Recent Longevity News for the week ending 8/26/15

Anti-aging tricks from dietary supplement seen in mice - Science Daily, 8/21/15 - "the dietary supplement alpha lipoic acid (ALA) can stimulate telomerase, the enzyme that lengthens telomeres, with positive effects in a mouse model of atherosclerosis ... ALA appears to exert its effects against atherosclerosis by spurring the smooth muscle cells that surround blood vessels to make PGC1 (peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma co-activator 1)-alpha ... What's new here is that we show that PGC1-alpha is regulating telomerase, and that has real beneficial effects on cellular stress in a mouse model of atherosclerosis" - See alpha lipoic acid products at Amazon.com.

Omega-3 Treatment Shows Long-term Psychosis Prevention - Medscape, 8/20/15 - "Adolescents and young adults considered to be at high risk for psychosis show significant reductions in progression to psychotic disorder 7 years after a brief, 12-week intervention of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) compared with a group receiving placebo ... the cumulative conversion rate to psychosis was 9.8% in the omega-3 PUFA group, compared with 40% in the placebo group ... The proportion of patients who reported being prescribed antipsychotic medication at the time of long-term follow-up was 29.4% in the omega-3 PUFA group, compared with 54.3% in the placebo group ... Among those in the placebo group, 82.9% met the criteria for at least one DSM-IV Axis I disorder during the long-term follow-up period, compared with 52.9% in the omega-3 PUFA group" - See fish oil supplements at Amazon.com.

Sleep, Patient Satisfaction May Go Hand in Hand for Hospitals - Medscape, 8/19/15 - "About half of all patients woken up for vitals checks probably don’t need to be, according to a 2013 study published in JAMA Internal Medicine. The study suggests waking those patients may contribute to bad patient results and dissatisfaction, and could increase the odds of patients having to come back to the hospital ... Sleep disruptions are actually not benign as far as patients are concerned,” said Dana Edelson, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Chicago and an author on the 2013 study. “We’re putting them at unnecessary risk when we’re waking them up in the middle of the night when they don’t need to be.” ... And possibly making the recovery a bit more difficult ... Patients will tell you, ‘I was so exhausted, I couldn’t wait to get home and go sleep"

Powdered cranberry combats colon cancer in mice - Science Daily, 8/18/15 - "Cranberry extracts may also afford protection toward other cancers, but it seems reasonable to look at colon cancer ... her team generated three powdered cranberry extracts: a whole fruit powder, an extract containing only the cranberry polyphenols, and one containing only the non-polyphenol components of the fruit ... The researchers mixed the cranberry extracts into the meals of mice with colon cancer ... After 20 weeks, the mice given the whole cranberry extract had about half the number of tumors as mice that received no cranberry in their chow. The remaining tumors in the cranberry-fed mice were also smaller. Plus, the cranberry extracts seemed to reduce the levels of inflammation markers in the mice ... There may be some synergy between polyphenol and non-polyphenol constituents ... This is approximately equivalent to a cup a day of cranberries if you were a human instead of a mouse ... she's not sure someone could get the same benefits from juice, which lacks some of the components in the skin of the cranberry" - See cranberry extract at Amazon.com.

Abstracts from this week:

Suboptimal Serum α-Tocopherol Concentrations Observed among Younger Adults and Those Depending Exclusively upon Food Sources, NHANES 2003-20061-3 - PLoS One. 2015 Aug 19 - ">90% of American adults are not consuming recommended amounts of vitamin E ... FOOD consumers have lower average α-tocopherol levels (24.9± 0.2 μmol/L) than FOOD+DS users (33.7 ± 0.3 μmol/L) ... Using a criterion of adequacy of 30 μmol/L, 87% of persons 20-30y and 43% of those 51+y had inadequate vitamin E status ... The prevalence of inadequate vitamin E levels is significantly higher among non-users of dietary supplements" - [Nutra USA] - See Jarrow FamilE (contains all eight members of the vitamin E family, includes Tocomin) at Amazon.com.

Antidepressant Use in the Elderly Is Associated With an Increased Risk of Dementia - Alzheimer Dis Assoc Disord. 2015 Aug 19 - "SSRI and non-SSRI users had significantly higher dementia risk than the nondepressed nonusers (hazard ratio [HR]=1.83, P=0.0025 for SSRI users and HR=1.50, P=0.004 for non-SSRI users). In addition, SSRIs users had significantly higher dementia risk than non-users with severe depression (HR=2.26"

Egg intake and cancers of the breast, ovary and prostate: a dose-response meta-analysis of prospective observational studies - Br J Nutr. 2015 Aug 21 - "For breast cancer, the linear dose-response meta-analysis found a non-significantly increased risk (RR for an increase of 5 eggs consumed/week: 1.05, 95 % CI 0.99, 1.11, n 16 023 cases). Evidence for non-linearity was not statistically significant (P non-linearity= 0.50, n 15 415 cases) but consuming ≥ 5 eggs/week was significantly associated with an increased risk of breast cancer compared with no egg consumption, with the summary RR being 1.04 (95 % CI 1.01, 1.07) for consuming 5 eggs/week and 1.09 (95 % CI 1.03, 1.15) for consuming about 9 eggs/week. For other cancers investigated, the summary RR for an increase of 5 eggs consumed/week was 1.09 (95 % CI 0.96, 1.24, n 2636 cases) for ovarian cancer; 1.47 (95 % CI 1.01, 2.14, n 609 cases) for fatal prostate cancer, with evidence of small-study effects (P Egger= 0.04). No evidence was found for an association with the risk of total prostate cancer"

High-Dose Menaquinone-7 Supplementation Reduces Cardiovascular Calcification in a Murine Model of Extraosseous Calcification - Nutrients. 2015 Aug 18 - "MK-7 supplementation inhibited cardiovascular calcification and decreased aortic alkaline phosphatase tissue concentrations. Furthermore, MK-7 supplementation increased aortic MGP messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) expression (10-fold; p < 0.05). CKD-induced arterial hypertension with secondary myocardial hypertrophy and increased elastic fiber breaking points in the arterial tunica media did not change with MK-7 supplementation. Our results show that high-dose MK-7 supplementation inhibits the development of cardiovascular calcification. The protective effect of MK-7 may be related to the inhibition of secondary mineralization of damaged vascular structures" - See MK-7 at Amazon.com.

Chemopreventive effects of dietary eicosapentaenoic acid supplementation in an experimental myeloid leukemia - Cancer Prev Res (Phila). 2015 Aug 19 - "Supplemented mice exhibited a decrease in leukemia burden and a decrease in the LSC colony-forming unit (LSC-CFU). The decrease in LSCs was confirmed through serial transplantation assays in all disease models. The results support a chemopreventive role for EPA in myeloid leukemia, which is dependent on the ability to efficiently convert EPA to endogenous cyclooxygenase-derived prostanoids, including Δ12-PGJ3" - See fish oil supplements at Amazon.com.

Consumption of Yogurt, Low-Fat Milk, and Other Low-Fat Dairy Products Is Associated with Lower Risk of Metabolic Syndrome Incidence in an Elderly Mediterranean Population - J Nutr. 2015 Aug 19 - "dietary habits by a 137-item validated food-frequency questionnaire, and blood biochemistry determinations ... median follow-up of 3.2 y ... the comparison of extreme tertiles of dairy product consumption were 0.72 (0.61, 0.86) for low-fat dairy, 0.73 (0.62, 0.86) for low-fat yogurt, 0.78 (0.66, 0.92) for whole-fat yogurt, and 0.80 (0.67, 0.95) for low-fat milk. The respective HR for cheese was 1.31"

Plasma Carotenoids Are Inversely Associated With Dementia Risk in an Elderly French Cohort - J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci. 2015 Aug 18 - "Dementia and AD were diagnosed by a committee of neurologists. The concentration of plasma carotenoids (beta-carotene, alpha-carotene, lycopene, lutein, zeaxanthin, and beta-cryptoxanthin) was determined at baseline ... After adjustment for sociodemographic data, diet quality, and clinical variables, including baseline cognitive performances, only higher lutein concentration, considered as a function of plasma lipids, was consistently significantly associated with a decreased risk of all-cause dementia and AD (hazard ratio = 0.808, 95% confidence interval = 0.671-0.973, p = .024 and hazard ratio = 0.759" - See lutein at Amazon.com.

Dietary Magnesium Is Positively Associated with Skeletal Muscle Power and Indices of Muscle Mass and May Attenuate the Association Between Circulating C-Reactive Protein and Muscle Mass in Women - J Bone Miner Res. 2015 Aug 19 - "Age-related loss of skeletal muscle mass and strength are risk factors for sarcopenia, osteoporosis, falls, fractures, frailty and mortality. Dietary magnesium (Mg) could play a role in prevention of age-related loss of skeletal muscle mass, power and strength directly through physiological mechanisms or indirectly through an impact on chronic low-grade inflammation, itself a risk factor for loss of skeletal muscle mass and strength ... Our results suggest that dietary magnesium may aid conservation of age-related loss of skeletal muscle mass and power in women of all ages" - See Jarrow Formulas, MagMind at Amazon.com.

High dietary protein decreases fat deposition induced by high-fat and high-sucrose diet in rats - Br J Nutr. 2015 Aug 19 - "high-sucrose (HS) ... high-protein diets reduced by 20 % the adiposity gain induced by HS and high-sucrose high-fat (HS-HF) diets"

Chromium Supplementation and the Effects on Metabolic Status in Women with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome: A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Trial - Ann Nutr Metab. 2015 Jul 31 - "randomized to receive 200 µg chromium picolinate supplements (n = 32) or placebo (n = 32) for 8 weeks ... Chromium supplementation in women with PCOS resulted in significant decreases in serum insulin levels (-3.6 ± 7.4 vs. +3.6 ± 6.2 µIU/ml, p < 0.001), homeostasis model of assessment-insulin resistance (HOMA-IR; -0.8 ± 1.6 vs. +0.9 ± 1.5, p < 0.001), homeostatic model assessment-beta cell function (HOMA-B; -15.5 ± 32.3 vs. +13.6 ± 23.1, p < 0.001), and a significant increase in quantitative insulin sensitivity check index (QUICKI) score (+0.02 ± 0.03 vs. -0.008 ± 0.02, p = 0.001) compared with the placebo. In addition, a trend toward a significant effect of chromium supplementation on decreasing serum triglycerides (-12.4 ± 74.4 vs. +15.2 ± 32.4 mg/dl, p = 0.05), very low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol (-2.5 ± 14.9 vs. +3.0 ± 6.5 mg/dl, p = 0.05), and cholesterol concentrations (-8.6 ± 21.9 vs. +0.7 ± 22.4 mg/dl, p = 0.09) was seen" - See chromium supplements at Amazon.com.

Plasma n-3 fatty acids and clinical outcomes in recent-onset rheumatoid arthritis - Br J Nutr. 2015 Aug 18:1-6 - "A randomised controlled trial (RCT) of high-dose v. low-dose fish oil in recent-onset rheumatoid arthritis (RA) demonstrated that the group allocated to high-dose fish oil had increased remission and decreased failure of disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drug (DMARD) therapy ... plasma phospholipid (PL) EPA and DHA ... When analysed as a single cohort, plasma PL EPA was related to time to remission, with a one unit increase in EPA (1 % total fatty acids) associated with a 12 % increase in the probability of remission at any time during the study period (hazard ratio (HR)=1.12; 95 % CI 1.02, 1.23; P=0.02) ... Adjustment for smoking, anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide antibodies and 'shared epitope' HLA-DR allele status did not change the HR. Plasma PL EPA, adjusted for the same variables, was negatively related to time to DMARD failure (HR=0.85; 95 % CI 0.72, 0.99; P=0.047). The HR for DHA and time to remission or DMARD failure were similar in magnitude to those for EPA" - See fish oil supplements at Amazon.com.

Curcumin treatment enhances the effect of exercise on mitochondrial biogenesis in skeletal muscle by increasing cAMP levels - Metabolism. 2015 Jul 21 - "endurance training (eTR) ... Taken together, these results suggest that the combination of curcumin treatment and eTR has the potential to accelerate mitochondrial biogenesis in skeletal muscle by increasing cAMP levels" - See curcumin products at Amazon.com.

Health Focus (Glycemic Index/Glycemic Load):