• Low Vitamin D Levels

    Low vitamin D levels may not only increase a person’s risk of stroke, but lower their health post-stroke.

    Low vitamin D has been associated in past studies with neurovascular injury (damage to the major blood vessels supplying the brain, brainstem, and upper spinal cord). Nils Henninger, from University of Massachusetts Medical School (Massachusetts, USA), and colleagues studied 96 stroke patients, assessing their blood levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D (a marker of vitamin D status). Stroke patients who had low vitamin D levels less than 30 ng/mL) showed two-times larger areas of dead tissue resulting from obstruction of the blood supply compared to patients with normal vitamin D levels. Further, for each 10 ng/mL reduction in vitamin D level, the chance for healthy recovery in the three months following stroke decreased by almost half, regardless of the patient’s age or initial stroke severity.

    Article Source: http://www.worldhealth.net/news/vitamin-d-stroke-link/

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  • How metformin prevents tumors: UCSD researchers

    Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have identified a previously unknown mechanism that helps fortify the structure and tight junctions between epithelial cells — a basic cell type that lines various body cavities and organs throughout the body, forming a protective barrier against toxins, pathogens and inflammatory triggers. Breaches of this barrier can provoke organ dysfunction and development of tumors.

    The findings, published online in the current issue of eLife by senior author Pradipta Ghosh, MD, professor in the departments of Medicine and Cellular and Molecular Medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine, and colleagues, helps illuminate why the widely prescribed anti-diabetic drug Metformin has repeatedly been shown to not only protect epithelial integrity in the face of stressors like inflammation, sepsis, hypoxia and harmful microbes, but also appears to prevent cancer.

    Virtually all cell types possess cell polarity — the asymmetrical organization of their components and structures that makes it possible for them to carry out specialized functions. In epithelial cells, polarity determines how they form barriers. Loss of epithelial polarity impacts organ development and function and can initiate cancers.

    The stress-polarity pathway, discovered and described in 2006 and 2007, is a specialized pathway mobilized only during periods of stress. It is orchestrated by a protein-kinase called AMPK that protects cellular polarity when epithelial cells are under energetic stress and an activator of AMPK called LBK1.

    “The latter is a bona fide tumor suppressor,” said Ghosh. Mutations in LBK1 have been linked to cancers and loss of cell polarity. While the question of exactly how the energy-sensing LKB1-AMPK pathway maintains cell polarity during stress remained unknown for more than a decade, evidence accumulated that Metformin, an activator of the LKB1-AMPK pathway and a frontline treatment for type 2 diabetes, has beneficial effects on the epithelial lining and can potentially prevent cancer.

    The new research, said Ghosh, provides “mechanistic insights into the tumor suppressive action of Metformin and the LKB1-AMPK pathway at a higher resolution.” Specifically, she and colleagues discovered that the stress-polarity pathway requires a key effector of AMPK — a protein called GIV/Girdin.

    In cultured polarized epithelial cells, the authors demonstrated that AMPK and its activator Metformin exerted much of their beneficial effects via phosphorylating GIV and directing GIV to the tight junctions of the epithelial layer. Without such phosphorylation and/or targeting, the beneficial effects of AMPK, and its activator Metformin, were virtually abolished and the epithelial barrier became “leaky” and eventually collapsed. Mutants of GIV found in colon cancer that specifically abolish AMPK’s ability to phosphorylate GIV could trigger tumor cell growth in 3D matrigel.

    “In summary, by identifying GIV/Girdin as a key layer within the stress-polarity pathway we’ve peeled another layer of the proverbial onion,” Ghosh said. “In the process, we’ve provided new insights into the epithelium-protecting and tumor-suppressive actions of one of the most widely prescribed drugs, Metformin, which may inspire a fresh look and better designed studies to fully evaluate the benefits of this relatively cheap medication.”

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    Co-authors of the study are: Nicolas Aznar, Arjun Patel, Christina Rohena, Ying Dunkel, Vanessa Taupin, Irina Kufareva, and Marilyn Farquhar, all at UC San Diego.

    Article Source: http://www.stonehearthnewsletters.com/how-metformin-prevents-tumors-ucsd-researchers/diabetes/

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  • Risk factors for prostate cancer

    New research suggests that age, race and family history are the biggest risk factors for a man to develop prostate cancer, although high blood pressure, high cholesterol, vitamin D deficiency, inflammation of prostate, and vasectomy also add to the risk. In contrast, obesity, alcohol abuse, and smoking show a negative association with the disease. Details are reported in the International Journal of Medical Engineering and Informatics .

    Khaled Alqahtani, Shankar Srinivasan, Dinesh Mital and Syed Haque of the Department of Health Informatics, at Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences, Newark, New Jersey, USA, explain that prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men with 233000 new cases estimated in the USA during 2014 and almost 30000 deaths. A boy being born today has an almost 1 in 7 chance of developing prostate cancer at some point in their life and a 3% chance of dying from the disease. At this time, however, cancer specialists do not fully understand the underlying causes nor the epidemiology of prostate cancer.

    Alqahtani and colleagues have analyzed data from The US Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS), the largest database in the USA for all-payer inpatient health care. They focused on the years 2007-2011 amounting to more than 12 million records and looked at men aged 35 to 100 years, finding that approximately 5.35% of them had prostate cancer (642383 men). They then used statistical analyses to look at the independent variables: age, race, family history of prostate cancer, family history of any other cancer, obesity, alcohol abuse, smoking, cholesterol, vitamin D deficiency, inflammation of prostate, vasectomy, and hypertension, to see which factors were critical variables associated with prostate cancer incidence.

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    Alqahtani, K.S., Srinivasan, S., Mital, D.P. and Haque, S. (2015) ‘Analysis of risk factors for prostate cancer patients’, Int. J. Medical Engineering and Informatics , Vol. 7, No. 4, pp.365-380

    Article Source: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-09/ip-rff092915.php

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  • Testosterone may help men with multiple sclerosis

    A small pilot study suggests that testosterone treatment is safe, well tolerated and may reduce symptoms, slow brain degeneration and increase muscle mass in men with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis, the most common form of the disease, according to a report in the May issue of Archives of Neurology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

    Multiple sclerosis is a progressive disease involving the immune and central nervous systems. MS and many other autoimmune diseases (in which the body attacks its own systems or tissues) are less common in men than in women, according to background information in the article. This is especially true during reproductive years. Sex hormones, including testosterone and estrogen, may be responsible for the difference. Testosterone has been shown to protect against an MS-like condition and other autoimmune diseases in animals.

    Nancy L. Sicotte, M.D., of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, and colleagues conducted a study of testosterone treatment in 10 men with relapsing-remitting MS, characterized by periods of neurologic symptoms (such as numbness or difficulty walking) followed by periods of remission. The men, who had an average age of 46, were enrolled in the study and then entered a six-month pre-treatment phase, during which symptoms were monitored but no therapies were administered. Then, each man applied 10 grams of a gel containing 100 milligrams of testosterone to his upper arms once daily for 12 months.

    “One year of treatment with testosterone gel was associated with improvement in cognitive performance and a slowing of brain atrophy [deterioration],” the authors write. During the first nine months of the study–the period of time before the men began taking testosterone, plus the first three months of treatment, before it had time to take effect–brain volume decreased an average of -0.81 percent per year. In the second nine months, this decline slowed by 67 percent to an annual rate of -0.25 percent. “Because the protective effect of testosterone treatment on brain atrophy was observed in the absence of an appreciable anti-inflammatory effect, this protection may not be limited to MS, but may be applicable to those with non-inflammatory neurodegenerative diseases,” including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or Lou Gehrig’s disease, the authors write.

    In addition, lean body mass (muscle mass) increased an average of 1.7 kilograms (about 3.74 pounds) during the treatment phase. Participants did not report any adverse effects, there were no abnormalities in blood tests taken during the trial and the men’s prostate examination results remained stable.

    “Overall, in this first trial of testosterone treatment in men with relapsing-remitting MS, the treatment was shown to be safe and well tolerated,” the authors conclude. “In addition, exploratory findings reported herein suggest a possible neuroprotective effect of testosterone treatment in men, which warrants further investigation.”

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    (Arch Neurol. 2007;64:683-688. Available pre-embargo to the media at www.jamamedia.org .)

    Editor’s Note: This study was supported by grants from the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, the General Clinical Research Centers at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, the Sherak Family Foundation and the Skirball Foundation. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.

    Article Source: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-05/jaaj-tmh051007.php

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