biomarkers, omega-3’s, ketones, oral microbiome, flu, autism, fats

• Biomarker Profiling by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy for the Prediction of All-Cause Mortality: An Observational Study of 17,345 Persons
  • “Four circulating biomarkers predicted the risk of all-cause mortality among participants from the Estonian Biobank after adjusting for conventional risk factors: alpha-1-acid glycoprotein, albumin, very-low-density lipoprotein particle size, and citrate. All four biomarkers were predictive of cardiovascular mortality, as well as death from cancer and other nonvascular diseases. One in five participants in the Estonian Biobank cohort with a biomarker summary score within the highest percentile died during the first year of follow-up, indicating prominent systemic reflections of frailty.”
• Plasma phospholipids identify antecedent memory impairment in older adults
  • “We discovered and validated a set of ten lipids from peripheral blood that predicted phenoconversion to either amnestic mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer’s disease within a 2–3 year timeframe with over 90% accuracy. This biomarker panel, reflecting cell membrane integrity, may be sensitive to early neurodegeneration of preclinical Alzheimer’s disease.”
• Omega-3 Fatty Acids in the Prevention of Interferon-Alpha-Induced Depression: Results from a Randomized, Controlled Trial
  • “Compared with placebo, the incident rates of IFN-α-induced depression were significantly lower in EPA-treated but not in DHA-treated patients (10% and 28%, respectively, versus 30% for placebo, p = .037). Both EPA and DHA significantly delayed the onset of IFN-induced depression (week of onset: 12.0 and 11.7, respectively, versus 5.3 for placebo, p = .002). EPA and DHA were both well tolerated in this population. EPA treatment increased both EPA and DHA erythrocyte levels, but DHA only increased DHA erythrocyte levels.”
• Ketone Body Therapy: From ketogenic diet to oral administration of ketone ester
  • Ketone Body Therapy: From ketogenic diet to oral… [J Lipid Res. 2014] – PubMed – NCBI
  • “Abstract Ketone bodies (KB), acetoacetate and β-hyroxybutyrate, were considered harmful metabolic by-products when discovered in the mid-nineteenth century in urine of patients with diabetic ketoacidosis. It took physicians many years to realize KB are normal metabolites synthesized by the liver and exported into the systemic circulation to serve as an energy source for most extrahepatic tissues… Because the ketogenic diet (KD) is difficult to prepare and follow, and effectiveness of KB treatment in certain patients may be enhanced by raising plasma levels to 4-8 mM, KB esters, such as 1,3-butanediol monoester of β-hydroxybutyrate and glyceryl-tris-3-hydroxybutyrate, have been devised. When administered orally in controlled dosages, these esters can produce plasma KB levels comparable to those achieved by the most rigorous KD, thus providing a safe, convenient, and versatile new approach to the study and potential treatment of a variety of diseases, including epilepsy, Alzheimer diesease, and Parkinson disease.”
  • I think this is an interesting study showing how the esters of ketone bodies will be converted into ketone bodies in the liver. However, therapeutically this seems problematic. A ketogenic diet is not just about the increase in ketone bodies but also a decrease in glucose so, like other matters concerning diet, it’s not just what you are eating but what you are not eating. There’s no reason to think that a person eating a diet which is broken down into high levels of glucose will switch their metabolism to ketone bodies just because they are present. It is more likely that the body will continue to prefer glucose and excrete the ketone bodies in urine similar to ketoacidosis. – Jesse
• Mode of Delivery and Offspring Body Mass Index, Overweight and Obesity in Adult Life: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
  • “There is a strong association between [cesarean section] and increased offspring [Body Mass Index], overweight and obesity in adulthood. Given the rising [cesarean section] rate worldwide there is a need to determine whether this is causal, or reflective of confounding influences.”
• Oral Mycobiome Analysis of HIV-Infected Patients: Identification of Pichia as an Antagonist of Opportunistic Fungi
  • “Oral microbiota contribute to health and disease, and their disruption may influence the course of oral diseases. Here, we used pyrosequencing to characterize the oral bacteriome and mycobiome of 12 HIV-infected patients and matched 12 uninfected controls… Increase in Candida colonization was associated with a concomitant decrease in the abundance of Pichia, suggesting antagonism… The mechanism by which Pichia inhibited Candida involved nutrient limitation, and modulation of growth and virulence factors… Our findings provide the first evidence of interaction among members of the oral mycobiota, and identifies a potential novel antifungal.”
• Two lipids in the diet, rather than cholesterol, are responsible for heart failure and stroke,
  • “For over 65 years, it has been thought that cholesterol in the plasma was responsible for heart failure… This perspective presents evidence that it is oxidized cholesterol and trans fat in the diet that are the causes. It is these two lipids in the diet, rather than cholesterol in the plasma, that are responsible for heart failure. The oxysterols change the structure of the coronary arteries so that they are more susceptible to calcification and increase the synthesis of thromboxane. The trans fatty acids inhibit prostacyclin synthesis that cause the blood to clot. I believe that removing these two lipids from the diet would prolong the lives of hundreds of thousands of people annually.”
• REST and stress resistance in ageing and Alzheimer’s disease
  • REST [repressor element 1-silencing transcription factor] is lost… in mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease… REST represses genes that promote cell death and Alzheimer’s disease pathology, and induces the expression of stress response genes. Moreover, REST potently protects neurons from oxidative stress and amyloid β-protein toxicity, and conditional deletion of REST in the mouse brain leads to age-related neurodegeneration… In Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia and dementia with Lewy bodies, REST is lost from the nucleus and appears in autophagosomes together with pathological misfolded proteins. Finally, REST levels during ageing are closely correlated with cognitive preservation and longevity. Thus, the activation state of REST may distinguish neuroprotection from neurodegeneration in the ageing brain.
• Comparative community burden and severity of seasonal and pandemic influenza: results of the Flu Watch cohort study
  • “On average influenza infected 18% of unvaccinated people each winter. Up to three-quarters of infections were asymptomatic and about a quarter of infections had PCR-confirmed disease. 17% of people with PCR-confirmed disease had medically attended illness. These data did not vary significantly when comparing pandemic with seasonal influenza.”
• Environmental and State-Level Regulatory Factors Affect the Incidence of Autism and Intellectual Disability
  • “To compare environmental, phenotypic, socioeconomic and state-policy factors in a unified geospatial framework, we analyzed the spatial incidence patterns of ASD and ID using an insurance claims dataset covering nearly one third of the US population. Following epidemiologic evidence, we used the rate of congenital malformations of the reproductive system as a surrogate for environmental exposure of parents to unmeasured developmental risk factors, including toxins. Adjusted for gender, ethnic, socioeconomic, and geopolitical factors, the ASD incidence rates were strongly linked to population-normalized rates of congenital malformations of the reproductive system in males (an increase in ASD incidence by 283% for every percent increase in incidence of malformations, 95% CI: [91%, 576%], p<6×10⁻⁵).”
• Association of Dietary, Circulating, and Supplement Fatty Acids With Coronary Risk: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis (2014)
  • “Current evidence does not clearly support cardiovascular guidelines that encourage high consumption of polyunsaturated fatty acids and low consumption of total saturated fats.”
• Meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies evaluating the association of saturated fat with cardiovascular disease (2010)
  • “During 5–23 y of follow-up of 347,747 subjects, 11,006 developed CHD or stroke. Intake of saturated fat was not associated with an increased risk of CHD, stroke, or CVD.”