Unripe Banana Flour Could Give A Healthy Boost To Pasta

 
Unripe Banana

Supplementing spaghetti with unripe banana flour may be a healthy addition since banana flour contains antioxidants and fiber, according to a study in the Journal of Food Science, published by the Institute of Food Technologists.

Fiber-rich unripe banana flour contains resistant starch, a type of fiber that may aid in managing weight and type 2 diabetes. “As consumers are unlikely to eat sufficient amounts of vegetables and other fiber-rich foods directly, the supplementation of pasta with unripe banana flour can play an important role in achieving health benefits,” says Edith Agama-Acevedo, lead researcher at the Centro de Desarrollo de Productos Bióticos del IPN in Mexico.

Banana flour was added to pasta in the study because pasta is considered a product with a low glycemic index, a rating that measures the effects of carbohydrates on blood sugar levels. Low glycemic responses are thought to be favorable to health because of possible prevention of heart disease and metabolic diseases like type 2 diabetes.

Researchers served spaghetti made from semolina and a semolina/banana flour blend to 200 Mexican consumers. “The preference of the banana flour-added spaghetti and the control was similar,” says Agama-Acevedo. “The addition of tomato sauce increased the acceptability of the banana flour spaghetti. The spaghetti added with 30 and 45 percent of banana flour had higher acceptability than its control.

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New Storage Methods Extend Life Of Japanese Plums

New Storage Methods Extend Life

 Plums: they're sweet, juicy, and packed with beneficial antioxidants and dietary fiber. Although there are many varieties available to consumers, there are two main types of the small, purple fruit: Japanese plums and European plums. Japanese plums are the most widely grown type and are round, while oval European plums are commonly used for making dried plums, or prunes.

Getting fresh plums to the marketplace has been a challenge for fruit producers. The short shelf life of Japanese and European plums limits export and shipping options—Japanese plums can typically be stored for only three to five weeks after harvesting. For years, researchers have tested a variety of techniques to extend the storage life of Japanese and European plums, including preharvest calcium application, postharvest heat treatment, application of an edible coating, cold storage, and "modified atmosphere storage". Results of the tests have been inconclusive and sporadic.

Ahmad Sattar Khan, a PhD student, and Dr. Zora Singh, Associate Professor of Horticulture at the Muresk Institute, University of Technology in Perth, Western Australia, recently carried out a research project attempting to extend the postharvest storage life of Japanese plums (Prunus salicina Lindl. cv. Tegan Blue). The study, published in the Journal of the American Society of Horticultural Science, tested the effects of modified atmosphere packaging (MAP), and the application of 1-methylcyclopropene (1-MCP), a fumigant, on Japanese plums, including the effects on the fruit's dietary antioxidants and overall quality.

According to the report, a combination of modified atmosphere packaging and 1-MCP had been shown to extend the storage life of plums with varying results, depending on storage conditions and type of polyethylene film used under MA storage.

The long-term storage study garnered important new information that will allow fruit producers and exporters to extend the storage life of Japanese plums for up to seven weeks. The researchers concluded that "1-MCP application in combination with MAP can be used effectively to reduce the ethylene biosynthesis and fruit softening during cold storage and to extend the storage life up to seven weeks followed by eight days of ripening without any adverse effects on the quality of the fruit.

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Gene Therapy Technique Slows Brain Disease ALD Featured In Movie Lorenzo's Oil

 
Movie Lorenzo's Oil

A strategy that combines gene therapy with blood stem cell therapy may be a useful tool for treating a fatal brain disease, French researchers have found.

These findings appear in the 6 November 2009 issue of the journal Science, which is published by AAAS, the nonprofit science society.

In a pilot study of two patients monitored for two years, an international team of researchers slowed the onset of the debilitating brain disease X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD) using a lentiviral vector to introduce a therapeutic gene into patient's blood cells. Although studies with larger cohorts of patients are needed, these results suggest that gene therapy with lentiviral vectors, which are derived from disabled versions of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), could potentially become instrumental in treating a broad range of human disorders.

This is the first time we were able to successfully use an HIV-derived lentivirus vector for gene therapy in humans, and also the first time that a very severe brain disease has been treated with efficacy by gene therapy. We've demonstrated that this HIV-derived lentivirus vector works as was hoped for so many years," said coauthor Patrick Aubourg, professor of pediatrics at University Paris-Descartes and head of a research unit at Inserm-University Paris Descartes.

Featured in the movie "Lorenzo's Oil," ALD is a severe hereditary condition caused by a deficiency of a protein called ALD that is involved in fatty acid degradation. Sufferers steadily lose their myelin sheath, the protective layer that coats nerve fibers in the brain. Without myelin the nerves lose function, leading to increasing physical and mental disability in patients. X-linked ALD, the most common form of the disease, affects boys starting at age 6-8 years of age and death usually occurs before the patients reach adolescence.

Bone marrow transplants typically slow progression of the disease because the donor marrow includes cells that develop into myelin-producing cells. However, finding a matching bone marrow donor can be a challenging and lengthy process, and the procedure carries considerable risks.

Genetically correcting the blood stem cells in the patients' own bone marrow may prove to be a valuable alternative approach when no matched donors are available.

In most gene therapy studies, a working gene is inserted into the genome to replace a dysfunctional, disease-causing gene. A carrier molecule called a vector is used to deliver the therapeutic gene into the patient's cells. Vectors are typically the backbones of viruses that have been genetically altered to carry normal human DNA. Scientists have recently turned to vectors based on the lentivirus genus of retroviruses, which includes HIV. Lentiviral vectors are a type of retrovirus that can infect both dividing and nondividing cells, and are thought to provide long-term and stable gene expression, unlike other retroviruses.

"The HIV-derived lentivirus vector allows expression of the therapeutic gene in principle for life, because the therapeutic gene is inserted in the chromosomes -- the genome. Therefore, cells that derive from the initially corrected cells, stem cells in particular, will continue to express the therapeutic gene forever," said Aubourg.

In the study, blood stem cells were removed from the patients and genetically corrected in the lab, using a lentiviral vector to introduce a working copy of the ALD gene into the cells. The modified cells were then infused back into the patients' after they had received a treatment that destroyed their bone marrow. Two years later, healthy ALD proteins were still detectable in both patients' blood cells. Encouragingly, both patients showed neurological improvement and a delay in disease progression comparable to that seen with bone marrow transplants.

The healthy ALD protein was expressed in about 15 percent of blood cells, yet surprisingly this low level was sufficient to slow brain disease in ALD. "This percentage of correction will not be sufficient for all diseases," warns Aubourg. "There is a lot of work to be done to make this gene therapy vector more powerful, less complicated, and less expensive. This is only the beginning," he said.

Gene therapy is not without serious risks. Like other retrovirus vectors, the HIV-derived lentivirus vector is tasked with inserting the therapeutic gene in the chromosomes of the patients' cells. In a worst case scenario, this action could disturb the biology of the cells and patients could end up with leukemia; this outcome has occurred in past gene therapy trials. "The HIV-derived lentivirus vector basically has this same risk, although the design of the vector makes patients less prone to this side effect," said Aubourg.

This research was funded by INSERM (National Institute of Health and Research Medical), Assistance Publique des Hôpitaux de Paris, PHRC programs, the Deutsche Forchungsgemeinschaft and the German Ministry of Education and Research, the European Leukodystrophy Association, the Association Française contre les Myopathies, the Stop ALD Foundation and University Paris-Descartes.

Related Press Briefing in France: A press conference related to the forthcoming Science paper, "Hematopoietic Stem Cell Gene Therapy with a Lentiviral Vector in X-linked Adrenoleukodystrophy," by Dr. Nathalie Cartier and colleagues is planned for 2:00 p.m. in Paris on Wednesday, 4 November.

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Biologists Uncover Surprising Connection Between Breast Cancer Cells and Surrounding Tissue

 
Biologists Uncover Surprising Connection

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Biologist Lee Ligon has found a previously unknown connection between breast cancer tumor cells and the surrounding healthy tissue. The results provide new information on the earliest stages of breast cancer metastasis.

The results were published March 7, 2012, in the journal ,PLoS One. Ligon was joined in the research by Rensselaer doctoral student Maria Apostolopoulou. The research was funded by the American Cancer Society.

The research shows that a specialized type of molecule called Cadherin-23 can be found in and around breast cancer tumors. The molecule, which had never been associated with breast tissue or cancer, helps connect cancerous tumor cells to its neighboring healthy tissue, called the stroma.

Something happens once cancerous cells enter the stroma and the cancer can very quickly become invasive," Ligon said. "Pathologists studying cancerous tissues have often noted that tumor cells make contact with the cells in the stroma, but they assumed the connections were unimportant."

Ligon and her team sought to uncover exactly what molecules were involved in attaching the tumor cells to the surrounding tissue to determine if those initial points of contact play a role in the progression of cancer through the body.

In the human breast, tumors most often originate in what are known as epithelial tissues. These tissues are made up of a specialized type of cell called epithelial cells. Epithelial cells line the interior of many structures and organs within the human body. In the breast, they line the interior of milk ducts. When epithelial cells start to divide uncontrollably, they eventually break out of the duct and literally spill into the surround tissue or stroma. The stroma is composed of cells called fibroblasts and extracellular material such as collagen fibers. In many cases, the invading cancerous epithelial cells will glom onto nearby fibroblasts in the stroma.

Ligon and Apostolopoulou worked to pick apart how the epithelial cells attached themselves to the fibroblasts. One of the primary tools the body uses to glue cells together is a family of molecules called cadherins. In the human genome there are over 80 different cadherin family members. In most cases, cadherins stick two cells of the same type together. In the case of the breast cancer tumor cells and fibroblasts, two very different cells were sticking together. Ligon sought to determine which cadherins were involved in this odd interaction.

At first, their findings were not surprising. They found cadherins associated with epithelial cells as well as cadherins associated with fibroblasts. It was the discovery of the highly specialized and unusual cadherin, Cadherin-23, that really surprised them, according to Ligon.

In the human breast, tumors most often originate in what are known as epithelial tissues. These tissues are made up of a specialized type of cell called epithelial cells. Epithelial cells line the interior of many structures and organs within the human body. In the breast, they line the interior of milk ducts. When epithelial cells start to divide uncontrollably, they eventually break out of the duct and literally spill into the surround tissue or stroma. The stroma is composed of cells called fibroblasts and extracellular material such as collagen fibers. In many cases, the invading cancerous epithelial cells will glom onto nearby fibroblasts in the stroma.

Ligon and Apostolopoulou worked to pick apart how the epithelial cells attached themselves to the fibroblasts. One of the primary tools the body uses to glue cells together is a family of molecules called cadherins. In the human genome there are over 80 different cadherin family members. In most cases, cadherins stick two cells of the same type together. In the case of the breast cancer tumor cells and fibroblasts, two very different cells were sticking together. Ligon sought to determine which cadherins were involved in this odd interaction.h

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New Antibiotics? Solving Mystery of How Sulfa Drugs Kill Bacteria Yields 21st Century Drug Development Target

New Antibiotics

More than 70 years after the first sulfa drugs helped to revolutionize medical care and save millions of lives, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists have determined at an atomic level the mechanism these medications use to kill bacteria. The discovery provides the basis for a new generation of antibiotics that would likely be harder for bacteria to resist and cause fewer side effects.

The work focused on sulfa drugs and their target enzyme, dihydropteroate synthase (DHPS). Most disease-causing microorganisms need DHPS to help make the molecule folate, which is required for the production of DNA and some amino acids. Working with enzymes from gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria, researchers used a variety of techniques to determine for the first time the key intermediate structure DHPS forms during the chemical reaction to advance folate production. The structure also explains at a molecular level how sulfa drugs function and how resistance causing mutations help bacteria withstand them.

The findings mark a major advance in both microbial biochemistry and anti-microbial drug discovery. The study is published in the March 2 issue of the journal Science.

The structure we found was totally unexpected and really opens the door for us and others to design a new class of inhibitors targeting DHPS that will help us avoid side effects and other problems associated with sulfa drugs," said Stephen White, Ph.D., chair of the St. Jude Department of Structural Biology and the paper's corresponding author.

Co-author Richard Lee, Ph.D., a member of the St. Jude Department of Chemical Biology and Therapeutics, added: "Now we want to leverage this information to develop drugs against the opportunistic infections that threaten so many St. Jude patients."

Sulfa drugs were discovered in the 1930s and became the first antibiotic in widespread use. Although the drugs were early victims of antibiotic resistance, they are still widely used against emerging infectious diseases and to prevent infections in patients with weakened immune systems, including St. Jude patients undergoing cancer chemotherapy. The growing problem of antibiotic resistance has prompted renewed interest in sulfa drugs as a possible source of new therapeutic targets, Lee said.

Previous work had shown that sulfa drugs target DHPS and work by mimicking a molecule called pABA. DHPS advances folate production by accelerating the fusion of pABA and another molecule called dihydropteridine pyrophosphate (DHPP). Until now, however, scientists did not know exactly how the DHPS reaction occurred or how sulfa drugs disrupted the process.

Working on enzymes from gram-positive Bacillus anthracis and gram-negative Yersinia pestis, the bacteria that cause anthrax and plague, researchers first used computational methods to predict the enzyme's activity. Next they used a technique called X-ray crystallography to capture the unfolding chemical reaction and confirm the prediction. X-ray crystallography involves bombarding proteins trapped in crystals with X-rays to determine the protein structure.

Researchers showed that DHPP binds to a specific pocket in DHPS. Aided by magnesium, the binding promotes the break-up of DHPP and release of pyrophosphate. Two long flexible loops then create an intermediate structure that sets the stage for pABA to enter and bind in a second short-lived pocket, allowing pABA to fuse with the cleaved DHPP. Investigators captured all four actors in the drama in a single crystal structure, including the intermediate cleaved DHPP molecule whose existence was previously unknown.

The results showed that the mechanism involves a chemical reaction known as an Sn1 reaction rather than the anticipated Sn2 reaction. "This is a key finding for drug discovery because it reveals chemical features of the DHPS enzyme's active site that we can exploit in developing new drugs," said study co-author Donald Bashford, Ph.D., an associate member of the St. Jude Department of Structural Biology.

The study also provided insights into sulfa drug resistance. Investigators showed that the binding sites of pABA and the sulfa drugs overlap, but that sulfa drugs extend beyond the pocket in which pABA binds. Mutations associated with drug resistance cluster around this extended region of the pABA pocket, which explains how mutations can prevent the drugs from binding without seriously affecting the binding of pABA. The work also highlights the transitory structure made by the two DHPS loops as a target for a new class of drugs that would be difficult for bacteria to develop resistance against.

When we set out on this project eight years ago, a goal was to truly understand the catalytic mechanism of the DHPS protein and how the inhibitors targeting it work. I am ecstatic we've succeeded," Lee said. The success grew out of an interdisciplinary effort and some luck, White said. The plague enzyme turned out to be well suited to this project. Unlike the DHPS enzymes from other bacteria, the two extended loops are free to form the short-lived structure and the pABA pocket when the enzyme is immobilized in the crystal.

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aulty Fat Sensor Implicated in Obesity and Liver Disease

Faulty Fat Sensor Implicated

Defects in a protein that functions as a dietary fat sensor may be a cause of obesity and liver disease, according to a study published in the journal Nature, led by researchers at Imperial College London. The findings highlight a promising target for new drugs to treat obesity and metabolic disorders.

The protein GPR120 is found on the surface of cells in the gut, liver and fat tissue and allows cells to detect and respond to unsaturated fatty acids from the diet, especially the omega-3 fatty acids which are believed to have a beneficial impact on health. Scientists found that mice deficient in GPR120 were more prone to developing obesity and liver disease when fed a high-fat diet. They also found that people with a certain mutation in the gene encoding GPR120, which stops the protein from responding to omega-3 fatty acids, were significantly more likely to be obese.

In the gut, when unsaturated fatty acids from food bind to GPR120, this stimulates the release of hormones that suppress appetite and stimulate the pancreas to secrete insulin. When fat cells sense high levels of fat in the blood through GPR120, it stimulates them to divide to produce more fat cells to store all the fat, reducing the risk of fatty liver and furring of the arteries. This mechanism could be an important pathway for bringing about some of the healthy effects of omega-3s.

When they were fed on a high-fat diet, mice that lacked GPR120 not only became obese but also had fatty livers, lower numbers of fat cells, and poor control of blood glucose. The researchers believe that mice that are deficient in GPR120 have difficulty storing excess fat in fat tissue. Instead, their bodies store fat in areas where it can cause health problems, like the liver, the muscles and in the walls of arteries. In humans, this pattern of obesity is associated with type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

The study involved scientists in the UK, France and Japan. It was led by Professor Philippe Froguel, from the School of Public Health at Imperial College London.

Being overweight is not always unhealthy if you can make more fat cells to store fat," said Professor Froguel. "Some people seem to be unable to do this, and instead they deposit fat around their internal organs, which is very unhealthy. Our study suggests that in both mice and humans, defects in GPR120 combined with a high-fat diet greatly increase the risk of this unhealthy pattern of obesity. We think GPR120 could be a useful target for new drugs to treat obesity and liver diseases.

The researchers analysed the gene for GPR120 in 6,942 obese people and 7,654 controls to test whether differences in the code that carries instructions for making the protein contribute to obesity in humans. They found that one mutation that renders the protein dysfunctional increases a person's risk of obesity by 60 per cent. The researchers think this mutation mimics the effect of a bad diet lacking in unsaturated omega-3 fat.

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Eating Berries Benefits the Brain

 
Eating Berries Benefits the Brain

Strong scientific evidence exists that eating blueberries, blackberries, strawberries and other berry fruits has beneficial effects on the brain and may help prevent age-related memory loss and other changes, scientists report. Their new article on the value of eating berry fruits appears in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

In the article, Barbara Shukitt-Hale, Ph.D., and Marshall G. Miller point out that longer lifespans are raising concerns about the human toll and health care costs of treating Alzheimer's disease and other forms of mental decline. They explain that recent research increasingly shows that eating berry fruits can benefit the aging brain. To analyze the strength of the evidence about berry fruits, they extensively reviewed cellular, animal and human studies on the topic.

Their review concluded that berry fruits help the brain stay healthy in several ways. Berry fruits contain high levels of antioxidants, compounds that protect cells from damage by harmful free radicals. The two also report that berry fruits change the way neurons in the brain communicate. These changes in signaling can prevent inflammation in the brain that contribute to neuronal damage and improve both motor control and cognition. They suggest that further research will show whether these benefits are a result of individual compounds shared between berry fruits or whether the unique combinations of chemicals in each berry fruit simply have similar effects.

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Physical Activity Yields Feelings of Excitement, Enthusiasm

Physical Activity Yields Feelings

 People who are more physically active report greater levels of excitement and enthusiasm than people who are less physically active, according to Penn State researchers. People also are more likely to report feelings of excitement and enthusiasm on days when they are more physically active than usual.

You don't have to be the fittest person who is exercising every day to receive the feel-good benefits of exercise," said David Conroy, professor of kinesiology. "It's a matter of taking it one day at a time, of trying to get your activity in, and then there's this feel-good reward afterwards.

Conroy added that it often is hard for people to commit to an exercise program because they tend to set longterm rather than short-term goals.

"When people set New Year's resolutions, they set them up to include the entire upcoming year, but that can be really overwhelming," he said. "Taking it one day at a time and savoring that feel-good effect at the end of the day might be one step to break it down and get those daily rewards for activity. Doing this could help people be a little more encouraged to stay active and keep up the program they started.

The researchers asked 190 university students to keep daily diaries of their lived experiences, including free-time physical activity and sleep quantity and quality, as well as their mental states, including perceived stress and feeling states. Participants were instructed to record only those episodes of physical activity that occurred for at least 15 minutes and to note whether the physical activity was mild, moderate or vigorous. Participants returned their diaries to the researchers at the end of each day for a total of eight days. The researchers published their results in the current issue of the Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology.

According to Amanda Hyde, kinesiology graduate student, the team separated the participants' feeling states into four categories: pleasant-activated feelings exemplified by excitement and enthusiasm, pleasant-deactivated feelings exemplified by satisfaction and relaxation, unpleasant-activated feelings exemplified by anxiety and anger, and unpleasant-deactivated feelings exemplified by depression and sadness.

We found that people who are more physically active have more pleasant-activated feelings than people who are less active, and we also found that people have more pleasant-activated feelings on days when they are more physically active than usual," said Hyde, who noted that the team was able to rule out alternative explanations for the pleasant-activated feelings, such as quality of sleep.

Our results suggest that not only are there chronic benefits of physical activity, but there are discrete benefits as well. Doing more exercise than you typically do can give you a burst of pleasant-activated feelings. So today, if you want a boost, go do some moderate-to-vigorous intensity exercise.

Conroy added that most previous studies have looked only at pleasant or unpleasant feelings and paid less attention to the notion of activation.

"Knowing that moderate and vigorous physical activity generates a pleasant-activated feeling, rather than just a pleasant feeling, might help to explain why physical activity is so much more effective for treating depression rather than anxiety," he said. "People dealing with anxious symptoms don't need an increase in activation. If anything, they might want to bring it down some. In the future, we plan to look more closely at the effects of physical activity on mental health symptoms.

Other authors on the paper include Aaron Pincus, professor of psychology, and Nilam Ram, assistant professor of human development and family studies and of psychology.

National Institute on Aging and the Penn State Social Science Research Institute funded this research.

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How HRT and the Pill Can Lead to Breast Cancer: New Research Suggests Possible Treatment How HRT and the Pill Can Lead to Breast Cancer: New Research Suggests Possible Treatment

 
New Research Suggests Possible Treatment

Breast cancer is one of the most common cancers, affecting up to one in eight women during their lives in Europe, the UK and USA. Large population studies such as the Women's Health Initiative and the Million Women Study have shown that synthetic sex hormones called progestins used in hormone replacement therapy, HRT, and in contraceptives can increase the risk of breast cancers.

Now medical researchers at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna have identified a key mechanism which allows these synthetic sex hormones to directly affect mammary cells.

The research builds on previous work by Prof Josef Penninger, the IMBA director, who found the first genetic evidence that a protein called RANKL is the master regulator of healthy bones. In a complex system that regulates bone mass, RANKL activates the cells that break down bone material when it needs to be replaced. When the system goes wrong and we make too much of the protein it triggers bone loss, leading to osteoporosis in millions of patients around the world every year. Finding exactly the same molecule in breast tissues led the scientists to the new link between sex hormones and breast cancer.

In a scientific article published in the journal Nature, the research team show that a synthetic female sex hormone used in HRT and contraceptive pills can trigger RANKL in breast cells of mice. As a consequence, these mammary cells start to divide and multiply and fail to die when they should. Moreover, stem cells in the breast become able to renew themselves, ultimately resulting in breast cancer.

Ten years ago we formulated the hypothesis that RANKL might be involved in breast cancer and it took us a long time to develop systems to prove this idea," says Prof Josef Penninger. " I have to admit it completely surprised me just how massive the effects of the system were. Millions of women take progesterone derivatives in contraceptives and for hormonal replacement therapy. Since our results show that the RANKL system is an important molecular link between a synthetic sex hormone and breast tumors, one day women may be able to reduce their risk by taking blocking medicines in advance to prevent breast cancer.

A monoclonal antibody, denosumab, that blocks RANKL has been recently approved in the US and the EU for the treatment of osteoporosis, and is currently under review for the treatment of bone metastases in patients with advanced cancer. "Further studies will be needed to prove the principle of our findings," says Dr Daniel Schramek, who carried out the studies with Prof Josef Penninger at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology in Vienna. "But we hope that medical trials using denosumab can be started in the near future to test whether the mouse studies can be directly translated to human breast cancer.

This work was an international collaboration between lead researchers at IMBA and scientists at the Medical University of Vienna; the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, Sydney, Australia; the Ontario Cancer Institute, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada; Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Medical School and the Ragon Institute of MGH/MIT and Harvard, Boston, USA; the Institute for Genetics, Centre for Molecular Medicine (CMMC), and Cologne Excellence Cluster (CECAD), University of Cologne, Germany; University College London, UK; and the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany.

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Nutrient Found in Dark Meat of Poultry, Some Seafood, May Have Cardiovascular Benefits

Nutrient Found in Dark Meat of Poultry, Some Seafood,Nutrient Found in Dark Meat of Poultry, Some Seafood,A nutrient found in the dark meat of poultry may provide protection against coronary heart disease (CHD) in women with high cholesterol, according to a study by researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center. The study, published online in the European Journal of Nutrition, evaluated the effects of taurine, a naturally-occurring nutrient found in the dark meat of turkey and chicken, as well as in some fish and shellfish, on CHD. It revealed that higher taurine intake was associated with significantly lower CHD risk among women with high total cholesterol levels. The same association was not seen in women with low cholesterol levels, however. There is very little information available about taurine, said principal investigator Yu Chen, PhD, MPH, associate professor of epidemiology at NYU School of Medicine, part of NYU Langone Medical Center. While there have been some animal studies that indicate taurine may be beneficial to cardiovascular disease, this is the first published prospective study to look at serum taurine and CHD in humans, she explained. "Our findings were very interesting. Taurine, at least in its natural form, does seem to have a significant protective effect in women with high cholesterol. Coronary heart disease is the leading killer of American men and women, causing one in five deaths. Also known as coronary artery disease, it is caused by the buildup of plaque in the arteries to the heart. Large prospective epidemiologic studies have provided evidence that nutritional factors are important modifiable risk factors for CHD. Dr. Chen and colleagues conducted their study using data and samples from the NYU Women's Health Study. The original study enrolled more than 14,000 women, 34 to 65 years of age, between 1985 and 1991 at a breast cancer screening center in New York City. Upon enrollment, a wide range of medical, personal and lifestyle information was recorded and the data and samples continue to be utilized for a variety of medical studies. For the serum taurine study, funded by the American Heart Association, the researchers measured taurine levels in serum samples collected in 1985 -- before disease occurrence -- for 223 NYUWHS participants who developed or died from CHD during the study follow up period between 1986 and 2006. The researchers then compared those samples to the taurine levels in serum samples collected at the same time for 223 participants who had no history of cardiovascular disease. The comparison revealed serum taurine was not protective of CHD

A nutrient found in the dark meat of poultry may provide protection against coronary heart disease (CHD) in women with high cholesterol, according to a study by researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center.
The study, published online in the European Journal of Nutrition, evaluated the effects of taurine, a naturally-occurring nutrient found in the dark meat of turkey and chicken, as well as in some fish and shellfish, on CHD. It revealed that higher taurine intake was associated with significantly lower CHD risk among women with high total cholesterol levels. The same association was not seen in women with low cholesterol levels, however.

There is very little information available about taurine, said principal investigator Yu Chen, PhD, MPH, associate professor of epidemiology at NYU School of Medicine, part of NYU Langone Medical Center. While there have been some animal studies that indicate taurine may be beneficial to cardiovascular disease, this is the first published prospective study to look at serum taurine and CHD in humans, she explained. "Our findings were very interesting. Taurine, at least in its natural form, does seem to have a significant protective effect in women with high cholesterol.

Coronary heart disease is the leading killer of American men and women, causing one in five deaths. Also known as coronary artery disease, it is caused by the buildup of plaque in the arteries to the heart. Large prospective epidemiologic studies have provided evidence that nutritional factors are important modifiable risk factors for CHD.

Dr. Chen and colleagues conducted their study using data and samples from the NYU Women's Health Study. The original study enrolled more than 14,000 women, 34 to 65 years of age, between 1985 and 1991 at a breast cancer screening center in New York City. Upon enrollment, a wide range of medical, personal and lifestyle information was recorded and the data and samples continue to be utilized for a variety of medical studies.

For the serum taurine study, funded by the American Heart Association, the researchers measured taurine levels in serum samples collected in 1985 -- before disease occurrence -- for 223 NYUWHS participants who developed or died from CHD during the study follow up period between 1986 and 2006. The researchers then compared those samples to the taurine levels in serum samples collected at the same time for 223 participants who had no history of cardiovascular disease.
The comparison revealed serum taurine was not protective of CHD overall. However, among women with high cholesterol, those with high levels of serum taurine were 60 percent less likely to develop or die from CHD in the study, compared to women with lower serum taurine levels. If future studies are able to replicate the findings, taurine supplementation or dietary recommendations may one day be considered for women with high cholesterol at risk for CHD.
It is an interesting possibility," she said. "If these findings are confirmed, one day we might be able to suggest that someone with high cholesterol eat more poultry, specifically dark meat.

Dr. Chen explained that Caucasian women comprised more than 80 percent of the study population and, therefore, the results may not at this time be generalized to men or other races, but suggested that future studies should be conducted in these populations. In addition, she explained, it is unclear whether synthetic taurine as an additive in food and drink products will have the same benefit observed in this study, and health effects of these products should be investigated separately. "We studied taurine found in the blood that originated from natural sources," Dr. Chen said. "The nutrient being added to energy drinks or supplements is human-made and is added in unstudied amounts. These products also often contain not only very high amounts of taurine, but a multitude of other ingredients as well -- such as caffeine and ginseng -- that may influence CHD risk."

The researchers are currently using NYUWHS data to evaluate the effect of taurine on the occurrence of stroke in another study funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI).

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