Nutrition News

A new study on pediatric H1N1 influenza admissions has found that asthma is a significant risk factor for severe disease in children with pandemic H1N1 compared with the seasonal flu. The study, led by researchers from The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto, Ontario, is published online November 18 in CMAJ ...

A newly discovered chemical pathway that helps protect heart tissue can be stimulated by two of 20 common beta-blockers, drugs that are prescribed to millions of patients who have experienced heart failure. Researchers from Duke University Medical Center tested 20 beta blockers and found that two of them -- alprenolol and carvedilol -- could stimulate a...

In a new study, researchers report that a class of heart medications called beta-blockers can have a helpful, or harmful, effect on the heart, depending on their molecular activity. The study, which appears in the journal Circulation Research, found that beta-blockers that target both the alpha- and beta-receptors on the heart muscle offer the most benefit to cardiac patients, while those that target...

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) researchers have confirmed that a diet rich in polyphenols and polyunsaturated fatty acids, patented as an LMN diet, helps boost the production of the brain's stem cells -neurogenesis- and strengthens their differentiation in different types of neuron cells. The research revealed that mice fed...

The presence of increased body fat, and therefore higher levels of inflammatory substances in the blood, hinders the loss and maintenance of body weight; as shown by a research project of the University of Navarra conducted by Estíbaliz Goyenechea Soto, a scientist at the School of Pharmacy.

Many people who are overweight or obese develop insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes at some stage in their lives. A European research team has now discovered that obese people have large amounts of the molecule CXCL5, produced by certain cells in fatty tissue.

Pumping ability reduced in those with undesirable blood levels, analysis shows. Abnormal cholesterol levels can significantly increase the risk of heart failure, a new study has found. U.S. researchers analyzed data on 6,860 participants in the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute's Framingham Heart Study. None of the participants, average age 44, had coronary heart disease at the start of the study. After about 26 years of follow-up, 680 people had developed heart failure.

On the skin's surface, bacteria are abundant, diverse and constant, but inflammation is undesirable. Research at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine now shows that the normal bacteria living on the skin surface trigger a pathway that prevents excessive inflammation after injury. "These germs are actually good for us," said...

Exposures in the womb to a ubiquitous family of industrial chemicals can subtly perturb preferences of boys for certain types of child’s play thought to be hardwired in the brain, a new study suggests. Phthalates are widely used solvents and plastics softeners. In this study, the greater a boy’s fetal exposure to certain phthalates, the less often he tended to engage in typically masculine play.

A team led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute have discovered a direct link between insulin -- a hormone long associated with metabolism and metabolic disorders such as diabetes -- and core body temperature. While much research has been conducted on insulin since its discovery in the 1920s, this is the first time the hormone has been connected to the fundamental process of temperature regulation.

Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine set out to address a question that has been challenging scientists for years: How do dietary restriction -- and the reverse, overconsumption -- produce protective effects against aging and disease? An answer lies in a two-part study led by Charles Mobbs, PhD, Professor of Neuroscience and of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, published...

A paper by University of Notre Dame biologist Giles Duffield and a team of researchers offers new insights into a gene that plays a key role in modulating the body's circadian system and may also simultaneously modulate its metabolic system. The relationship between circadian and metabolic systems the researchers describe could have important implications for understanding the higher incidence of cardiovascular disease, obesity and diabetes among...