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Intestinal bacteria may protect against diabetes

The findings were published in   Scientific Reports . The study was carried out in the LC-MS Metabolomics Centre of the University of Eastern Finland together with a large number of partners from Finnish and Swedish research institutes. The study compared two groups participating in the Finnish Diabetes Prevention Study, DPS. At the onset of the study, all participants were overweight and had impaired glucose tolerance. The researchers investigated the serum metabolite profile of 200 participants with impaired glucose tolerance, who either developed type 2 diabetes within the first 5 years, or did not convert to type 2 diabetes within a 15-year follow-up. The differences between the groups were analysed by non-targeted metabolomics analysis. Instead of focusing on just a few pre-defined markers, metabolomics analysis allows for the determination of the study participants' metabolic profile, i.e. the concentrations of several metabolites. The greatest differences in the metabo...
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Both too much, too little weight tied to migraine

The researchers looked at all available studies on body mass index (BMI) and migraine. "As obesity and being underweight are potentially modifiable risk factors for migraine, awareness of these risk factors is vital for both people with migraine and doctors, " said study author B. Lee Peterlin, DO, of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a member of the American Academy of Neurology. "More research is needed to determine whether efforts to help people lose or gain weight could lower their risk for migraine." A total of 12 studies with 288,981 participants were included in the meta-analysis. When the researchers compiled all of the results and adjusted for age and sex, they found that obese people were 27 percent more likely to have migraine than people of normal weight. People who were underweight were 13 percent more likely to have migraine than people of normal weight. Obesity was defined as a BMI of 30 or higher. Underweight was defined as a BMI ...
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Low-fat dairy linked to lower tendency towards depression

Dairy consumption has long been linked to a wide range of physical health benefits, but its effect on emotional health has remained unclear. Now, a new study published in the journal  Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology  reveals that people who consume low-fat dairy products may be less prone to depression Professor Ryoichi Nagatomi of Tohoku University and colleagues in Japan and China investigated the association between whole and low-fat dairy consumption and depressive symptoms such as exhaustion, sadness, anxiety, helplessness and hopelessness. This is the first study to consider different components of dairy products (whole fat and low fat) and the occurrence of depression. The study involved 1,159 Japanese adults between the ages of 19 and 83. There were 897 men and 262 women, of which 31.2% and 31.7% respectively, were depressed. The researchers asked th e participants in a questionnaire how often they consumed whole- or low-fat milk or yogurt. De...
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Sympathetic nervous system key to thermogenesis, new study suggests

While researchers had previously hypothesized that macrophages, a class of white blood cells, played a major role in thermogenesis, the new study suggests that the main driver of thermogenesis is the sympathetic nervous system, which is chiefly controlled by the brain. The results were published online in  Nature Medicine . The Mount Sinai research team led by Christoph Buettner, MD, PhD, senior author of the study and Professor of Medicine (Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Bone Disease) at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, focused on catecholamines, hormones released by the sympathetic nervous system to activate brown fat tissue. Brown adipose tissue is a type of fat tissue that burns energy to produce heat and keep us warm. Catecholamines can also convert white fat tissue, the more familiar kind of fat tissue that stores lipids, into a tissue that resembles brown fat. The researchers tested whether macrophages could provide an alternative source of catecholamines, a...
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Do BAT receptors hold the key to treating obesity and diabetes?

"Our study establishes the potential of TRPM8 and TRPP3 as druggable targets involved in human brown adipogenesis, to develop substances that can modulate energy consumption in individuals and blood sugar control," said Michael Ragunath, M.D., Ph.D., a researcher involved in the work at the Department of Life Sciences and Facility Management, Center for Cell Biology and Tissue Engineering, Zurich University of Applied Sciences, in Zurich, Switzerland. "In the face of a growing number of diabetic and obese people, our work hopefully will contribute to the development of non-adrenergic stimulators of brown fat and the appreciation of functional food to influence brown fat physiology." To make this discovery, Ragunath and colleagues used two types of precursor cells from human donors: bone marrow stem cells (MSCs) and subcutaneous belly fat cells. They induced these cells to become white or brown fat, and in parallel cultures the cells were allowed to remain undi...
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High-fat, high-carb diet a cause of osteoarthritis

Research, published in  Scientific Reports , conducted by Professor Yin Xiao, from QUT's Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation and his team, in collaboration with Professor Lindsay Brown and his team at University of Southern Queensland, is possibly the first study to investigate the association between osteoarthritis and common dietary fatty acids. The researchers studied the effects on joints of diets rich in a variety of saturated fatty acids found in such foods as butter, coconut oil , palm oil and animal fat, and simple carbohydrates -- a high-fat, high carbohydrate diet common to "junk food." "Our findings suggest that it's not wear and tear but diet that has a lot to do with the onset of osteoarthritis," Professor Xiao said. "The main function of cartilage is to seal the bone ends in a joint and absorb pressure on the bones during weight-bearing movement such as walking. "We found that a diet containing simple carbohydrat...
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Post-biotics may help shield obese from diabetes

Jonathan Schertzer, assistant professor of biochemistry and biomedical sciences and senior author of a paper published by  Cell Metabolism , explains it this way: "We know that gut bacteria, often called the microbiome, send inflammation signals that change how well insulin works to lower blood glucose. "It was previously thought that bacteria only caused problems such as higher inflammation and higher blood glucose. But this is only half of the story. We discovered that a specific component of bacteria actually lowers blood glucose and allows insulin to work better during obesity. "Understanding how different parts of bacteria control glucose could lead to new therapies that avoid some of the problems with pro-biotics or pre-biotics . We have found a "post-biotic" that lowers blood glucose during obesity." This work is important as more than half of Canadians are overweight or obese, which leads to higher levels of blood insulin and glucose. T...
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