Eating more vegetable protein may protect against early menopause

Study shows modest but significant lower risk

Date: June 26, 2017

Source: University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Summary:

Long-term, high intake of vegetable protein from such foods as whole grains, soy and tofu, may protect women from early menopause and could prolong reproductive function, results of a new study from epidemiologists suggest.

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        Results of a new study from epidemiologists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health suggest that long-term, high intake of vegetable protein from such foods as whole grains, soy and tofu, may protect women from early menopause and could prolong reproductive function.

          Consuming enriched pasta, dark bread and cold cereal were especially associated with lower risk, while they observed no similar relation to eating animal sources of protein.
"A better understanding of how dietary vegetable protein intake is associated with ovarian aging may identify ways for women to modify their risk of early onset menopause and associated health conditions," write first author and then-graduate student Maegan Boutot, with her advisor, professor Elizabeth Bertone-Johnson. Details appear in the current early online edition of the American Journal of Epidemiology.
Early menopause, the cessation of ovarian function before age 45, affects about 10 percent of women and is associated with higher risk of cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis and early cognitive decline, the authors note. Few studies have evaluated how protein intake is associated with menopause timing, they add, and to their knowledge this is the first to look specifically at early menopause.
           Boutot, Bertone-Johnson and colleagues in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences at UMass  Amherst, with others, evaluated the relationship between diet and risk of early menopause among members of the Nurses' Health Study II (NHS2), an ongoing prospective study of 116,000 women aged 25-42 when they entered it in 1989.
Participants were asked to report how often they ate a single serving of 131 foods, beverages and supplements over the previous year, from "never or less than once a month" to "6+ per day." They observed that women consuming approximately 6.5 percent of their daily calories as vegetable protein had a significant 16 percent lower risk of early menopause compared to women whose intake was approximately 4 percent of calories.
            For a woman with a 2,000 calorie per day diet, the authors explain, this is equal to three to four servings of such foods as enriched pasta, breakfast cereal, tofu and nuts, or about 32.5 grams a day. They adjusted for age, smoking, body mass index and other possible confounding factors.
Boutot and Bertone-Johnson add, "Though relatively few women in our study consumed very high levels of vegetable protein and our power for analyses of more extreme intake levels was limited, women consuming 9 or more percent of their calories from vegetable protein had a hazard ratio of 0.41 (95 percent confidence interval = 0.19-0.88)" compared to those eating less than 4 percent.
Others on the study team were from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. The study was supported by a grant from NIH's Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
             For the NHS2, follow-up questionnaires have assessed nurses' lifestyle behaviors and medical conditions every two years. Nearly 90 percent have continued to participate in followup. Diet was assessed five times over the 20-year study, allowing the researchers to capture within-person variation in changes in food and nutrient intake over times, Boutot explains. Participants in the study contributed more than 1 million person-years of follow-up, during which 2,041 women experienced early menopause.
Boutot and Bertone-Johnson suggest that more prospective studies of their findings are warranted, including studies that compare soy-based and non-soy vegetable proteins.

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Dietary and lifestyle recommendations for patients at risk of macular degeneration

Date: June 23, 2017

Source: Dove Medical Press

Summary:

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a major cause of severe visual impairment in older populations and is characterized by progressive destruction of the retinal pigment epithelial cells and photoreceptors due to low-grade inflammation, ischemia and oxidative stress. Studies show evidence that carotenoids and antioxidants derived either from the diet or from supplements may significantly reduce the risk of visual loss in these patients.

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            But how often do ophthalmologists and optometrists in Sweden recommend the use of nutritional supplements, changes in diet, or smoking cessation to patients at risk of or with early symptoms of AMD? A study published recently in Dove Medical Press journal, Clinical Optometry, set out to investigate just this and also determine how practitioners rate the strength of evidence for nutritional supplements in the prevention or treatment of AMD, and which sources of information they consult to create those recommendations.

           All Swedish optometrists and ophthalmologists who were registered in the membership databases of their professional organizations were invited to participate in a questionnaire. The cross-sectional study looked into four main aspects: use of nutritional supplements, dietary advice, smoking and eye diseases, and strength of evidence and the sources of information regarding nutritional supplement interventions.
The response rate was, surprisingly, 40.3% for optometrists and 5% for ophthalmologists. Optometrists were more likely to recommend nutritional supplements in AMD and provided significantly more advice about diet than ophthalmologists for both patients at risk for AMD and those with established disease. Ophthalmologists, however, were more likely than optometrists to rely on evidence-based findings from the age-related eye disease studies of AMD regarding treatment with and selection of supplements and to recommend smoking cessation.
            Author Lene Martin from Mälardalen University, Sweden, and City University of London, UK, said "The role that optometrists play when discussing healthy lifestyle changes is currently a widely discussed topic. Ophthalmologists aren't the only eye care professionals who meet patients at risk of or with AMD, and this paper summarizes neatly how optometrists can be increasingly involved in preventative strategies for AMD."
Dr Martin also reflects, "More targeted education and implementation strategies may be needed for both optometrists and ophthalmologists."

Could humans ever regenerate a heart? A new study suggests the answer is 'yes'

Communication between genes is the key

Date: June 26, 2017

Source: University of Florida

Summary:

A new study's findings point to potential for tweaking communication between human genes and advancing our ability to treat heart conditions and stimulate regenerative healing.

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Study scientists examined the genes of the starlet sea anemone (Nematostella vectensis) shown here. Sea anemones are related to corals and jellyfish, and are composed of an outer skin armed with stinging cells (cnidocytes) and a tube shaped gut, with nothing in the middle.

Credit: Photo courtesy of the Whitney Lab for Marine Bioscience

              When Mark Martindale decided to trace the evolutionary origin of muscle cells, like the ones that form our hearts, he looked in an unlikely place: the genes of animals without hearts or muscles.

In a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the University of Florida scientist and colleagues found genes known to form hearts cells in humans and other animals in the gut of a muscle-less and heartless sea anemone. But the sea anemone isn't just any sea creature. It has superpower-like abilities: Cut it into many pieces and each piece will regenerate into a new animal.
So why does the sea anemone regenerate while humans cannot? When analyzing the function of its "heart genes," study researchers discovered a difference in the way these genes interact with one another, which may help explain its ability to regenerate, said Martindale, a UF biology professor and director of the Whitney Lab for Marine Bioscience in St. Augustine.
                 The study's findings point to potential for tweaking communication between human genes and advancing our ability to treat heart conditions and stimulate regenerative healing, he said.
"Our study shows that if we learn more about the logic of how genes that give rise to heart cells talk to each other, muscle regeneration in humans might be possible," Martindale said.
These heart genes generate what engineers calls lockdown loops in vertebrates and flies, which means that once the genes are turned on, they tell each other to stay on in an animal's cells for its entire lifetime. In other words, animals with a lockdown on their genes cannot grow new heart parts or use those cells for other functions.
"This ensures that heart cells always stay heart cells and cannot become any other type of cell," Martindale said.
             But in sea anemone embryos, the lockdown loops do not exist. This finding suggests a mechanism for why the gut cells expressing heart genes in sea anemones can turn into other kinds of cells, such as those needed to regenerate damaged body parts, Martindale said.
The study supports the idea that definitive muscle cells found in the majority of animals arose from a bifunctional gut tissue that had both absorptive and contractile properties. And while the gut tissue of a sea anemone might not look like a beating heart, it does undergo slow, rhythmic peristaltic waves of contraction, much like the human digestive system.
Study authors argue that the first animal muscle cells might have been very heart-like, Martindale said.
"The idea is these genes have been around a long time and preceded the twitchy muscles that cover our skeleton," Martindale said.
Continued research could one day allow scientists to coax muscles cells into regenerating different kinds of new cells, including more heart cells, Martindale said.
Other study authors include UF biology graduate student Dave Simmons and former UF postdoctoral researcher Naveen Wijesena.

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Hot cities spell bad news for bees

Date: June 26, 2017

Source: North Carolina State University

Summary:

Common wild bee species decline as urban temperatures increase, a new research study concludes.

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          Research from NC State University finds that carpenter bees, like the one pictured here, are better equipped than most other common bee species to function at higher temperatures. In other words, higher temps won't save your deck.

Credit: Elsa Youngsteadt

            A new study from North Carolina State University finds that common wild bee species decline as urban temperatures increase.

"We looked at 15 of the most common bee species in southeastern cities and -- through fieldwork and labwork -- found that increasing temperatures in urban heat islands will have a negative effect on almost all of them," says Steve Frank, an associate professor of entomology at NC State and co-author of a paper describing the work.
             "What's exciting is that we were able to use a relatively easy lab test on individual bees to predict how whole populations will fare at higher temperatures in urban areas," says Elsa Youngsteadt, a research associate at NC State and co-lead author of the paper. "This is a tool we can use for additional bee species in the future, giving us insights into how urban warming affects ecosystems."
In the laboratory portion of the study, researchers established the critical thermal maximum (CTmax) for all 15 bee species. This involved placing the bees in tubes and gradually increasing the temperature until each bee became incapacitated. The most heat-tolerant species included the carpenter bees Xylocopa virginica and Ceratina strenua, with CTmax values of 50 to 51°C (122 to 124°F). Some of the least heat-tolerant species included a green sweat bee (Agapostemon virescens) and a bumble bee (Bombus bimaculatus), each with a CTmax below 45°C (113°F). It's worth noting that the CTmax is the temperature at which an insect is incapacitated, but the insect is adversely affected at lower temperatures and may leave a habitat or reproduce less.
            "After measuring the CTmax values, we still didn't know whether the way individual bees responded to temperature in the lab would correspond to how bee populations respond to higher temperatures in messy, real-world habitats," Youngsteadt says.
To address this question, the researchers sampled bee populations 11 times over two years at 18 urban sites in Wake County, North Carolina.
The researchers found that the response of the 15 bee species studied in the lab corresponded to each species' abundance in urban yards. In other words, the lower a species' CTmax, the more its numbers declined with urban warming.
           "This is certainly relevant for urban heat islands, but it may also help us understand potential effects of global climate change on bee species," Youngsteadt says. "If species that have a lower CTmax are most sensitive to urban warming, they may also be most sensitive to warming in other environments."
The paper, "Physiological thermal limits predict differential responses of bees to urban heat-island effects," is published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters. April Hamblin, a former graduate student at NC State, is co-lead author. Margarita López-Uribe, a postdoctoral researcher at NC State, is a co-author. The work was done with support from USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture, under grant number 2013-02476; and from the U.S. Geological Survey under cooperative agreements G11AC20471 and G13AC00405.

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Odd properties of water and ice explained: Water exists as two different liquids

Date: June 26, 2017

Source: Stockholm University

Summary:

Scientists have discovered two phases of liquid water with large differences in structure and density. The results are based on experimental studies using X-rays.

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Pictured is an artist's impression of the two forms of ultra-viscous liquid water with different density. On the background is depicted the x-ray speckle pattern taken from actual data of high-density amorphous ice, which is produced by pressurizing water at very low temperatures.

Credit: Mattias Karlén

            We normally consider liquid water as disordered with the molecules rearranging on a short time scale around some average structure. Now, however, scientists at Stockholm University have discovered two phases of the liquid with large differences in structure and density. The results are based on experimental studies using X-rays, which are now published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

Most of us know that water is essential for our existence on planet Earth. It is less well-known that water has many strange or anomalous properties and behaves very differently from all other liquids. Some examples are the melting point, the density, the heat capacity, and all-in-all there are more than 70 properties of water that differ from most liquids. These anomalous properties of water are a prerequisite for life as we know it.
            "The new remarkable property is that we find that water can exist as two different liquids at low temperatures where ice crystallization is slow," says Anders Nilsson, professor in Chemical Physics at Stockholm University. The breakthrough in the understanding of water has been possible through a combination of studies using X-rays at Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago, where the two different structures were evidenced and at the large X-ray laboratory DESY in Hamburg where the dynamics could be investigated and demonstrated that the two phases indeed both were liquid phases. Water can thus exist as two different liquids.
             "It is very exciting to be able to use X-rays to determine the relative positions between the molecules at different times," says Fivos Perakis, postdoc at Stockholm University with a background in ultrafast optical spectroscopy. "We have in particular been able to follow the transformation of the sample at low temperatures between the two phases and demonstrated that there is diffusion as is typical for liquids."
When we think of ice it is most often as an ordered, crystalline phase that you get out of the ice box, but the most common form of ice in our planetary system is amorphous, that is disordered, and there are two forms of amorphous ice with low and high density. The two forms can interconvert and there have been speculations that they can be related to low- and high-density forms of liquid water. To experimentally investigate this hypothesis has been a great challenge that the Stockholm group has now overcome.
                "I have studied amorphous ices for a long time with the goal to determine whether they can be considered a glassy state representing a frozen liquid," says Katrin Amann-Winkel, researcher in Chemical Physics at Stockholm University. "It is a dream come true to follow in such detail how a glassy state of water transforms into a viscous liquid which almost immediately transforms to a different, even more viscous, liquid of much lower density."
"The possibility to make new discoveries in water is totally fascinating and a great inspiration for my further studies," says Daniel Mariedahl, PhD student in Chemical Physics at Stockholm University. "It is particularly exciting that the new information has been provided by X-rays since the pioneer of X-ray radiation, Wilhelm Röntgen, himself speculated that water can exist in two different forms and that the interplay between them could give rise to its strange properties."
              "The new results give very strong support to a picture where water at room temperature can't decide in which of the two forms it should be, high or low density, which results in local fluctuations between the two," says Lars G.M. Pettersson, professor in Theoretical Chemical Physics at Stockholm University. "In a nutshell: Water is not a complicated liquid, but two simple liquids with a complicated relationship."
These new results not only create an overall understanding of water at different temperatures and pressures, but also how water is affected by salts and biomolecules important for life. In addition, the increased understanding of water can lead to new insights on how to purify and desalinate water in the future. This will be one of the main challenges to humanity in view of the global climate change.

Diagnosing obesity by mathematically estimating abdominal fat

Date: June 20, 2017

Source: Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics

Summary:

Abdominal obesity, or fat that accumulates around one's stomach and abdomen, has long been considered to pose a high health risk in individuals. Hence, measurement of abdominal fat helps predict propensity to disorders caused by excess weight in the abdominal area. In a new paper, researchers propose a new technique to evaluate abdominal obesity by estimating the thickness of subcutaneous fat.

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This is a simplified abdomen image from CT with 16 electrodes. Red color represents subcutaneous fat region, blue represents muscle region, white represent bone region, pink represents visceral region, and green represents abdominal organs.

Credit: SIAM

                 Abdominal obesity, or fat that accumulates around one's stomach and abdomen, has long been considered to pose a high health risk in individuals. Hence, measurement of "central obesity" -- as it's often called -- helps predict propensity to disorders caused by excess weight in the abdominal area.

In a paper publishing next week in the SIAM Journal on Imaging Sciences, researchers from ETH Zurich and Yonsei University in Seoul propose a new technique to evaluate abdominal obesity by estimating the thickness of subcutaneous fat.
            "Recent studies have shown that abdominal obesity is linked with diseases such as congestive heart failure and metabolic syndrome," said author Jin Keun Seo. "Static electrical impedance tomography, or EIT, could be employed as a non-invasive surrogate of disease progression in these conditions."
In addition to being noninvasive, EIT, an imaging technique, provides real-time data without using ionizing radiation, which makes it preferable to computed tomography (CT) since it's less harmful to patients. Another imaging technique commonly used for this purpose, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has poorer spatial resolution than EIT.
          "Compared to CT, EIT is more advantageous since it is non-ionizing and can hence be used for continuous patient self-monitoring to track body fat status in daily routines," Seo explained. "Unlike CT and MRI, EIT is a low cost, portable, and easy-to-use bedside technique to image electrical conductivity distribution."
Since electrical conductivity of biological tissue depends on its cell structure, it can help image different tissues in the body and distinguish them from each other. The cell structure of fat and muscle are quite different; hence, the electrical conductivity values of fat and muscle differ over different frequencies.
Multi-frequency EIT (MFEIT) reconstructs the image of conductivity inside the human body based on this dependence of tissue conductivity on frequency. And since bone, muscle, and fat conduct electricity differently over various frequencies, MFEIT can use data of the boundary current-voltage relationship at diverse frequencies to estimate the amount of fat. Again, since body fat is less conductive than water and tissues such as muscle, this difference can be used to estimate the thickness of visceral and subcutaneous  adipose tissue.
               The specific process involves a specially chosen current pattern, which generates a depth-dependent data set that is used to outline the borders between fat and muscle. Current is injected through one pair of electrodes, and the subsequent voltage drop measured at another pair of electrodes. The relation between the injected current and the voltage drop gives the transadmittance -- or the ratio of current to voltage, which depends on the positions of the two pairs of electrodes, body geometry, and admittivity distribution, which combines both conductivity and permittivity. Assuming that the size of the electrodes is very small in comparison to the size of the border between the various tissue regions, the authors use a point electrode model, which provides a good approximation of the solution, while also simplifying the model considerably.
One issue with EIT is that the technique is prone to forward-modeling errors; these errors often include boundary geometry and electrode position uncertainties. In this paper, authors propose a new reconstruction method that compensates for this pitfall of EIT, using prior anatomical information at the expense of spatial resolution, and improving reproducibility. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the result of reconstruction is satisfactory in identifying subcutaneous fat.
             "Existing approaches for static conductivity imaging are based on minimizing the difference between the voltage measured and that obtained from numerical simulations," Hyeuknam explained. "Therefore, obtaining reliable conductivity distributions requires both accurate modeling of the domain and the electrode configuration. This new method can obtain accurate imaging distribution by canceling out modeling errors."
Further research is needed to take advantage of the frequency dependent behavior of human tissue to estimate the distribution of visceral fat. "Current experimental work has shown promising results in detecting subcutaneous fat thickness as confirmed with ultrasound imaging," said Hyeuknam. "Future work is needed to determine the volume of visceral fat in patients with metabolic and cardiovascular disorders."
            Abnormally high deposition of fat tissue in the abdominal area has been associated with disorders such as metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, and malignancies. Quantitative assessment of visceral fat in the abdominal region using techniques such as the one described above can thus aid in evaluating the potential risk of developing such conditions.

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Bitter or sweet? How taste cells decide what they want to be

New study provides insight into the genes and molecules that shape taste cell development

Date: June 21, 2017

Source: Monell Chemical Senses Center

Summary:

A new study advances understanding of how stem cells on the tongue grow into the different types of mature taste cells that detect either sweet, salty, sour, bitter, or umami. By identifying novel genes and molecular pathways involved in shaping a taste cell's function, these findings may someday allow scientists to treat taste disorders, characterize new taste qualities, or even fine-tune taste perception to encourage healthier eating.

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         Ever burn your tongue so badly that you were unable to taste your food for a few days? Luckily, a unique feature of taste cells is that they continually regenerate every 10 to 14 days. Now, a new study from the Monell Center and collaborating institutions advances understanding of how stem cells on the tongue grow into the different types of mature taste cells that detect either sweet, salty, sour, bitter, or umami.

By identifying novel genes and molecular pathways involved in shaping a taste cell's function, these findings may someday allow scientists to treat taste disorders, characterize new taste qualities, or even fine-tune a person's taste perception to encourage healthier eating.
          "We still have many open questions about how the sense of taste works. Some of these newly-discovered genes may help us better understand how a taste cell detects a given taste quality," said Monell Center molecular neurobiologist Peihua Jiang, PhD, the study's senior author. "Who knows, someday we may be able to use this knowledge to generate fewer bitter cells in a bitter-sensitive person to help that person enjoy healthy bitter-tasting vegetables."
Taste cells are located in clusters called taste buds, which in turn are found in papillae, the raised bumps visible on the tongue's surface. Two different types of specialized taste cells contain the chemical receptors and intracellular molecular machinery needed to initiate the perception of taste. A third type appears to serve as a supporting cell.
          In 2013, Jiang helped identify the stem, or progenitor, cell that gives rise to these three different taste cell types. Moving forward, he was able to place these taste stem cells in a culture dish and prompt them to grow into the different mature taste cell types, thus creating a taste bud in a dish -- scientifically known as taste organoids.
In the current paper, published online in the open access journal Scientific Reports, Jiang and his collaborators studied taste organoids at different stages of growth to identify which genes are turned on at each stage of taste cell generation.
          Using a powerful genetic technology called RNA-seq, these experiments revealed a nearly comprehensive list of all the genes, including some not previously identified, that guide the development of taste cells. The studies also revealed when during taste cell differentiation these genes influence whether a given taste cell ultimately will respond to either salty, sweet, sour, bitter or umami.
Other experiments expanded the findings to provide clues about the molecular signals that may direct the taste stem cells to go down one path or another. Using pharmacological approaches, the researchers identified the so-called signaling proteins within the immature taste cells that cause the developing cells to multiply and turn into specific cell types. These studies revealed the important roles of several signaling pathways, including ones not previously known to play a role in taste.
          "By better understanding how our taste cells detect and translate information about the chemical constituents of our food, we may be able to confirm how humans detect poorly-understood qualities such as fat or calcium, or even identify entirely new tastes," said study co-author Robert Margolskee, MD, PhD, also a Monell molecular neurobiologist.
Jiang notes that the research may have treatment implications for patients who lose their sense of taste following radiation for head and neck cancers. "Understanding how taste cells grow may help us develop novel strategies to help patients with taste disorders," he said.
            Moving forward, the researchers want to identify the functions of the newly-discovered taste genes. Other studies will focus on better understanding the molecular signaling that guides taste cell differentiation and function.
"This is basic research at its best," said Jiang. "We need to know how taste cells grow and work in normal situations before we can harness this knowledge to help people."