A single hormone directs body’s responses to low-protein diet: Mice live longer and lose weight while eating more when FGF21 is present
A single hormone appears to coordinate the lifespan extension produced by a low-protein diet. A new study from Pennington Biomedical Research Center, published in the journal Nature Communications, found that reducing the amount of protein in the diet produced an array of favorable health outcomes, including an extension of lifespan, and that these effects depend […]
Dominant form of heart failure caused by metabolic-immune interaction, review article suggests
The dominant form of heart failure worldwide appears to be caused by a strong, bidirectional interaction between the body’s response to metabolic stress and the immune system, according to a review article written by UT Southwestern researchers and colleagues. The article, published in Nature Cardiovascular Research, argues for more research into this root cause to […]
Pandemic Only Made Inequities Between Men and Women Worse
The COVID-19 pandemic appears to have exacerbated the inequalities that already existed between men and women across the globe, a review of data showed. Analyses of gender-specific datasets from 193 countries found that women were more likely than men to report employment loss from March 2020 to September 2021 (26% vs 20.4%, respectively), and were […]
Health Officials Warily Eye Rising New BA.2 Omicron Strain
[embedded content] Health officials are keeping a sharp eye on the COVID-19 omicron subvariant BA.2, which appears to be more contagious than the current BA.1 strain — but its health impacts are still unclear. A new World Health Organization study reported that even as COVID-19 cases are falling, BA.2 accounted for 21.5% of all new […]
Third Person ‘Cured’ of HIV via Transplant
A U.S. woman appears to be free of her HIV infection after receiving closely matched blood from a relative and HIV-resistant umbilical cord blood, researchers reported. Following the general game plan of two European men who required bone marrow transplantation for cancer and received their transplant from donors with rare HIV-resistant blood, the middle-age woman […]
High protein diet may harm polar bears
A high protein diet appears linked to kidney disease and shortened lifespans for captive polar bears, a relationship similarly suspected in humans, according to a review led by Washington State University wildlife biologist Charlie Robbins. The paper, published in Zoo Biology, takes careful look at what zoos have fed polar bears revealing they mostly offered […]
Fat-secreted molecule lowers response to common cancer treatment
Leptin, a molecule produced by fat cells, appears to cancel out the effects of the estrogen-blocking therapy tamoxifen, a drug commonly used to treat and prevent breast cancers, suggests a new study led by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center. The findings, published online Aug. 13 in npj Breast Cancer, could help explain […]
How fructose in the diet contributes to obesity
Eating fructose appears to alter cells in the digestive tract in a way that enables it to take in more nutrients, according to a preclinical study from investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian. These changes could help to explain the well-known link between rising fructose consumption around the world and increased rates of obesity […]