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HEALTH NEWS
- B vitamins can potentially be used to treat advanced non-alcoholic fatty liver disease
- Decreased acetyl-L-carnitine levels associated with depression
- Skip the texts: Face-to-face meetings make college students happier
- Eating more plant protein associated with lower risk of death
- Heat therapy boosts mitochondrial function in muscles
- Your soap and toothpaste could be messing with your microbiome
B vitamins can potentially be used to treat advanced non-alcoholic fatty liver disease
Duke University Medical School, August 6, 2022
Scientists at Duke-NUS Medical School have uncovered a mechanism that leads to an advanced form of fatty liver disease—and it turns out that vitamin B12 and folic acid supplements could reverse this process.
These findings could help people with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, an umbrella term for a range of liver conditions affecting people who drink little to no alcohol, which affects 25% of all adults globally, and four in 10 adults in Singapore.
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease involves fat build-up in the liver and is a leading cause of liver transplants worldwide. When the condition progresses to inflammation and scar tissue formation, it is known as non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).
Dr. Tripathi, study co-author Dr. Brijesh Singh and their colleagues in Singapore, India, China and the US confirmed the association of homocysteine with NASH progression in preclinical models and humans. They also found that when homocysteine attached to a protein called syntaxin 17, it blocked the protein from performing its role of transporting and digesting fat (known as autophagy, an essential cellular process by which cells remove malformed proteins or damaged organelles) in fatty acid metabolism, mitochondrial turnover, and inflammation prevention. This induced the development and progression of fatty liver disease to NASH.
Importantly, the researchers found that supplementing the diet in the preclinical models with vitamin B12 and folic acid increased the levels of syntaxin 17 in the liver and restored its role in autophagy. It also slowed NASH progression and reversed liver inflammation and fibrosis.
Decreased acetyl-L-carnitine levels associated with depression
Stanford University, July 30 2022.
An article that in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported a link between low levels of acetyl-L-carnitine and a greater risk of depression.
Acting on the findings of animal research conducted by lead author Carla Nasca, PhD, the researchers recruited men and women between the ages of 20 and 70 years who had been admitted to Weill Cornell Medicine or Mount Sinai School of Medicine for treatment of acute depression. Clinical assessments were conducted upon enrollment and blood samples were analyzed for levels of acetyl-L-carnitine.
In comparison with levels measured in blood samples provided by 45 demographically matched healthy men and women, acetyl-L-carnitine blood levels in depressed subjects were substantially lower. Acetyl-L-carnitine levels were lowest among depressed patients who had severe symptoms, a history of treatment resistance, or early onset disease. Having a history of childhood abuse was also associated with low acetyl-L-carnitine levels.
“We’ve identified an important new biomarker of major depression disorder,” Dr Rasgon stated. What’s the appropriate dose, frequency, duration? We need to answer many questions before proceeding with recommendations, yet.
Skip the texts: Face-to-face meetings make college students happier
University of Hamburg (Germany), August 5, 2022
In a world where everyone spends more and more time with eyes fixed on their phones, new research suggests young people feel happier after socializing with friends in person rather than virtually
The conclusion is an outgrowth of nearly four years spent analyzing how social habits of more than 3,000 college students affected their state of mind.
“The findings of this study suggest that talking to people face to face makes us feel better than texting back and forth, for example,” said James Maddux, senior scholar at the Center for the Advancement of Well-Being in Fairfax, Va., who reviewed the results.
Led by Lara Kroencke, of the University of Hamburg in Germany, the researchers noted that other studies have consistently shown that people tend to feel better after socializing with others.To better explore that question, Kroencke’s team conducted three studies between 2017 and 2020 with students from the University of Texas at Austin.
Researchers chose that age group because of the “intense” socializing that tends to take place during that phase of life. Participants between 18 and 24 years old; 37% were white, 23% were Asian, 23% were Hispanic, nearly 5% were Black, and the rest identified as multiracial.
The result: Students tended to feel best after interacting with others in person or through a mix of in person and virtual, versus entirely by computer or phone. Interacting only virtually was, however, better for well-being than no interaction at all, the team stressed.
They also found that socializing with close friends brought about a greater overall sense of well-being than engaging with either family or someone a person didn’t know so well. And those who tended towards high levels of neuroticism were likely to benefit the most from in-person interactions.
Eating more plant protein associated with lower risk of death
Massachusetts General Hospital & Harvard Medical School, July 31, 2022
Eating more protein from plant sources was associated with a lower risk of death and eating more protein from animals was associated with a higher risk of death, especially among adults with at least one unhealthy behavior such as smoking, drinking and being overweight or sedentary, according to an article published online by JAMA Internal Medicine.
Mingyang Song, M.D., Sc.D., of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, and coauthors used data from two large U.S. studies that had repeated measures of diet through food questionnaires and up to 32 years of follow-up. Among 131,342 study participants, 85,013 (64.7 percent) were women and the average age of participants was 49. Median protein intake, measured as a percentage of calories, was 14 percent for animal protein and 4 percent for plant protein.
The authors report:
After adjusting for major lifestyle and dietary risk factors, every 10 percent increment of animal protein from total calories was associated with a 2 percent higher risk of death from all causes and an 8 percent increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease death.
In contrast, eating more plant protein was associated with a 10 percent lower risk of death from all causes for every 3 percent increment of total calories and a 12 percent lower risk of cardiovascular death.
Increased mortality associated with eating more animal protein was more pronounced among study participants who were obese and those who drank alcohol heavily.
The association between eating more plant protein and lower mortality was stronger among study participants who smoked, drank at least 14 grams of alcohol a day, were overweight or obese, were physically inactive or were younger than 65 or older than 80.
Substituting 3 percent of calories from animal protein with plant protein was associated with a lower risk of death from all causes: 34 percent for replacing processed red meat, 12 percent for replacing unprocessed red meat and 19 percent for replacing eggs.
Heat therapy boosts mitochondrial function in muscles
Brigham Young University, August 2, 2022
A new study finds that long-term heat therapy may increase mitochondrial function in the muscles. The discovery could lead to new treatments for people with chronic illness or disease. The study–the first of its kind in humans–is published in the Journal of Applied Physiology.
Mitochondria, the “energy centers” of the cells, are essential for maintaining good health. Exercise has been shown to create new mitochondria and improve function of existing mitochondria. However, some people with chronic illnesses are not able to exercise long enough–previous research suggests close to two hours daily–to reap the benefits. Rodent studies have suggested that heat exposure may also induce the production of more mitochondria.
Researchers from Brigham Young University in Utah studied 20 adult volunteers who had not participated in regular exercise in the three months prior to the study. The research team applied two hours of shortwave diathermy–a type of heat therapy generated by electrical pulses–to the thigh muscles of one leg of each person every day. The researchers based the six-day trial of heat on the minimum amount of exercise needed to measure changes in muscle, or about two hours each day. They designed the treatment to mimic the effects of muscle heating that occurs during exercise. The therapy sessions increased the temperature of the heated leg by approximately 7 degrees F. Each participant’s other leg served as a control, receiving no heat therapy or temperature change. The researchers looked at mitochondria content in the muscles on the first day of therapy and 24 hours after the last treatment.
Mitochondrial function increased by an average of 28 percent in the heated legs after the heat treatment. The concentration of several mitochondrial proteins also increased in the heated legs, which suggests that “in addition to improving function, [repeated exposure to heat] increased mitochondrial content in human skeletal muscle,” the research team wrote.
Your soap and toothpaste could be messing with your microbiome
University of Chicago, August 2, 2022
Antimicrobial chemicals found in common household products could be wreaking havoc with people’s guts, according to a research paper out this week in the journal Science.
Triclosan is an antibacterial compound used in soaps, detergent and toothpaste, as well as toys and plastics. It was originally only used in hospitals, but it found its way into homes as Americans became more germ-phobic. (However, recent studies have found it no more effective at killing bacteria than plain soap. )
Now, there are growing concerns about the possible negative effects of the chemical on human health and the environment. According to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), animal studies have shown that the chemical can act as a hormone disruptor. A study found traces of triclosan in the urine of 75% of the participants – some as young as six. The chemical has also been found in more than half of freshwater streams in the US.
The latest research paper, written by academics from the University of Chicago, focused on the lesser-known effects of triclosan exposure on the bacteria in people’s guts.
Disturbing the human microbiome has been “linked to a wide array of diseases and metabolic disorders, including obesity, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and behavioral and metabolic disorders,” wrote the paper’s authors, Alyson L Yee and Jack A Gilbert.
To test the chemical’s effect in humans, researchers from Stanford and Cornell universities gave seven volunteers triclosan-containing products, such as toothpaste and liquid soap, to use for four months. After that period, the same volunteers were switched to products without triclosan. The volunteers were compared with a second group who first used the non-triclosan products, then changed to those containing triclosan.
The results showed that more triclosan was found in the urine of all the participants during the periods when they were using triclosan-containing products.
Yee and Gilbert also suggested that exposure to triclosan could be even more detrimental to the health of developing fetuses and newborns than to adults. A 2014 New York University study found that gut disruptions in early infancy could have lasting negative effects on immune and brain development.
