The evidence is accumulating on how bad stress is for health. Chronic stress can intensify inflammation and increase a person’s risk for developing central nervous system infections, neurodegenerative diseases, like multiple sclerosis (MS), and other inflammatory diseases, say researchers presenting at the 115th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association (APA). These researchers have demonstrated for the first time that stress related increases in central nervous system inflammation are behind the adverse effects of stress in an animal model of MS.

Researchers from Texas A & M University used mice to show what role social stress plays in the immune process to influence the course of an MS like disease. They proposed that stress induced increases of pro inflammatory cytokines, which are proteins that regulate immune and inflammatory functions, inhibit the clearing of a virus and allow the inflammatory process to run amok. Stress, say the authors, may interact with viral infections to increase vulnerability

to diseases such as MS. Meta-analysis of studies investigating the impact of stressful events in patients with MS show an increased risk of worsening symptoms of the disease.

In a series of experiments on mice, the authors showed that increases in a particular cytokine interleukin-6 (IL-6), which is released during stress and regulates the part of the immune system that fights infection can make socially stressed mice vulnerable to MS-like illnesses.

The researchers used a social disruption model (SDR) to simulate social stress for mice and then infected the mice with Theiler’s murine encephalomyelitis (TMEV). Infection with TMEV results in an acute infection of the central nervous system followed by a chronic autoimmune disease similar to that seen in humans with MS. Their laboratory has previously shown that exposure to social stress prior to infection exacerbates both the early viral infection and the later autoimmune demyelinating MS-like phase of the disease.

To create a stressful environment, researchers housed three young male mice together for several weeks. After the mice established a stable social hierarchy, researchers introduced an older aggressive male into the residence for a couple of hours. The intruder exhibits aggressive behavior posturing, fighting, wounding, pursuit that results in submissive behaviors and social defeat in the younger resident mice. This procedure was repeated for three consecutive nightly two-hour sessions with one night off, followed by an additional three nightly sessions. To keep the mice from getting used to the intruder, a new intruder was introduced for each session.

What they found was this stress appears to elevate levels of IL-6, which subsequently increases the severity of the MS-like illness. Furthermore, using specific IL-6 neutralizing antibody treatments during the stress exposure can prevent the stress-related worsening of the disease, said the authors.

In one experiment, they showed that mice exposed to social disruption had elevated central and peripheral levels of IL-6. However, infusing the neutralizing antibody into the brain prevented this stress-induced increase in IL-6. This demonstrated that the antibody could effectively reverse the stress-related increases in IL-6 in brain and in circulating blood.

Results from a second experiment showed that administering the IL-6 neutralizing antibody during the stress exposure prevented worsening of the TMEV infection. By blocking the stress-induced elevation of IL-6, TMEV infection was weakened, which lessened some of the disease symptoms, such as motor impairment, inflammation in the brain and spinal cord, and the viral level in the central nervous system. Based on these findings, Dr. Mary Meagher, the lead researcher, proposes that the adverse effects of stress-induced IL-6 on TMEV infection are enough to create a pro-inflammatory environment that interferes with the immune response to infection. Because the early immune response shapes the later specific immune response to infection, impairment of the early response could account for the increased viral level, prolonged viral infection, increased CNS inflammation, and the subsequent exacerbation of the chronic autoimmune disease.

There is a growing body of evidence in both animal and human studies that suggests that exposure to stress can increase and sustain the release of pro-in?¬‚ammatory cytokines following an assault on the immune system. Thus, the present findings might help scientists unravel which biobehavioral mechanisms offset the adverse health effects of chronic social stress in humans. “Similar to mice exposed to repeated social defeat by an aggressive intruder, people exposed to chronic social conflict experience high levels of stress and consequent dysregulation of the immune system, thereby increasing vulnerability to infectious and autoimmune disease,” said Meagher. “The cytokine response during chronic stress appears to play a key role in exacerbating the acute CNS infection and the development of subsequent autoimmune responses.”

Furthermore, interventions that prevented or reversed the stress-induced increases in IL-6 in the mouse model may have implications for humans, said Meagher. It is possible that the adverse effects of social conflict on people who are vulnerable to certain inflammatory diseases may be prevented or reversed by treatments aimed at blocking increases in this cytokine. Recent evidence suggests that some potential interventions include certain anti-inflammatory drugs, exercise, antidepressant medication, omega-3 fatty acids, and mindfulness relaxation training. However, human clinical trials are needed to fully evaluate this issue.

Presentation: “Severe or Traumatic Stress and Inflammation in Multiple Sclerosis,” Mary W. Meagher, PhD, Texas A&M University

Session 1157 Symposium: Traumatic Stress, Cardiovascular Disease, Metabolic Syndrome, and Neurodegenerative Disease, 11:00 11:50 AM, Friday, August 17, Moscone Center, Second Floor-West Building, Room 2020

The American Psychological Association (APA), in Washington, DC, is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States and is the world’s largest association of psychologists. APA’s membership includes more than 148,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through its divisions in 54 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 60 state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance psychology as a science, as a profession and as a means of promoting health, education and human welfare.

American Psychological Association (APA)
750 First St., NE
Washington, DC 20002-4242
United States
apa Continue reading →

University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine researchers have answered long-running questions about the way that anesthetics act on the body, by showing that the cellular pathway for emerging from anesthesia is different from the one that drugs take to put patients to sleep during operations. The findings will be published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The research focuses on orexins, the small, specialized fraction of the brain’s 100 billion neurons that play a key role in regulating the body’s wakeful state. Studying mice whose orexin systems had been genetically destroyed – a state similar to humans suffering from narcolepsy, a neurological condition that causes unusual daytime sleepiness – Max B. Kelz, MD, PhD, an assistant professor in Penn’s Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care and the Mahoney Institute of Neurological Sciences, found that these mice took much longer to emerge from general anesthesia than those with normal orexin signaling systems. However, the mice with faulty orexin systems did not appear to fall asleep faster during anesthesia, which suggests that different processes are at play when transitioning to and from the anesthetized stated.

“The modern expectation is that anesthesiologists can simply flip a consciousness switch as easily as we might turn the room lights on or off,” says lead author Max B. Kelz, MD, PhD, an assistant professor in Penn’s Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care and the Mahoney Institute of Neurological Sciences. “However, what patients do not realize is that despite 160 years of widespread clinical use, the mechanisms through which the state of anesthesia arises and dissipates remain unknown.”

Kelz became interested in these questions after treating a narcoleptic patient who took more than six hours to regain consciousness after anesthesia, compared to the typical six minutes or so. By probing what’s different about the narcoleptic brain, the Penn study has established for the first time that the process of entry into and exit from the anesthetized state are not mirror images of one another.

Kelz and his colleagues, including Sigrid Veasey, MD, associate professor in the Department of Medicine’s Sleep Medicine division, hope that further research on the brain’s neural signaling systems will lead to novel ways to administer anesthesia and “jump start” a speedy, safe return to consciousness – particularly among patients who struggle to wake up or in patient groups that may be more prone to anesthesia side effects such as the elderly and patients with neurodegenerative disorders. The findings might also be used to create designer anesthetic agents that “hijack” the body’s natural sleep cycles to mimic a state closer to natural sleep than a chemically-induced coma, Kelz says.

###

PENN Medicine is a $3.5 billion enterprise dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, and excellence in patient care. PENN Medicine consists of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (founded in 1765 as the nation’s first medical school) and the University of Pennsylvania Health System.

Penn’s School of Medicine is currently ranked #3 in the nation in U.S.News & World Report’s survey of top research-oriented medical schools; and, according to most recent data from the National Institutes of Health, received over $379 million in NIH research funds in the 2006 fiscal year. Supporting 1,400 fulltime faculty and 700 students, the School of Medicine is recognized worldwide for its superior education and training of the next generation of physician-scientists and leaders of academic medicine.

The University of Pennsylvania Health System includes three hospitals – its flagship hospital, the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, rated one of the nation’s “Honor Roll” hospitals by U.S.News & World Report; Pennsylvania Hospital, the nation’s first hospital; and Penn Presbyterian Medical Center – a faculty practice plan; a primary-care provider network; two multispecialty satellite facilities; and home care and hospice.

Source: Holly Auer

University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine Continue reading →

The number of hectares planted with biotech crops worldwide increased by 9.0 million hectares (22 million acres) in 2005. This is according to new figures published today by ISAAA (The International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (1).

“More farmers are choosing to plant GM crops than ever before. This is testament to the real advantages and benefits farmers worldwide are getting out of biotech crops,” says Simon Barber, Director of the Plant Biotechnology Unit at EuropaBio – the European association for bioindustries (2). “It is very encouraging to see that among the growing number of countries adopting biotech crops, a number of them are now European – farmers in 5 EU member states planted GM crops in 2005.”

The advantages and benefits accruing to farmers using the technology are considerable. A recent study produced by PG Economics (3) showed that farmers using the technology increased their income by US$27 billion during the period 1996 to 2004 with significant, additional environmental benefits delivered; the accumulative economic benefits during the nine years to developing countries ($15 billion), exceeded benefits to industrial countries ($12 billion).

The benefits that can be achieved through biotechnology applied to agriculture have also prompted more than 3,400 international scientists to sign the AgBioWorld declaration of support for agricultural biotechnology to improve agriculture in the developing world. Signatories include 25 Nobel Prize winners.

In Europe, the European Council of March 2003 asked the Commission to support a European Technology Platform for “Plants for the Future” – a stakeholder forum on plant genomics and biotechnology. The platform has published a 20 year vision and a Strategic Research Agenda to set the scene for European agricultural development for the next two decades. The project is supported by the European Commission and the major public and private stakeholders, and is coordinated by EPSO and EuropaBio.

(1) ISAAA
The International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) is a not-for-profit organization that delivers the benefits of new agricultural biotechnologies to the poor in developing countries. It aims to share these powerful technologies to those who stand to benefit from them and at the same time establish an enabling environment for their safe use.
isaaa

(2) EuropaBio
EuropaBio, the European Association for Bioindustries, has 50 direct members operating worldwide and 25 national biotechnology associations representing some 1500 small and medium sized enterprises involved in research and development, testing, manufacturing and distribution of biotechnology products.
europabio

(3) PG Economics
PG Economics Limited is a specialist provider of advisory and consultancy services to agriculture and other natural resource-based industries. Its specific areas of specialisation are plant biotechnology, agricultural production systems, agricultural markets and policy.
pgeconomics

(4) AgBioWorld
The AgBioWorld Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization headquartered in Auburn, Alabama, and is run by Professor C.S. Prakash of Tuskegee University.
agbioworld

The Declaration – agbioworld/declaration/petition/petition.php

(5) European Technology Platform – Plants for the Future
epsoweb/Catalog/TP/index.htm Continue reading →

Sports personality Gary Lineker visited the Royal Free Hospital in London on 24th September to meet the country’s first Leukaemia CARE Clinical Nurse Specialist.

Clara Patmore, who started in her new role at the Hampstead hospital this summer, is the first nurse in the UK to be funded by the charity Leukaemia CARE.

Among her duties, she acts as a continuous point of contact between the medical team and the leukaemia patient, provides information and support for patients and their families, goes through treatment plans with patients and visits inpatients.

Gary, who is Leukaemia CARE’s patron, was met by Pam Chesters, trust chairman, and Tony Gavin, the charity’s chief executive, and given a tour of the hospital’s oncology and chemotherapy suite by Dr Panos Kottaridis, leukaemia consultant. He also spoke to Kate Skupin, 52, from Wembley, and Christopher Frost, a 50-year-old driving instructor, from Barnet, who were both treated for leukaemia at the Royal Free.

After meeting staff and patients, Gary said: “With the launch of the first Leukaemia CARE nurse at the Royal Free Hospital, patients diagnosed with leukaemia will be looked after by a specialist nurse providing one-to-one support for anything they need. She will provide support for families during what I know is a very difficult time.

“It is thanks to Leukaemia CARE that this role has been made possible, and to the fantastic support of staff at the Royal Free Hospital.”

Clara qualified as a nurse in 2000 and has worked in the haematology department at the Royal Free since 2001.

She said: “I am grateful to Leukaemia CARE for funding my role, and delighted to work with such an expert haematology team at the Royal Free where we are involved in national and international trials. It is very rewarding to work in a hospital with such a good record in terms of clinical care and also in research.”

Dr Kottaridis said: “We are extremely grateful to Leukaemia CARE for choosing the Royal Free to support this special job.

“Clara has been a very successful nurse and junior sister at our hospital and she will be a very successful leukaemia nurse, providing a vital link between the patient and the medical team.”

Leukaemia CARE Continue reading →

The Switch™ programme, ‘Switch what you Do, View, and Chew’, has been shown to be capable of promoting children’s fruit and vegetable consumption and lowering ‘screen time’. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Medicine tested the programme and report that it offers promise for use in youth obesity prevention.

Douglas Gentile, a psychology professor from Iowa State University, USA, worked with a team of researchers to evaluate the intervention in a group of 1,323 children and their parents from 10 schools. He said, “Reversing the pediatric obesity epidemic has been established as a critical priority. We tested Switch, a family-, school-, and community-based intervention aimed at changing the key behaviors of physical activity, television viewing/screen time, and nutrition”.

The Switch programme features three components, Community, School and Family. The Community component is designed to promote awareness of the importance of healthy lifestyles using paid advertising (such as billboards) and unpaid media (such as letters to the editors of print publications). The School component reinforces the Switch messages by providing teachers with materials and methods to integrate key health concepts into the school day. Finally in the Family component, participating families receive monthly packets containing behavioral tools to assist families in altering their health behaviors.

Gentile said, “Family components are critical for youth obesity prevention programs because parents directly and indirectly influence children’s activity and nutrition behaviors. Parents also influence the physical and social environments that are available to their children. The School and Community components are essential to integrate the programme into the places where families live, work and play”.

The intervention yielded encouraging results, with the experimental group showing significant differences from the control group in both screen time and fruit and vegetable consumption. According to Gentile, “Although modest, these results are not trivial. The effects remained significant at the 6-month follow-up evaluation, indicating maintenance of these differences over time. Such maintenance may contribute to reduced weight risks in the future”.

Notes:

Evaluation of a multiple ecological level child obesity prevention program: Switch what you Do, View, and Chew
Douglas A Gentile, Gregory Welk, Joey C Eisenmann, Rachel A Reimer, David A Walsh, Daniel W Russell, Randi Callahan, Monica Walsh, Sarah Strickland and Katie Fritz
BMC Medicine 2009, 7:49 doi:10.1186/1741-7015-7-49

biomedcentral/1741-7015/7/49/abstract

Source:
Graeme Baldwin

BioMed Central Continue reading →

Blueberries may help fight atherosclerosis, also known as hardening of the arteries, according to results of a preliminary U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)-funded study with laboratory mice. The research provides the first direct evidence that blueberries can help prevent harmful plaques or lesions, symptomatic of atherosclerosis, from increasing in size in arteries.

Principal investigator Xianli Wu, based in Little Rock, Ark., with the USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center and with the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, led the investigation. The findings are reported in the current issue of the Journal of Nutrition.

Atherosclerosis is the leading cause of two forms of cardiovascular disease–heart attacks and strokes. Cardiovascular disease is the number one killer of Americans.

The study compared the size, or area, of atherosclerotic lesions in 30 young laboratory mice. Half of the animals were fed diets spiked with freeze-dried blueberry powder for 20 weeks; the diet of the other mice did not contain the berry powder.

Lesion size, measured at two sites on aorta (arteries leading from the heart), was 39 and 58 percent less than that of lesions in mice whose diet did not contain blueberry powder.

Earlier studies, conducted elsewhere, have suggested that eating blueberries may help combat cardiovascular disease. But direct evidence of that effect has never been presented previously, according to Wu.

The blueberry-spiked diet contained 1 percent blueberry powder, the equivalent of about a half-cup of fresh blueberries.

All mice in the investigation were deficient in apolipoprotein-E, a trait which makes them highly susceptible to forming atherosclerotic lesions and thus an excellent model for biomedical and nutrition research.

Wu’s group wants to determine the mechanism or mechanisms by which blueberries helped control lesion size. For example, by boosting the activity of four antioxidant enzymes, blueberries may have reduced the oxidative stress that is a known risk factor for atherosclerosis.

In followup studies, Wu’s group wants to determine whether eating blueberries in infancy, childhood and young adulthood would help protect against onset and progression of atherosclerosis in later years. Early prevention may be especially important in light of the nation’s epidemic of childhood obesity. Overweight and obesity increase atherosclerosis risk.

ARS, the USDA’s principal intramural scientific research agency, operates the Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center in conjunction with the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and the Arkansas Children’s Hospital, all in Little Rock. The blueberry research is one example of ARS investigations that are designed to help improve children’s nutrition and health, a USDA top priority.

Source:
United States Department of Agriculture — Research, Education and Economics

Continue reading →

The Leon Levy Foundation has awarded over $1.4 million in grants to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City in support of collaborative research into two little-understood neurological disorders: chemotherapy-related cognitive dysfunction in adult cancer patients and Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus (NPH), also known as “water on the brain,” a progressive neurologic disorder in older adults that may be present in as many as 5 percent of dementia cases.

The three-year joint study on chemotherapy-related cognitive dysfunction will assess changes in brain structure, particularly in the hippocampus and the white matter, and cognitive functions in adult cancer patients treated with chemotherapy prior to receiving a stem-cell transplant.

“A significant number of cancer patients treated with chemotherapy experience changes in memory and other cognitive functions that interfere with their ability to lead a normal life. Yet despite the seriousness of the problem, little is known about it,” says the study’s principal investigator, Dr. Denise D. Correa, assistant professor of neuropsychology in Neurology at Weill Cornell Medical College and a neuropsychologist at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell and at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

The collaborative study involving researchers from Weill Cornell, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) and City University of New York (CUNY) will be the first to test the hypothesis that chemotherapy affects specific brain structures, particularly the hippocampus and white matter.

Dr. Correa hopes the research leads to efforts to identify “neuroprotective agents” that may minimize or prevent chemotherapy-related cognitive dysfunction.

A second three-year study will investigate techniques to improve detection of Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus (NPH), a condition in which an excess of fluid compresses the brain, causing disturbances in gait, balance, control of urination and memory.

This investigation will be led by Dr. Norman Relkin, an authority in the diagnosis of the condition and author of international guidelines for the diagnosis of NPH. He is director of the Memory Disorders Program at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center and associate professor of clinical neurology and neuroscience at Weill Cornell Medical College.

“NPH is treatable, but grossly under-recognized. Sadly, its symptoms are too often mistaken for Alzheimer’s, Vascular Dementia or Parkinson’s disease,” explains Dr. Relkin. “There is currently no single method for objectively diagnosing NPH, and the available means of diagnosis involve a costly and time-consuming combination of clinical examinations, brain imaging and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) drainage procedures. Furthermore, in published studies, the accuracy of this conventional approach is only about 50 percent in the hands of most physicians.”

The three-year study will examine two techniques: Quantitative Diffusion Tensor Magnetic Resonance Imaging (QDT-MRI) and Proteomic Analysis of Cerebrospinal Fluid (PA-CSF) — approaches Dr. Relkin says “have shown excellent promise in our preliminary study and could revolutionize NPH diagnosis and management.”

Shelby White, founding trustee of the Leon Levy Foundation, says, “Leon was interested in the function of the human brain and its effects on behavior. He also had a very high regard for the work of Dr. Norman Relkin. This important research should advance our knowledge of these two perplexing neurological disorders. We have great confidence in the excellence of Dr. Relkin and Dr. Correa, and the NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell neurological program, and are therefore pleased to support this critical effort.”

Leon Levy Foundation

The Leon Levy Foundation, founded in 2004, is a private, not-for-profit foundation created from the estate of Leon Levy, a legendary investor with a longstanding commitment to philanthropy. The Foundation’s overarching goal is to continue the tradition of humanism characteristic of Mr. Levy by supporting scholarship at the highest level, ultimately advancing knowledge and improving the lives of individuals and society at large.

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, located in New York City, is one of the leading academic medical centers in the world, comprising the teaching hospital NewYork-Presbyterian and Weill Cornell Medical College, the medical school of Cornell University. NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell provides state-of-the-art inpatient, ambulatory and preventive care in all areas of medicine, and is committed to excellence in patient care, education, research and community service. Weill Cornell physician-scientists have been responsible for many medical advances — from the development of the Pap test for cervical cancer to the synthesis of penicillin, the first successful embryo-biopsy pregnancy and birth in the U.S., the first clinical trial for gene therapy for Parkinson’s disease, the first indication of bone marrow’s critical role in tumor growth, and, most recently, the world’s first successful use of deep brain stimulation to treat a minimally-conscious brain-injured patient. NewYork-Presbyterian, which is ranked sixth on the U.S.News & World Report list of top hospitals, also comprises NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital of NewYork-Presbyterian, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Westchester Division and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/The Allen Pavilion. Weill Cornell Medical College is the first U.S. medical college to offer a medical degree overseas and maintains a strong global presence in Austria, Brazil, Haiti, Tanzania, Turkey and Qatar.

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital
Weill Cornell Medical Center Continue reading →

Foods Matter, the UK’s only magazine for those with food allergies and intolerances, is launching the first of its ‘tastings supplements’ for Food Allergy and Intolerance week. With comprehensive details and comments on over 200 allergen-free foods, the supplement forms part of the on-going assessments of free-from foods in the build up to the Foods Matter FreeFrom Food Awards 2009.

Every month Foods Matter runs tastings of different groups of free-from products – the February supplement includes breads and bread mixes, cereal bars, savoury snacks, pies and tarts, sausages, sauces, cheeses and puddings and desserts.

The tables list the products, their manufacturers, what they are free of, what they actually contain, what the tasters think of them, what they cost and where they are available. They also ‘traffic-light’ E numbers in the ingredients lists to make it easier for readers to identify additives that they might wish to avoid for themselves or their families.

Taster-judges include members of the in-house team, food professionals, people with dairy, gluten, egg, sugar etc intolerances. They also include people with no dietary restrictions at all who can benchmark the products against ‘normal’ products eaten by ‘normal’ people.

The tastings are done ‘blind’ (the tasters do not know what products they are tasting). As part of the benchmarking process, a non-free-from version of the product is often included.

Tasters are asked to comment on each product and mark it out of ten, bearing in mind the texture, taste, aroma and look of the product. They are not told the price of the product although this may be taken into account when the final comments are drawn up.

The 2009 Foods Matter FreeFrom Food Awards are sponsored by Livwell – see livwell.eu. Livwell are part of the Finsbury Food Group and are the largest supplier to the UK free-from retail market. The awards will be presented during Allergy Week in May at Antony Worrall Thompson’s Notting Grill.

For more information on the awards please check freefromfoodawards

Foods Matter Continue reading →

Today in Brussels European Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner Markos Kyprianou publicly “named and praised” several CEOs of major food, drink and retail industries for their commitments to tackling obesity made in the framework of the EU Platform for Action on Diet, Physical Activity and Health.

The Platform gathers stakeholders to agree voluntary measures to combat overweight and promote physical activity. They have so far presented 146 commitments overall. The companies “named and praised” are: 9 soft drinks companies in UNESDA, including Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, who have committed not to advertise soft drinks to children under 12; McDonald’s for their commitment to provide nutritional information on packaging throughout Europe; Unilever for their commitment to reformulate products; and Kraft for their commitment not to market certain products directly to children unless they meet a certain nutritional profile. Today the Commission also released the latest Eurobarometer on Health, Food and Nutrition (see IP/06/…).

European Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner Markos Kyprianou said: “These commitments are good examples of concrete and verifiable action undertaken by industry to tackle obesity and overweight. The EU Platform is producing results. I would therefore like to congratulate the companies that made these commitments, encourage them to build on their good work, and invite others to do the same – and more. It’s only by working together that we can hope to halt and begin to reverse the growing obesity epidemic in Europe.”

The commitments ‘named and praised’ by Commissioner Kyprianou were presented by the European CEOs of the companies concerned:

Dominique Reiniche, President of the European Union Group of The Coca-Cola Company and President of the Union of European Beverages Associations (UNESDA); and Zein Abdalla, CEO of PepsiCo Europe, presented the commitments of the 9 soft drinks companies in UNESDA who have committed not to advertise soft drinks to children under 12 and have set up a system of independent consultants to monitor the implementation of this commitment;
Denis Hennequin, President of McDonald’s Europe, outlined McDonald’s commitment to provide nutritional information on packaging throughout Europe;
Kees Van der Graaf, President Europe of Unilever, explained Unilever’s commitment to reformulate products; and
Marc Firestone, Executive Vice President Corporate & Legal Affairs of Kraft Foods, presented Kraft’s commitment not to market certain products directly to children unless they meet a certain nutritional profile.

Commissioner Kyprianou welcomed the commitments as good examples of the progress of the Platform. He emphasised that a key element of building the credibility of the Platform, and one of the reasons that these commitments were considered good examples, is that their implementation is monitored in a transparent, accountable and participative way.

The Commissioner also set out his thoughts on work in progress in the area of nutrition and healthy diets ahead of the EU-WHO Conference in Istanbul (15-17 November 2006). One core output of the conference is expected to be the adoption of a European Charter on counteracting obesity. The next step for the Commission is a possible Communication on Nutrition and Healthy Diets in 2007.

Obesity in Europe

The rising prevalence of obesity across the EU is a major public health concern. Obesity causes a range of chronic diseases including diabetes, cancers and heart disease. Unhealthy diets and lack of physical activity are a leading cause of avoidable illness and premature death in Europe. Figures prepared for the World Health Organisation (WHO) by the International Obesity Task Force (IOTF) show that one in five children in Europe is overweight with an additional 400,000 children becoming overweight each year.

EU Platform for action on diet, physical activity and health

The EU Platform for action on diet, physical activity and health has brought together key players from industry, NGOs, doctors’ associations and consumer groups to enter into binding but voluntary commitments as part of an effort to halt and reverse obesity trends.

Since its launch in 2005 a total of 146 commitments for new actions to fight obesity have been made and are being implemented by Platform members. They range from the promotion of healthy lifestyles to the provision of greater nutritional information and the restriction of advertising to young children.

– More information on EU policy on nutrition and obesity

– More information on the EU Platform for action on diet, physical activity and health

– More information on the Istanbul conference on obesity Continue reading →

A group of researchers from the LGC Chemical Metrology Laboratory in the United Kingdom and the University of Oviedo, Spain, have come up with a method to detect how the proportions of isotopes in a chemical element (atoms with an equal number of protons and electrons but different numbers of neutrons) vary throughout the length of a single hair. The mid-term objective is to be able to use these methods to track the geographical movements of people, including international crime suspects and victims.

In order to carry out this study, which is published this month in the journal Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry, the scientists focused on the most abundant sulphur isotopes in hair keratin – sulphur-32 (32S), which accounts for about 95%, and sulphur-34 (34S), which makes up around 4%. This proportion can change slightly in response to people’s diets and if they travel from one country to another, and the technique is able to detect these small variations.

“The new method is based on combining a laser ablation system and multicollector inductively-coupled plasma mass spectrometry (abbreviated to LA-MC-ICP-MS)”, Rebeca Santamar?­a-Fern??ndez of LGC, lead author of the study, tells SINC. To summarise, the laser makes contact with the selected fraction of the hair, generating an aerosol, which later ionises within plasma, with the spectrometer providing the exact proportions of the sulphur isotopes.

“The advantage of this method compared with others is the high resolution resulting from use of the laser”, points out Santamar?­a-Fern??ndez. This advance has enabled the scientists to confirm that the sulphur variations in hair can be linked to peoples’ geographical movements.

The traveller experiment

The researchers collected hair samples of more than 4cm in length donated by three volunteers. Two were permanent residents in the United Kingdom, while the third – dubbed “the traveller” – had spent the past six months in Croatia, Austria, the United Kingdom and Australia.

“We are what we eat, and the small variations in the 34S/32S relationship reflect changes to our diet, which can in turn be related to movements from one country to another”, Justo Giner, another of the study’s authors, tells SINC. In addition, as hair grows an average of 1.25cm per month, the data obtained from a hair measuring between 4cm and 6cm can provide information about its owner’s activities in the months leading up to the sample being taken.

The results of the experiment revealed that the traveller’s hair indeed showed significant variations in the sulphur isotopes, while changes in the hairs of the two people living in the United Kingdom were minimal, and similar in both samples.

The authors believe they have overcome “the first hurdle” – developing an effective method to measure longitudinal isotope variations in hair, with the potential to relate these changes to geographical movements. The next objective is to demonstrate the global significance of these variations, and they are already working with hair samples from 150 volunteers with different diets and geographical origins in order to move forward in this area. In addition, the researchers will also measure the isotopic variations of other elements apart from sulphur in their study, for example carbon and nitrogen.

The scientists are confident they will be able to create databases that will one day make it possible to link the relationship between a specific isotope in hair keratin and a country or region, which would be of great help to the police in tracking down international criminals.

“Although we still cannot say that a certain isotopic variation in a person’s hair shows that he or she has been in a particular country, the method can help to break down the alibis of some terrorists who claim not to have moved over recent months”, says Santamar?­a-Fern??ndez.

Various British security forces, such as the London Metropolitan Police, have already expressed their interest in this project. The LGC centre (previously known as the Laboratory of the Government Chemist) is working with various national and international research groups, among them the University of Oviedo.

Reference literature: Santamar?­a-Fernandez R., Giner Martinez-Sierra J., Marchante Gay??n JM, Garc?­a Alonso J.I., Hearn R. “Measurement of longitudinal sulfur isotopic variations by laser ablation MC-ICP-MS in single human hair strands”. Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry 394 (1):225-233, mayo de 2009.

Source:
SINC

FECYT – Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology Continue reading →