Recent Longevity News for the week ending 12/30/15

Association of Coffee Consumption With Overall and Cause-specific Mortality in a Large US Prospective Cohort Study - Medscape, 12/29/15 - "Following adjustment for smoking and other potential confounders, coffee drinkers, as compared with nondrinkers, had lower hazard ratios for overall mortality (<1 cup/day: hazard ratio (HR) = 0.99 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.92, 1.07); 1 cup/day: HR = 0.94 (95% CI: 0.87, 1.02); 2–3 cups/day: HR = 0.82 (95% CI: 0.77, 0.88); 4–5 cups/day: HR = 0.79 (95% CI: 0.72, 0.86); ≥6 cups/day: HR = 0.84 (95% CI: 0.75, 0.95)). Similar findings were observed for decaffeinated coffee and coffee additives. Inverse associations were observed for deaths from heart disease, chronic respiratory diseases, diabetes, pneumonia and influenza, and intentional self-harm, but not cancer. Coffee may reduce mortality risk by favorably affecting inflammation, lung function, insulin sensitivity, and depression"

Potatoes Tied to Higher Risk of Type 2 Diabetes; French Fries Worst - Medscape, 12/24/15 - "Eating potatoes may increase the risk of type 2 diabetes and replacing them with whole grains may lower this risk ... Potatoes contain a large amount of starch and a relatively small amount of fiber, vitamins, minerals, and polyphenols ... participants who ate less than two to four servings of potatoes per week had a 7% increased risk of type 2 diabetes (pooled hazard ratio [HR], 1.07), while those who ate seven or more servings per week had 33% increased risk (pooled HR, 1.33) compared with those who ate less than one serving per week"

Sugar Sag: Glycation and the Role of Diet in Aging Skin - Medscape, 12/23/15 - "First described in the context of diabetes, advanced glycation end products (AGEs) are formed through a type of non-enzymatic reaction called glycation. Increased accumulation of AGEs in human tissue has now been associated with end stage renal disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and, recently, skin aging. Characteristic findings of aging skin, including decreased resistance to mechanical stress, impaired wound healing, and distorted dermal vasculature, can be in part attributable to glycation. Multiple factors mediate cutaneous senescence, and these factors are generally characterized as endogenous (e.g., telomere shortening) or exogenous (e.g., ultraviolet radiation exposure). Interestingly, AGEs exert their pathophysiological effects from both endogenous and exogenous routes. The former entails the consumption of sugar in the diet, which then covalently binds an electron from a donor molecule to form an AGE. The latter process mostly refers to the formation of AGEs through cooking. Recent studies have revealed that certain methods of food preparation (i.e., grilling, frying, and roasting) produce much higher levels of AGEs than water-based cooking methods such as boiling and steaming"

New study indicates that metformin has the potential to prevent and treat preeclampsia - Science Daily, 12/22/15 - "the drug metformin decreases the production of the two toxins elevated in preeclampsia and also helps heal injured blood vessels ... Metformin appears to be the aspirin of the 21st century, because the drug has been discovered to have unexpected health benefits not only in diabetes, but also in polycystic ovarian disease and recent work has highlighted its anti-cancer properties" - See metformin at The Antiaging Store.

Abstracts from this week:

Resveratrol triggers ER stress-mediated apoptosis by disrupting N-linked glycosylation of proteins in ovarian cancer cells - Cancer Lett. 2015 Dec 15 - "resveratrol induced endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress-mediated apoptosis by interrupting protein glycosylation in a cancer-specific manner. Our results indicated that resveratrol suppressed the hexosamine biosynthetic pathway and interrupted protein glycosylation through GSK3β activation ... Resveratrol-mediated disruption of protein glycosylation induced cellular apoptosis as indicated by the up-regulation of GADD153, followed by the activation of ER-stress sensors (PERK and ATF6α). Thus, our results provide novel insight into cancer cell metabolism and protein glycosylation as a therapeutic target for cancers" - See ReserveAge Resveratrol Vegetarian Capsules, 500 Mg, 60-Count at Amazon.com.

Fish oil supplementation during chemotherapy increases posterior time to tumor progression in colorectal cancer - Nutr Cancer. 2015 Dec 23:1-7 - "Thirty individuals never submitted to chemotherapy were randomized into supplemented group (SG), which received 2 g/day of fish oil (0.6 g/day of EPA and DHA) for 9 wk or control group (CG), which received neither fish oil nor placebo ... Time to tumor progression was significantly longer in SG [S593 days (±211.5)] vs. CG [330 days" - See fish oil supplements at Amazon.com.

Impact of weekly iron folic acid supplementation with and without vitamin B12 on anaemic adolescent girls: a randomised clinical trial - Eur J Clin Nutr. 2015 Dec 23 - "iron folic acid (IFA) ... IFA supplementation with or without vitamin B12 is an effective measure to cure anaemia. Although addition of vitamin B12 had similar impact on improving haemoglobin status as IFA alone, it resulted in better ferritin status. Hence, more multi-centre studies with a longer duration of supplementation or higher dose of vitamin B12 may be undertaken to assess the possible impact of vitamin B12 on improving haemoglobin levels in the population"

Low serum dehydroepiandrosterone examined by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry correlates with poor prognosis in hormone-naïve prostate cancer - Prostate. 2015 Nov 30 - "We confirmed that low serum DHEA levels in prostate cancer patients were related to high Gleason score and advanced clinical stage. These results suggest that serum DHEA level may be a useful prognostic factor in prostate cancer patients" - See Pure Encapulations 7-Keto DHEA at Amazon.com.

Cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D and cognitive functioning - Int Psychogeriatr. 2015 Dec 22:1-10 - "A lower serum 25(OH)D was significantly associated with lower general cognitive functioning and slower information processing speed, but not with a faster rate of cognitive decline" - See vitamin D at Amazon.com. 

Health Focus (Cortisol):