Current Issue : October - December Volume : 2013 Issue Number : 4 Articles : 6 Articles
Background: The protein-calorie malnutrition, resulting in muscle mass loss, frequently occurs in severe COPD patients\r\nwith chronic respiratory failure (CRF), causing dyspnea, reduced exercise tolerance and impaired quality of life.\r\nThe cause of this occurrence is an intake-output energy imbalance. A documented deficit of phosphocreatine and\r\nreduced mithocondrial energy production can contribute to this imbalance.\r\nAim of this study is to verify whether a dietary supplementation with creatine and coenzyme Q10, important\r\nmitochondrial function factors, is able to influence this mechanism leading to a dyspnea reduction and improving\r\nexercise tolerance and quality of life.\r\nMethods: 55 COPD patients with chronic respiratory failure (in long term O2 therapy), in stable phase of the disease\r\nand without severe comorbidities were assigned (double-blind, randomized) to: group A (30 patients) with daily dietary\r\nsupplementation with Creatine 340 mg 320 mg Coenzyme Q-Ter (Eufortyn�®, Scharper Therapeutics Srl) for 2 months\r\nwhereas Group B (25 patients) received placebo.\r\nAll patients continued the same diet, rehabilitation and therapy during the study. At recruitment (T0) and after\r\n2 months (T1), patients were submitted to medical history, anthropometry (BMI), bioelectrical impedance, arterial blood\r\ngas analysis, evaluation of dyspnea (VAS, Borg, BDI, MRC) and functional independence (ADL), 6-minute walk test\r\n(6MWT) and quality of life questionnaire (SGRQ). At 6 months and 1 year, a telephone follow up was conducted on\r\nexacerbations number.\r\nResults: No significant difference was detected at baseline (T0) in the 2 groups. After 2 months of therapy (T1) the\r\nFFMI increased in the daily dietary supplementation group ( 3.7 %) and decreased in the placebo group (- 0.6 %),\r\nresulting in a statistically significant (p < 0.001) treatment difference. Statistically significant treatment differences,\r\nfavouring daily dietary supplementation group, were also seen for the 6MWT comparison. Group A patients also\r\nshowed significant: 1) improvement in the degree of dyspnea (VAS: p < 0.05; Borg: p < 0.05; MRC: p < 0.001; BDI1:\r\np < 0.05; BDI3: p < 0.03), and independence level in activities of daily living (p < 0.03); 2) improvement in quality of life\r\nin activity section (- 6.63 pt) and in total score (- 5.43 pt); 3) exacerbation number decrease (p < 0.02). No significant\r\ndifferences were found (end of study vs baseline) in group B....
The role of Prebiotics in controlling diet and lifestyle associated metabolic disorders has gained importance in recent years. Fructooligosaccharide (FOS) has a potential to be added into various Indian cuisines which are consumed on regular basis. However, little is known about the organoleptic attributes of FOS added popular Indian recipes. The present study therefore, aimed to assess the effect of addition of FOS in two products - steamed Dudhi muthiya and shallow fried Vegetable chilla at 10 g and 15 g and compare with the standard product. These recipes were evaluated by 25 semi-trained panel members using 9 point hedonic scale in triplicates. The characteristics of dough of Dudhi muthiya and batter of Vegetable chilla revealed reduction in water absorption power (WAP %) by 33.33 % and 18.75% respectively at 15 g level. Decrease in moisture loss and increase in bulk density was observed in Dudhi muthiya at 15 g (13.62 %) level and slight increase was observed in Vegetable chilla. Organoleptic evaluation of Dudhi muthiya revealed that except for non-significant reduction in texture scores, increase in all the attributes at 15 g level was observed, ranging from 1.3 % in colour and appearance to 14.54 % (p<0.001) for after taste and 14.74 % (p<0.001) for taste. The scores for Vegetable chilla increased from 1.7 % for colour and appearance to 11.6 % (p < 0.05) for taste. Hence, these two products can be recommended as therapeutic products for its use in improving the outcomes of various metabolic disorders....
Amyloid precursor protein (APP) proteolysis is required for production of amyloid-b (Ab) peptides that comprise b-amyloid\r\nplaques in brains of Alzheimer�s disease (AD) patients. Recent AD therapeutic interest has been directed toward a group of\r\nanti-amyloidogenic compounds extracted from plants. We orally administered the brain penetrant, small molecule phenolic\r\ncompound ferulic acid (FA) to the transgenic PSAPP mouse model of cerebral amyloidosis (bearing mutant human APP and\r\npresenilin-1 transgenes) and evaluated behavioral impairment and AD-like pathology. Oral FA treatment for 6 months\r\nreversed transgene-associated behavioral deficits including defective: hyperactivity, object recognition, and spatial working\r\nand reference memory, but did not alter wild-type mouse behavior. Furthermore, brain parenchymal and cerebral vascular\r\nb-amyloid deposits as well as abundance of various Ab species including oligomers were decreased in FA-treated PSAPP\r\nmice. These effects occurred with decreased cleavage of the b-carboxyl-terminal APP fragment, reduced b-site APP cleaving\r\nenzyme 1 protein stability and activity, attenuated neuroinflammation, and stabilized oxidative stress. As in vitro validation,\r\nwe treated well-characterized mutant human APP-overexpressing murine neuron-like cells with FA and found significantly\r\ndecreased Ab production and reduced amyloidogenic APP proteolysis. Collectively, these results highlight that FA is a bsecretase\r\nmodulator with therapeutic potential against AD....
Background: Gut lactobacilli can affect the metabolic functions of healthy humans. We tested whether a 1500\r\nkcal/d diet supplemented with cheese containing the probiotic Lactobacillus plantarum TENSIA (Deutsche\r\nSammlung f�¼r Mikroorganismen, DSM 21380) could reduce some symptoms of metabolic syndrome in Russian\r\nadults with obesity and hypertension.\r\nMethods: In this 3-week, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel pilot study, 25 subjects ingested\r\nprobiotic cheese and 15 ingested control cheese. Fifty grams of each cheese provided 175 kcal of energy. Blood\r\npressure (BP), anthropometric characteristics, markers of liver and kidney function, metabolic indices (plasma\r\nglucose, lipids, and cholesterol), and urine polyamines were measured. Counts of fecal lactobacilli and L. plantarum\r\nTENSIA were evaluated using molecular methods. The data were analyzed by t-test for independent samples and\r\nSpearmanâ��s partial correlation analysis.\r\nResults: The probiotic L. plantarum TENSIA was present in variable amounts (529.6 �± 232.5 gene copies) in 16/25\r\n(64%) study subjects. Body mass index (BMI) was significantly reduced (p = 0.031) in the probiotic cheese group\r\nversus the control cheese group. The changes in BMI were closely associated with the water content of the body\r\n(r = 0.570, p = 0.0007) when adjusted for sex and age. Higher values of intestinal lactobacilli after probiotic cheese\r\nconsumption were associated with higher BMI (r = 0.383, p = 0.0305) and urinary putrescine content (r = 0.475,\r\np = 0.006). In patients simultaneously treated with BP-lowering drugs, similar reductions of BP were observed in\r\nboth groups. A positive association was detected between TENSIA colonization and the extent of change of\r\nmorning diastolic BP (r = 0.617, p = 0.0248) and a trend toward lower values of morning systolic BP (r = -0.527,\r\np = 0.0640) at the end of the study after adjusting for BMI, age, and sex.\r\nConclusion: In a pilot study of obese hypertensive patients, a hypocaloric diet supplemented with a probiotic\r\ncheese helps to reduce BMI and arterial BP values, recognized symptoms of metabolic syndrome...
Plant breeding has been quite successful to keep up with the food requirement of every growing world�s \r\npopulation. The new challenge for plant breeders is to incorporate human health benefits in plant based foods, also \r\ncalled as nutraceuticals. With the recent technological advancements in biological sciences and instrumentation, \r\nnutraceutical breeding is becoming easier. Metabolomics is a key technology available to plant breeders that can \r\ncombine with existing technologies to breed healthier plant food. Onions is a widely-grown crop that has tremendous \r\nhealth benefits. The health benefits of onions are due to secondary metabolites. In nature, plants produce secondary \r\nmetabolites in low quantities. The use of metabolomics to determine production mechanisms of secondary \r\nmetabolites would help develop onion cultivars that contain high levels of secondary metabolites....
Public health recommendations for lifestyle modification, including diet and physical activity, have been widely disseminated for\r\nthe prevention and treatment of disease.These guidelines are intended for the overall population without significant consideration\r\nfor the individual with respect to one�s genes and environment. Personalized lifestyle medicine is a newly developed term that\r\nrefers to an approach to medicine in which an individual�s health metrics from point-of-care diagnostics are used to develop\r\nlifestyle medicine-oriented therapeutic strategies for improving individual health outcomes in managing chronic disease. Examples\r\nof the application of personalized lifestyle medicine to patient care include the identification of genetic variants through laboratory\r\ntests and/or functional biomarkers for the purpose of designing patient-specific prescriptions for diet, exercise, stress, and\r\nenvironment. Personalized lifestyle medicine can provide solutions to chronic health problems by harnessing innovative and\r\nevolving technologies based on recent discoveries in genomics, epigenetics, systems biology, life and behavioral sciences, and\r\ndiagnostics and clinical medicine. A comprehensive, personalized approach to medicine is required to promote the safety of\r\ntherapeutics and reduce the cost of chronic disease. Personalized lifestyle medicine may provide a novel means of addressing a\r\npatient�s health by empowering them with information they need to regain control of their health....
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