High-Fat Diet and Colorectal Cancer
Categories Medical news

Long Awaited Link Between High-Fat Diet and Colorectal Cancer Found

Colorectal cancer, the cancer that originates in the colon or rectum, is the third most common cancer diagnosed in the United States. A plethora of studies have established a link between consumption of high-fat diet and increased risk of colorectal cancer, but the mechanism of this association was till now obscure.

As reported in the journal, Stem Cell Reports, researchers from the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio have unfolded this mechanism. In a study that utilized mice as the models, researchers have been able to identify a pathway that drives the growth of cancer stem cells in their colon in response to a high-fat diet.

Feeding the mice with high-fat diet increased the growth of cancer stem cells in their colon. Furthermore, researchers identified a cellular signalling pathway, JAK2-STAT3 that drives the growth of cancer stem cells in the colon in response to a high-fat diet. Blocking this pathway reversed the growth of cancer stem cells in colon triggered by consuming a high-fat diet.

The study was co-authored by Dr Matthew Kalady, co-director of the Comprehensive Colorectal Cancer Program at the Cleveland Clinic. “This study is first of its kind that mediates a link between high-fat diet and colorectal cancer through the demonstration of a cellular pathway; a discovery that opens the gates to new ways of treating colorectal cancer”, says Dr Kalady.

Another co-author, Justin D. Lathia further appreciates it as an insight into the influence of diet on cancer stem cells in advanced cancers.

Immunotherapy In Type 1 Diabetes
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A Landmark Trial Establishes The Safety Of Immunotherapy In Type 1 Diabetes

Nearly 5% of the population in the  United States suffers from type 1 diabetes; an autoimmune disorder where the body’s immune system specifically fails to recognize pancreas’ insulin producing beta cells and mistakenly attacks them.

In the absence of sure shot treatment and the dearth of studies on immunotherapy, Dr Mohammad Alhadj Ali, Cardiff University School of Medicine, U.K., and Mark Peakman, professor of clinical immunology at King’s College London, conducted a study on the possible benefits of immunotherapy in type 1 diabetes.

Dr Ali and his team examined the effect of the immunotherapy molecule, proinsulin peptide, in 27 diabetic people within a period of 100 days. The participants were divided into two groups – one receiving the shots of immunotherapy and the other receiving placebo for 6 months at 2 or 4 weeks interval. Their markers of insulin, C-peptide levels were tested at 3, 6, 9, and 12 months, and compared with baseline levels.

In the end, the placebo group revealed a significant decline in their C-peptide levels and about 50% increase in insulin intake over a period of 12 months. On the other hand, the group that received immunotherapy shots had stable C-peptide levels and insulin intake.

This led Prof. Peakman to conclude, “Though the sample size for research was small, it has encouraged the researchers to conduct a larger study in future. Moreover, immunotherapy has been found safe for people with type 1 diabetes and may be acceptable in children as well as in long periods of treatment.”

Are the Statins Protective Against Death in Four Most Common Cancers
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Are the Statins Protective Against Death in the Four Most Common Cancers?

A 14-year study, which included nearly 1 million patients, has observed that the use of statins may be associated with reduced mortality and improved survival in lung, breast, prostate, and bowel cancers. The research is presented at Frontiers in Cardiovascular Biology (FCVB) 2016. In this study, patients with one of the four cancers (between 2000 and 2013) were recruited from ACALM clinical database, which included data on co-existing conditions such as high cholesterol.

When the factors influencing mortality such as age, gender, and ethnicity had been adjusted, researchers learned that patients with cancer were less likely to die if they had a high cholesterol diagnosis than those patients that did not. A diagnosis of high cholesterol indicated a 22% lower risk of death in patients with lung cancer, 43% lower risk in breast cancer, 47% lower risk in prostate cancer, and 30% lower risk in bowel cancer patients.

The lead author of the study Dr. Paul Carter (Aston University, Birmingham, UK) envisages that the effect is caused by cholesterol-lowering interventions such as statins, since the association was prominent amongst all four cancers. However, further studies are needed to in other types of cancer to confirm this speculation.

Obese Woman May Affects Future Generation at Metabolic Risk
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Obese Woman May Affects Future Generation at Metabolic Risk

Eating healthy and nutritious food keeps us healthy. However, sedentary lifestyle and switching to processed and fast foods have made obesity a popularized condition. A current mouse study, lead by Kelle H. Moley, published online in the journal Cell Reports has come up with a novel finding that a mother’s obesity leads to later obesity and other metabolic abnormalities in upcoming generations. Women following a Western diet develop metabolic and genetic abnormalities even before pregnancy which are subsequently forwarded to future generations, thereby making them prone to obesity-related conditions like Type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

This finding is pertinent since more than two-thirds of reproductive-age women in the US are obese. In the study, mice were fed a diet consisting of 60% fat and 20% sugar, nearly similar to the Western diet, right from six weeks before conception until weaning. The upcoming offsprings were then fed a diet containing high-protein, low-fat and low-sugar. Upto third descendents, the offsprings developed insulin resistance and other metabolic problems regardless of healthy diet.

Authors also found abnormal mitochondria in muscle and skeletal tissue of the progeny mice showing that mother’s obesity and associated metabolic abnormalities are inherited by transmitting dysfunctional genes of mitochondria in the unfertilized egg through the female bloodline. The mitochondrial DNA holds its own set of genes and is inherited only from mothers, not fathers. Additionally, oocytes also hoist information to program mitochondrial dysfunction throughout the body. Human offsprings are more susceptible to the effects of maternal metabolic syndrome since children follow the diets of parents

Consuming High Dose Loperamide Puts Heart at Risk
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Consuming High Dose Loperamide Puts Heart at Risk

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recently raised warnings over the drug loperamide stating that consumption of higher than recommended doses may cause QT interval prolongation, torsades de pointes, cardiac arrest, syncope and even death in some cases. The agency also reported that most cases of high-dose consumption were due to intentional misuse and abuse of the drug. Loperamide is a mu-opioid agonist indicated for diarrhea and prescribed at a maximum dose of 16 mg/day.

However, at higher doses, loperamide is known to deliver psychoactive effects. Considering this effect, copious online conferences recommend using loperamide to overcome opioid withdrawal symptoms. A drug safety communication conducted by FDA reported that more than half of the 48 cases of serious heart problems occurred in individuals who intentionally misused and abused high dose loperamide to get rid of opioid withdrawal symptoms or to simply reach a euphoric state. Out of those, 31 cases were hospitalized and 10 succumbed to death.

Moreover, individuals also intentionally misused other drugs like ranitidine along with loperamide for inflating its absorption and penetration across the blood-brain barrier, constrain its metabolism, and boost its euphoric effects. In precise, the FDA recommends considering loperamide as a possible cause of unexplained serious cardiac events. If loperamide toxicity is suspected, drug level testing should be done separately since standard toxicology and opioid drug testing miss out loperamide toxicity. Electrical pacing or cardio version should be opted than anti-arrhythmic drugs for treating loperamide-associated torsades de pointes.