Nutrition Review

If you've ever wondered if nicotine offered society any benefit, a new study published in The FASEB Journal offers a surprising answer. Nicotine can protect the brain against Parkinson's disease, the research suggests, and the discovery of how nicotine does this may lead to entirely new types of treatments for the disease.

A new study gauging the impact of consuming more fish oil showed a marked reduction both in inflammation and, surprisingly, in anxiety among a cohort of healthy young people. The findings suggest that if young participants can get such improvements from specific dietary supplements, then the elderly and people at high risk for certain diseases might benefit even more.

A new strategy to quantify the levels of titanium in the blood of patients fitted with titanium orthopaedic implants is presented in Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry, a Springer journal.

Adding hormone therapy to radiation therapy has been proven in randomized clinical trials to improve overall survival for men with intermediate- and high-risk prostate cancer. However, adding hormone therapy may reduce overall survival in men with pre-existing heart conditions, even if they have high-risk prostate cancer according to a new study just published online in advance of print in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology•Biology•Physics, the official scientific journal of ASTRO.

A new study of the brain's master circadian clock -- known as the suprachiasmatic nucleus, or SCN -- reveals that a key pattern of rhythmic neural activity begins to decline by middle age. The study, whose senior author is UCLA Chancellor Gene Block, may have implications for the large number of older people who have difficulty sleeping and adjusting to time changes.

Milk and soy protein supplements were associated with lower systolic blood pressure compared to refined carbohydrate dietary supplements, in a study reported in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

The neurotransmitter dopamine is best known for its roles in the brain -- in signaling pathways that control movement, motivation, reward, learning and memory. Now, Vanderbilt University Medical Center investigators have demonstrated that dopamine produced outside the brain -- in the kidneys -- is important for renal function, blood pressure regulation and life span.

Obese people with high levels of abdominal fat and liver fat may face increased risks for heart disease and other serious health problems, according to research published in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology: Journal of the American Heart Association.

Over half of all Alzheimer's disease cases could potentially be prevented through lifestyle changes and treatment or prevention of chronic medical conditions, according to a study led by Deborah Barnes, PhD, a mental health researcher at the San Francisco VA Medical Center.

Birth control pills may reduce a woman's bone density, according to a study published online July 13 in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism by Group Health Research Institute (GHRI) scientists. Impacts on bone were small, depended on the woman's age and the pill's hormone dose, and did not appear until about two years of use. The study size and design allowed the researchers to focus on 14- to 18-year-old teenagers, and to look at how bone density might change when a woman stops using the pill.