’s College London, October 17 2022.
The issue of Clinical Nutrition reported findings from a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial that uncovered a benefit for supplementation with aronia berry among men and women with prehypertension.
“Aronia melanocarpa, or black chokeberry, has gained increased attention for its high content of (poly)phenols, and potential protection against chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes,” authors Melanie Le Sayec of King’s College London and colleagues remarked.
The trial included 102 participants between the ages of 40 and 70 years who received aronia berry extract capsules that contained 106 milligrams total polyphenols or identical placebo capsules for 12 weeks. Blood pressure, arterial function, gut microbiome composition and other factors were assessed before and after the treatment period.
At the end of the study, augmentation index and pulse wave velocity, which measure arterial stiffness, significantly improved among participants who received aronia in comparison with the placebo group. The aronia-supplemented group also had a significant increase in microbiome species richness and abundance of species that produce butyrate, a compound that has a favorable effect in gut health.
The researchers observed associations between plasma and urinary aronia-derived polyphenol metabolites, decreased arterial stiffness and various gut flora species. “To our knowledge, this is the first time these species are shown to correlate with beneficial effects on arterial function,” they announced.
“The present findings suggest that daily consumption of aronia berry extract led to improvements in arterial function in healthy middle-aged people, with a concomitant and related increase in potentially health-promoting bacterial taxa,” the authors concluded.
Zinc enhances albumin’s protective role against Parkinson’s disease
University of Science and Technology, October 17, 2022
Revealing zinc’s interaction with a critical transport protein underscores the need to study biological pathways under physiologically relevant conditions.
Heavy metals in the body have long been thought to induce the aggregation of disease-linked proteins, but a KAUST study shows this is not always the case.
It turns out that zinc ions tune the ability of human serum albumin (HSA), an abundant transport protein in the body, to better prevent α-synuclein from aggregating, a process directly linked to Parkinson’s disease.
In unrealistically massive quantities, zinc tends to accelerate the aggregation of α-synuclein, a neuronal protein implicated in Parkinson’s disease. This is what other scientists had shown in the past. But, under the types of biologically plausible experimental conditions considered by Al-Harthi, the metal actually interacts with HSA to cause the opposite effect.
Using a state-of-the-art imaging technique known as proton-less nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, Al-Harthi and colleagues showed that zinc binding alters the chaperone function of HSA, a multifunctional molecule that plays a role in blocking α-synuclein accretion. In particular, zinc ions biased HSA toward stronger interactions with the aggregation-prone fragments of α-synuclein, a change that blunts fibril formation and slows down the toxic process of protein deposition that can lead to neurodegeneration.
High exposure to glyphosate in pregnancy could cause lower birth weights in babies
Indiana University School of Medicine, October 17, 2022
Indiana University School of Medicine researchers are learning more about the effects of herbicide exposure during pregnancy, finding glyphosate in 99% of the pregnant women they observed in the Midwest. In the study, published recently in Environmental Health, higher glyphosate levels were associated with lower birth weight and may also lead to higher neonatal intensive care unit admission risk.
This is the second study the researchers have conducted with significant findings. The team’s previous study, published in 2018, was the first study to confirm glyphosate in 93% of pregnancies which found associations with shortened pregnancies. Other recent studies have also confirmed their findings.
“Pesticide exposure in pregnancy, especially in early pregnancy, can imprint DNA and alter gene expression,” said Paul Winchester, MD, professor of clinical pediatrics and the study’s lead author.
Glyphosate is a chemical, commonly found in Roundup, used to kill weeds. It is used by farmers and homeowners across the United States, but especially in the Midwest on corn and soybeans. Previous studies have shown people can be exposed to glyphosate in all the foods they eat, even packaged or organic foods.
“As a neonatologist, I’m seeing more and more infants with problems like low birth weight as well as mothers with issues like obesity or gestational diabetes,” Winchester said. “We need to keep studying these herbicides long term to find out how they could be causing these issues and what we can do to prevent them.”
Omega-3 supplements linked to younger biological age in older people
University of South Australia & University of Newcastle, October 13, 2022
Supplements of omega-3s may slow cellular ageing in older people with mild cognitive impairment, according to results of a pilot randomized clinical trial
DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) was associated with reduced shortening of telomeres, DNA sequences at the end of chromosomes that shorten as cells replicate and age, report researchers from Australia in Nutrition .
The aging and lifespan of normal, healthy cells are linked to the so-called telomerase shortening mechanism, which limits cells to a fixed number of divisions. During cell replication, the telomeres function by ensuring the cell’s chromosomes do not fuse with each other or rearrange, which can lead to cancer. Elizabeth Blackburn, a telomere pioneer at the University of California San Francisco, likened telomeres to the ends of shoelaces, without which the lace would unravel. With each replication the telomeres shorten, and when the telomeres are totally consumed, the cells are destroyed (apoptosis). Previous studies have also reported that telomeres are highly susceptible to oxidative stress.
This is not the first time that omega-3s have been linked to reduced telomere shortening, with findings from a study by researchers from the University of California, San Francisco indicating that high blood levels of omega-3 fatty acids may slow cellular ageing in people with coronary heart disease (JAMA, Vol. 303, pp. 250-257).
The new study, performed by scientists from the University of South Australia, and the University of Newcastle is an intervention study, albeit on a pilot scale.
Results of the study showed that the omega-6 group exhibited the greatest shortening of telomere length, compared to the DHA and EPA groups. Increased levels of DHA in red blood cells was significantly associated with reduced telomere shortening in the DHA group, said O’Callaghan and his co-workers.
Reading Is Good for Your Health
University of Stavanger (Norway) Oct. 8, 2022
People with poor reading skills are likely to be less healthy than those who read easily, according to recent research. Literacy skills are important for keeping in good shape. A relationship exists between self-perceived health and literacy, and draws on data from the international adult literacy and life skills survey (ALL).
Self-perceived health can mean feeling pains, physical condition hampering everyday activities, fatigue, or emotional problems which affect social relationships. “Other research shows that self-perceived health is closely related to actual well-being,” explains Lundetræ. “So adults with low literacy skills, as a group, are likely to be in worse physical shape than those who can read well.”
A perception of poor health increases among weak readers with age. It is greatest among those aged 45-65 and lowest in the youngest group, aged 16-24. “So it’s natural that the relationship between weak reading skills and the perception of poor health rises with age. That’s when you usually feel the effects of an unhealthy lifestyle or failing to look after yourself properly.”
“Advice on nutrition, healthy diet and physical activity is increasingly communicated through newspaper and magazine articles and on the internet,” Lundetræ explains. “We receive a great deal of information by reading. It’s conceivable that certain people miss out on important health advice because they read poorly and seldom.” How well people understand such written details could be crucial for how good they are at looking after their own health, Lundetræ observes. Health-related text is often complicated. It can contain a lot of technical terms, and is frequently badly written. That makes it difficult to grasp for poor readers.
A general improvement in reading skills might accordingly give more people better health and, in the longer terms, have a beneficial effect on the cost of health services. Since a lot of those who are most in need of such knowledge are poor readers, these texts have to be easy to read. They must be written in a language which is not too technical or which uses too many words, and must communicate clearly and simply.
Hair straightening chemicals associated with higher uterine cancer risk
National Institutes of Health, October 17, 2022
Women who used chemical hair straightening products were at higher risk for uterine cancer compared to women who did not report using these products, according to a new study from the National Institutes of Health. The researchers found no associations with uterine cancer for other hair products that the women reported using, including hair dyes, bleach, highlights, or perms.
The study data includes 33,497 U.S. women ages 35-74 participating in the Sister Study, a study led by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), part of NIH, that seeks to identify risk factors for breast cancer and other health conditions. The women were followed for almost 11 years and during that time 378 uterine cancer cases were diagnosed.
The researchers found that women who reported frequent use of hair straightening products, defined as more than four times in the previous year, were more than twice as likely to go on to develop uterine cancer compared to those who did not use the products.
“We estimated that 1.64% of women who never used hair straighteners would go on to develop uterine cancer by the age of 70; but for frequent users, that risk goes up to 4.05%,” said Alexandra White, Ph.D., head of the NIEHS Environment and Cancer Epidemiology group and lead author on the new study. “This doubling rate is concerning. However, it is important to put this information into context—uterine cancer is a relatively rare type of cancer.”
Uterine cancer accounts for about 3% of all new cancer cases but is the most common cancer of the female reproductive system, with 65,950 estimated new cases in 2022. Studies show that incidence rates of uterine cancer have been rising in the United States, particularly among Black women.
The researchers did not collect information on brands or ingredients in the hair products the women used. However, in the paper they note that several chemicals that have been found in straighteners (such as parabens, bisphenol A, metals, and formaldehyde) could be contributing to the increased uterine cancer risk observed. Chemical exposure from hair product use, especially straighteners, could be more concerning than other personal care products due to increased absorption through the scalp which may be exacerbated by burns and lesions caused by straighteners.