Gary‘s Daily Health News - Vol. 11

UCF researchers identify food products that could reduce COVID transmission

The products can reduce the transmission potential of airborne pathogens by thickening and reducing a person’s saliva and could be added to foods, such as a chocolate

University of Central Florida, Sept. 16, 2021 

Face masks and social distancing are both well-known ways to keep airborne pathogens, like COVID-19, at bay, but University of Central Florida researchers Michael Kinzel and Kareem Ahmed are working on a possible new one — a combination of food products that alters people’s saliva.

The concept is based on new work from the researchers showing that food product ingredients can be used to thicken and reduce a person’s saliva, thus decreasing the transmission potential of airborne pathogens. The results were published recently in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.

“This is a new concept in the context of source control,” says study co-author Kinzel, an assistant professor in UCF’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. “There are obviously masks, but this is the first research focusing on what comes out of one’s buccal cavity or mouth.”

The work builds on the Kinzel and Ahmed’s previous studies examining the effectiveness of masks in the classroom, features that could make someone a super spreader, and initial studies of food ingredients to control airborne disease transmission. Ahmed is an associate professor in UCF’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.

“The group has researched droplet formation for years,” Kinzel says. “When we heard sneezes transported aerosols over 27 feet early in the pandemic, we realized that this has to be small aerosols, similar to what you see in a misting nozzle. Our thinking has been let’s focus on altering those droplets such that they fall to the ground and not travel so far.”

For the study, the researchers examined characteristics of saliva, such as thickness and amount, and their influence on how far droplets and aerosols from a human’s sneeze travel, which are factors related to airborne pathogen transmission.

High-speed cameras were used to capture the sneezes frame-by-frame in mid-air, and image processing software was used to quantify droplets and aerosols. Subsequent numerical methods using computational fluid dynamics provided detailed quantification to better understand the sneeze events.

Saliva was altered using a range of food-grade compounds, including cornstarch, agar agar, xanthan gum and ginger.

The researchers found that ginger reduced the amount of saliva expelled from a sneeze by more than 80% and was as effective as a mask in reducing the distance of droplets and aerosols from a sneeze.

Cornstarch and xanthan gum were found to increase the thickness of saliva by 5 and 2,000%, respectively. They also reduced the distance of aerosols from a sneeze more than not wearing a mask. However, a mask was still more effective in reducing aerosol distance than cornstarch and xanthan gum.

A neck gaiter combined with a surgical mask was the type of mask used in the study.

The findings suggest that certain food products can be tailored to both thicken and reduce saliva emitted to reduce airborne disease transmission. This can also be used in combination with a mask, or without as the impact of the pandemic changes, and could perhaps allow for increased capacity, Kinzel says.

One such product could be a chocolate to deliver the saliva changing compound, the researcher says.

“Much like vitamin gummies, this would not be a candy, but rather a form to deliver the solution,” he says. “It could perhaps be referred to as a ‘chocaceutical.’”

 

Zinc supplementation associated with improvements in oxidative stress, homocysteine

Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, September 15 2021. 

A systematic review and meta-analysis of clinical trials published on September 12, 2021 in the International Journal of Clinical Practice found an association between supplementing with the mineral zinc and lower levels of homocysteine and a biomarker of oxidative stress.   

Oxidative stress occurs when oxidants and antioxidants are imbalanced, resulting in an increase in reactive oxygen species (ROS). Greater ROS production overwhelms the body’s capacity to overcome their adverse effects, resulting in an increased risk of chronic disease risk.

Homocysteine is an amino acid that increases oxidative damage in the body when elevated above normal levels. High homocysteine levels have been linked to cardiovascular disease, stroke, Alzheimer disease and other disorders.  

For the meta-analysis, Meysam Zarezadeh at Tabriz University of Medical Sciences and colleagues selected 18 articles that included a total of 1,187 participants. Eleven articles reported clinical trials that evaluated the association between zinc supplementation and malondialdehyde (MDA, a biomarker of oxidative stress), three articles evaluated zinc’s association with thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS, another biomarker of oxidative stress) and four articles studied supplemental zinc’s effect on homocysteine.

Supplementing with zinc was associated with a significant reduction in MDA, which was greater among subgroups who received less than 40 milligrams zinc per day. Zinc supplementation was also associated with a significant decrease in homocysteine, particularly among type 2 diabetics. No significant association was observed between zinc supplementation and TBARS levels.

“This meta-analysis demonstrated that zinc supplementation reduces malondialdehyde and homocysteine levels in adult subjects,” the authors concluded. “Supplementation with elemental zinc less than 40 mg/day has optimum effect on oxidative stress biomarkers. However, future studies are required to assess the effect of zinc on oxidative stress conditions in different demographic subgroups.”

 

 

Can You Lose Weight? Ask Your Microbiome

The strongest associations with weight loss success or failure, independent of BMI, are found in the genetic capacity of the gut microbiome

Institute for Systems Biology, September 15, 2021

The strongest associations with weight loss success or failure – independent of BMI – are found in the genetic capacity of the gut microbiome. These new findings open the door to diagnostic tests that can identify people likely to lose weight with healthy lifestyle changes and those who might need more drastic interventions. 

ISB researchers looked at 105 people who participated in a consumer wellness program. About half of the cohort showed consistent weight loss and improved metabolic health markers. The other half did not respond to the intervention and maintained a stable weight. The microbiomes of those who lost weight had higher bacterial growth rates and were enriched in genes that divert dietary nutrients toward bacterial cell growth. Conversely, microbiomes in those resistant to weight loss had lower growth rates, combined with a higher capacity for breaking down non-absorbable fibers and starches into absorbable sugars. Weight-loss resistant microbiomes were also primed to deal with a more inflamed gut environment. 

“Our results underscore the fact that our gut microbiome is an important filter between the food we consume and our bloodstream. Weight loss may be especially hard when our gut bacteria slow their own growth, while also breaking down dietary fibers into energy-rich sugars that make their way into our bloodstream before they can be fermented into organic acids by the microbiota,” said Dr. Christian Diener, the paper’s lead author.

Importantly, the team examined determinants of successful weight loss that were independent of BMI. People with higher baseline BMIs tend to lose more weight following an intervention – a condition known as the “regression-to-the-mean” effect.

Researchers found specific bacteria (Prevotella and other Bacteroidetes genera) that appear to be more efficient at using the degradation products from complex starches and fibers to fuel growth, likely outcompeting the body for these energy-rich small molecules and reducing the caloric energy harvest from consumed food. Ensuring our gut microbes can efficiently convert sugars cleaved away from dietary fibers into short-chain-fatty-acids and/or reducing the abundance of bacterial fiber-degrading genes in our intestine may help to ensure improved weight loss responses to lifestyle interventions and better metabolic health.

“At a minimum, this work may lead to diagnostics for identifying individuals who will respond well to moderate healthy lifestyle changes, and those who may require more drastic measures to achieve weight loss,” said ISB Assistant Professor Dr. Sean Gibbons, corresponding author on the paper. “By understanding which microbes and metabolic processes help promote weight loss in the gut microbiome, we can begin to design targeted prebiotic and probiotic interventions that might push a weight-loss resistant microbiome to look more like a weight-loss permissive microbiome.” 

 

 

Men with anxiety are more likely to die of cancer, study says

Cambridge University's Institute of Public Health, September 20, 2021 

 

Men over 40 who are plagued with the omnipresent of generalized anxiety disorder are more than twice as likely to die of cancer than are men who do not have the mental affliction, new research finds. But for women who suffer from severe anxiety, the research found no increased risk of cancer death.

 

That finding, presented Tuesday at the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology's Congress in Vienna, emerges from the largest study ever to explore a link between anxiety and cancer. It tracked 15,938 Britons over 40 for 15 years.

 

Even after researchers took account of factors that boost the risk of cancer, including age, alcohol consumption, smoking and chronic diseases, men with a diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder were 2.15 times as likely to die of cancer than were those with no such diagnosis.

 

Generalized anxiety disorder - a condition marked by excessive, uncontrollable worry about many areas of life - affected women more commonly than it did men. Among women in the large cohort studied, 2.4 percent suffered from the disorder. Among men in the cohort, 1.8 percent did.

 

The authors of the new research acknowledge that the findings do not reveal how cancer and anxiety are related, and do not show that anxiety causes cancer. Men with anxiety may engage in behaviors that increase cancer risk. But the two diseases may also spring from common origins, including, possibly, higher rates of systemic inflammation. Whatever the relationship, says the study's lead author, the new findings identify extremely anxious men as a population whose mental and physical health should be closely tracked.

 

"Society may need to consider anxiety as a warning signal for poor health," said study lead author Olivia Remes of Cambridge University's Institute of Public Health. "With this study, we show that anxiety is more than just a personality trait," but rather, a disorder linked to real and serious health risks.

 

Imperial College psychiatrist David Nutt, who was not involved in the new research, said the intense distress suffered by those with anxiety comes with insomnia and widespread physical stress.

 

"That is bound to have a major impact on many physiological processes, including immune supervision of cancerous cells," said Nutt, a former president of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology.  "As a psychiatrist who used to run one of the very few clinics in the U.K. specialized in the treatment of people with severe anxiety disorders, these results do not surprise me," Nutt added.

 

Cholesterol drives Alzheimer’s plaque formation, study finds

University of Virginia, September 15, 2021

Cholesterol manufactured in the brain appears to play a key role in the development of Alzheimer’s disease, new research indicates.

Scientists from the University of Virginia School of Medicine and their collaborators found that cholesterol produced by cells called astrocytes is required for controlling the production of amyloid beta, a sticky protein that builds up in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s. The protein accumulates into insoluble plaques that are a hallmark of the disease. Many efforts have targeted these plaques in the hope that removing or preventing them could treat or prevent Alzheimer’s.

The new findings offer important insights into how and why the plaques form and may explain why genes associated with cholesterol have been linked to increased risk for Alzheimer’s. The results also provide scientists with important direction as they seek to prevent Alzheimer’s.

“This study helps us to understand why genes linked to cholesterol are so important to the development of Alzheimer’s disease,” said researcher Heather A. Ferris, MD, PhD, of UVA’s Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism. “Our data point to the importance of focusing on the production of cholesterol in astrocytes and the transport to neurons as a way to reduce amyloid beta and prevent plaques from ever being formed.”

Alzheimer’s Plaques and Cholesterol

While cholesterol is often associated with clogged arteries and heart disease, it plays important roles in the healthy body. The body makes cholesterol naturally so it can produce hormones and carry out other important functions. The new discovery from Ferris and her collaborators adds a new entry to cholesterol’s list of responsibilities.

The work also sheds light on the role of astrocytes in Alzheimer’s disease. Scientists have known that these common brain cells undergo dramatic changes in Alzheimer’s, but they have been uncertain if the cells were suffering from the disease or contributing to it. The new results suggest the latter.

The scientists found that astrocytes help drive the progression of Alzheimer’s by making and distributing cholesterol to brain cells called neurons. This cholesterol buildup increases amyloid beta production and, in turn, fuels plaque accumulation.

Normally, cholesterol is kept quite low in neurons, limiting the buildup of amyloid beta. But in Alzheimer’s, the neurons lose their ability to regulate amyloid beta, resulting in plaque formation.

Blocking the astrocytes’ cholesterol manufacturing “robustly” decreased amyloid beta production in lab mice, the researchers report in a new scientific paper. It’s too soon to say if this could be mimicked in people to prevent plaque formation, but the researchers believe that further research is likely to yield important insights that will benefit the battle against Alzheimer’s.

The fact that amyloid beta production is normally tightly controlled suggests that it may play an important role in brain cells, the researchers say. As such, doctors may need to be careful in trying to block or remove amyloid beta. Additional research into the discovery could shed light on how to prevent the over-production of amyloid beta as a strategy against Alzheimer’s, the researchers believe.

“If we can find strategies to prevent astrocytes from over-producing cholesterol, we might make a real impact on the development of Alzheimer’s disease,” Ferris said. “Once people start having memory problems from Alzheimer’s disease, countless neurons have already died. We hope that targeting cholesterol can prevent that death from ever occurring in the first place.”

 

Is greenery the secret to slowing the biological ageing process?

Monash University (Australia), September 16, 2021

We all know being surrounded by greenery is good for the mind and soul, but can it be good for the body, too?

Planetary health researchers at Monash University's School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine have found that may indeed be the case, at least for women.

In a world first, they've shown a link between the amount of plant life in a person's immediate environment and slower biological aging, based on changes to DNA methylation.

"We searched the medical literature prior to embarking on this project," says Ph.D. candidate and first author Rongbin Xu, "and could only find a single abstract, presented at a conference but never written up and published in a peer-reviewed journal, that touched on this subject.

"It focused on infants, and compared their biological gestational age with the greenness surrounding the mother during pregnancy, so it was quite a different application to our current study."

Their study was recently published in Environmental Health Perspectives.

With an aging global population driven by increased longevity and falling birth rates, understanding how to prolong good health and functioning into old age is a priority.

One of the most robust markers of biological aging is the aging-related methylation changes found in an individual's DNA. This is where some sections of DNA become covered by methyl molecules.

The role of methylation

Some sections of DNA have CpG sites that are particularly prone to increased methylation with age, and this restricts the functionality of affected genes. Conversely, aging can also reduce methylation in other areas, leading to over-expression of genes, which can be equally as harmful.

DNAmAge is a measure of a person's biological age as measured by methylation, and there are four main algorithms in popular use to calculate it: Horvath's Age, Hannum's Age, PhenoAge and GrimAge.

There's a growing body of research that indicates GrimAge may be the most robust DNAmAge estimator, given its strong predictive power of future health, such as time to death, cancer, and heart diseases.

By comparing an individual's DNAmAge to their chronological age in years, researchers can calculate the acceleration of biological aging (DNAmAgeAC). Increased acceleration is associated with early death and numerous diseases of aging, such as cancer and heart disease.

While some methylation changes are inevitable, we actually do have some influence over it. Research shows that interventions such as dietary adjustments and environmental factors may reverse adverse methylation changes.

"We speculated that the amount of greenery in a person's immediate environment may play a role in reducing accelerated biological aging," says Rongbin.

"A high degree of local vegetation density—gardens, parkland, bush—can reduce mental stress, provide a space for social interaction, encourage physical activity and reduce harm from air pollution and heat. Given these are all determinants for good health, it made sense that there may be a connection."

The researchers leveraged existing data from the Australian Mammographic Density Twins and Sisters Study, which had previously explored the links between environmental, genetic and lifestyle factors and breast tissue density, a known risk factor for breast cancer.

Initial trial participants included female twins aged 40-70 years in Perth, Sydney and Melbourne, and the cohort was later expanded to include their non-twin sisters. Blood samples were collected and stored as Guthrie cards, much like is done for newborn babies.

These cards formed the source for the DNA methylation analysis performed as part of this current study. Methylation levels were analyzed in a laboratory, and four DNAmAges were calculated for each of 479 women from 130 different families, using the four algorithms mentioned above.

The second part of the project involved mapping vegetation levels near participants' homes. Those taking part had provided residential addresses for the study, which were converted to longitude-latitude coordinates using a Google Maps interface.

While there's a risk some participants may have moved house during that time, a national Australian survey in 2008 showed 80% in this age group hadn't moved house for more than five years.

The team used infrared and visible light readings from a NASA satellite to estimate local vegetation mass in the 12 months leading up to each participant's blood draw.

Plant life absorbs visible red light for photosynthesis, but strongly reflects infrared and near-infrared light. The researchers used this—and some fairly complex mathematical formulas that accounted for atmospheric distortion in light readings—to estimate greenness density up to 2km from their homes.

"We found that using the most robust of the algorithms, GrimAge, increased surrounding greenness was associated with slower biological aging," says Rongbin. "Our study shows that a 0.1-unit increase in the Normalised Difference Vegetation Index within 500 meters of home is associated with a 0.31-years reduction in biological aging as measured by GrimAge.

"Previous cohort studies tell us this is equivalent to a 3% reduction in all-cause mortality. The association remained stable when measuring greenness at 300 meters, one kilometer and two kilometers from home."

Three components of GrimAge showed particularly strong association with slowed biological aging:

• Greenness is associated with a reversal of DNA methylation changes arising from exposure to cigarette smoke
• Greenness may be associated with improved immune function and metabolic health as indicated by the biomarker GDF-15
• Greenness may be associated with a reduction in fatty tissues seen in obesity, and improved kidney health as indicated by the biomarker cystatin

"More research is needed to confirm our results in larger studies," says Rongbin, "and to look at the process in men, but it's an exciting foray into this field."