just for health 20

In a paper publishing July 5 in  Cell Metabolism , a team led by Alan Saltiel, PhD, director of the UC San Diego Institute for Diabetes and Metabolic Health, and Elif Oral, MD, director of the MEND Obesity and Metabolic Disorder Program at the University of Michigan, along with scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences, identified a molecular signature in patients who responded to amlexanox, an anti-inflammatory and anti-allergic drug used to treat asthma that was developed in the 1980s in Japan. The discovery is not ready for the clinic, but it does reveal a potential new therapeutic approach for treating type 2 diabetes. "When we looked at the drug-treated group we saw a bimodal distribution, that is, there were some responders and some non-responders. We didn't understand why, so we did a molecular analysis from biopsies of fat cells we took from patients at the beginning and end of the study," said Saltiel. "In the responder group, the level...

A recent University of Michigan study of low-income mothers found that when they watch parent-approved, educational programming with their child, television is viewed as a positive tool. Moms also report largely positive experiences when managing their child's media use, which challenges negative assumptions about low-income mothers and screen time management. In the study, 296 low-income moms were asked about beliefs and rules regarding their 4-to-8-year-old child's television watching behavior, how they manage screen time and if they allow television during meals. The amount of screen time children should be allowed, in particular TV -- which is still the most popular electronic medium -- is a huge issue in all demographics, but perhaps even more so for low-income children, said first author Sarah Domoff, a researcher at the U-M Center for Human Growth and Development and assistant professor at Central Michigan University. That's because television watching is a...

In a newly published study, Cleveland Clinic researchers have identified a specific molecular pathway that plays a key role in the link between a high-fat diet and tumor growth in the colon. In the July 6 issue of  Stem Cell Reports , the team showed in pre-clinical models that cancer stem cell growth in the colon was enhanced by a high-fat, Western diet. Cancer stem cells are a subset of resilient, aggressive malignant cells that are believed to be partially responsible for spread and recurrence of cancer. Furthermore, when the researchers blocked the JAK2-STAT3 cellular signaling pathway, a widely studied pathway known to promote tumor growth, the spike in cancer stem cell growth caused by the high-fat diet declined. This study provides more insight into how the JAK2-STAT3 pathway is linked to diet-related cancer. Pinpointing the exact mechanism can help researchers develop therapeutics to counteract the negative effects of a Western diet on colorectal cancer. Colorecta...

The research analyzed data from three diet clinical trials which collectively looked at more than 1,200 individuals -- Diet, Obesity, and Genes (DiOGenes); the OPUS Supermarket intervention (SHOPUS); and the Nutrient-gene interactions in human obesity (NUGENOB). The findings suggest that for most people with prediabetes, a diet rich with vegetables fruits and wholegrains should be recommended for weight loss and could potentially improve diabetes markers. For people with type 2 diabetes, the analysis found that a diet rich in healthy fats from plant sources would be effective for achieving weight loss. These diets could also be effective independent of caloric restriction. Two simple biomarkers with a large effect "Recognizing fasting plasma glucose as a key biomarker enables a new interpretation of the data from many previous studies, which could potentially lead to a breakthrough in personalized nutrition," said Arne Astrup, M.D., Head of Department of Nutrition, Exer...

Significant hip deformities affect around 1 in 500 children. Slipped Capital Femoral Epiphysis (SCFE) is the most common hip disease of adolescence. The condition always requires surgery, can cause significant pain, and often leads to a hip replacement in adolescence or early adulthood. Children with a SCFE experience a decrease in their range of motion, and are often unable to complete hip flexion or fully rotate the hip inward. Unfortunately many cases of SCFE are misdiagnosed or overlooked, because the first symptom is knee pain, referred from the hip. The knee is often investigated and found to be normal. Early recognition of SCFE is important as the deformity may worsen if the slip remains untreated. Factors explored In an effort to identify children at higher risk of this condition researchers from the University's Institute of Translational Medicine, led by National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) Clinician Scientist and Senior Lecturer in Orthopaedic Surgery Dan...

(left) Huijuan Dou, Ph.D. candidate and the research's first creator, and Dr. Zsolt Bagi, vascular biologist within the Vascular Biology Middle on the Medical Faculty of Georgia at Augusta College. Credit score: Phil Jones Age and weight problems seem to create an ideal storm that may scale back blood stream by way of the tiny blood vessels that straight feed our coronary heart muscle and put us in danger for coronary heart failure, scientists report. They name it "aged fats" and scientists now have proof that the irritation created by each age and fats have an additive impact that may thicken the partitions of our coronary microvasculature with none proof of the traditional atherosclerotic plaque that many people affiliate with coronary heart illness. "Older overweight sufferers and typically ladies who are suffering coronary heart failure go to the cardiac catheterization lab and the heart specialist finds nothing that might clarify thei...