(Press-News.org) PITTSBURGH, April 28, 2015 - African-Americans and Africans who swapped their typical diets for just two weeks similarly exchanged their respective risks of colon cancer as reflected by alterations of their gut bacteria, according to an international study led by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine published online today in Nature Communications.
Principal investigator Stephen O'Keefe, M.D., professor of medicine, Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition, Pitt School of Medicine, observed while practicing in South Africa that his rural patients rarely had colon cancer or intestinal polyps, which can be a cancer precursor. In the Western world, colon cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer death and African-Americans carry the greatest disease burden in the United States.
"The African-American diet, which contains more animal protein and fat, and less soluble fiber than the African diet, is thought to increase colon cancer risk," Dr. O'Keefe explained. "Other studies with Japanese migrants to Hawaii have shown that it takes only one generation of Westernization to change their low incidence of colon cancer to the high rates observed in native Hawaiians. In this project, we examined the impact of a brief diet change on the colon in a controlled setting where we didn't have to worry about the influence of smoking and other environmental factors on cancer risk."
After assessment of their in-home diets, 20 African-American and 20 rural South African volunteers ages 50 to 65 were housed at a University of Pittsburgh site and at an African lodging facility respectively. There they ate meals prepared by the researchers using ingredients and cooking techniques typical of the other group. The team examined fecal and colon content samples, obtained during colonoscopy, of each volunteer at baseline and after the two-week study period.
Although the diet change was brief, each group took on the other's rates of turnover of cells of the intestinal lining, levels of fiber fermentation, and markers of bacterial metabolic activity and inflammation associated with cancer risk. In particular, African-Americans experienced an increase in butyrate production, which is thought to play a key role in anti-cancer pathways. The researchers also noted they removed intestinal polyps from nine of the African-American volunteers, but none were present in the Africans.
"We can't definitively tell from these measurements that the change in their diet would have led to more cancer in the African group or less in the American group, but there is good evidence from other studies that the changes we observed are signs of cancer risk," said co-author Jeremy Nicholson, Ph.D., of Imperial College London.
According to Dr. O'Keefe, increasing the amount of fiber in the diet - from approximately 10 grams to more than 50 for African-Americans in the diet swap - likely led to biomarker changes reflecting reduced cancer risk, but eating less animal fat and proteins also could be helpful.
"These findings are really very good news," he said. "In just two weeks, a change in diet from a Westernized composition to a traditional African high-fiber, low-fat diet reduced these biomarkers of cancer risk, indicating that it is likely never too late to modify the risk of colon cancer."
INFORMATION:
The team included other researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and Imperial College London, as well as Wageningen University in the Netherlands; University of Helsinki, Finland; University of Illinois; and the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa.
Funding for the study was provided National Institutes of Health grants CA135379, RR024153 and TR000005; the National Institute for Health Research Imperial Biomedical Research Centre, UK; the Academy of Medical Sciences; the Spinoza Award of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, the European Research Council and the Academy of Finland.
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KNOXVILLE--Many view Antarctica as a frozen wasteland. Turns out there are hidden interconnected lakes underneath its dry valleys that could sustain life and shed light on ancient climate change.
Jill Mikucki, a University of Tennessee, Knoxville, microbiology assistant professor, was part of a team that detected extensive salty groundwater networks in Antarctica using a novel airborne electromagnetic mapping sensor system called SkyTEM.
The research, funded by the National Science Foundation, provides compelling evidence that the underground lakes and brine-saturated ...
Putnam Valley, NY. (April 28, 2015) - Five studies from the current special issue of Cell Transplantation 24(4) devoted to work presented at the 21st meeting of the American Society for Neural Therapy and Repair (ASNTR) in 2014, a society for scientists focused on understanding the causes of, and developing cell and gene therapy and biopharmaceuticals for neurological injury and disease, are currently freely available on-line at: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cog/ct/2015/00000024/00000004.
MSCs promote improvement in patient with complete spinal cord injury
Complete ...
Creating small high schools improves outcomes for students in the overall school district - both in new small schools and existing larger schools - according to a study of New York City schools by researchers at New York University, Syracuse University, and Arizona State University.
The findings, published in the April issue of Educational Researcher, help to answer questions of whether introducing small high schools comes at an expense to the rest of the school district.
"Our findings suggest that there was real, meaningful improvement in New York City's high school ...
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"I told her I would get to the bottom of this," said Ankit Bharat, MD, a thoracic surgeon and surgical director of the Northwestern Medicine® lung transplant program. "It was a perfect operation yet this infection caused an abnormal buildup of ammonia that a person's body can't sustain. It's rare but it's almost always fatal. No one knew the cause or how to prevent it. This simply wasn't ...
Despite growing public awareness of sexual assault of women during their military service and increased efforts by the Department of Defense to deter sexual crimes and encourage reporting and help-seeking, a Veterans Affairs study suggests most female service members who experience sexual assault are still unlikely to seek post-assault health care, at least in the short term.
The study, published in Medical Care in April 2015, found that fewer than a third of sexually assaulted servicewomen sought such care.
The low numbers are notable, say researchers, because women ...
How soon after the Big Bang could water have existed? Not right away, because water molecules contain oxygen and oxygen had to be formed in the first stars. Then that oxygen had to disperse and unite with hydrogen in significant amounts. New theoretical work finds that despite these complications, water vapor could have been just as abundant in pockets of space a billion years after the Big Bang as it is today.
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The finding could lead to the development of new drug therapies to treat about 26 million Type 2 diabetics in the United States who rely on insulin and oral medication to manage the life-threatening disease for which there is no cure.
"We have a wonderful opportunity to personalize the treatment and prevention of this chronic disease," said Mark O. Goodarzi, MD, PhD, ...
Global carbon emissions from forests could have been underestimated because calculations have not fully accounted for the dead wood from logging.
Living trees take in carbon dioxide whereas dead and decaying ones release it. Understanding the proportion of both is important for determining whether a large area of forest is a source of carbon dioxide, or a 'sink' that helps to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Forestry, agriculture and land-use changes account for nearly 25 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, second only to the energy sector. New research ...
WASHINGTON, April 28, 2015 -- Science fans, assemble! On May 1, the world's top superhero team is back to save the day in "Avengers: Age of Ultron." This week, Reactions looks at the chemistry behind these iconic heroes' gear and superpowers, including Tony Stark's suit, Captain America's shield and more. Check out the video here: https://youtu.be/Gr3ov7R89Xo.
Subscribe to the series at http://bit.ly/ACSReactions, and follow us on Twitter @ACSreactions to be the first to see our latest videos.
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A new study found that sexual function in adult living donors was lower at the evaluation phase and at three months following liver transplantation. Results published in Liver Transplantation, a journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases and the International Liver Transplantation Society, suggest that donor education prior to surgery may improve recovery and ease concerns about sexual function following the transplant.
Living liver donors provide a healthy portion of their liver to an individual with end-stage liver disease. These donors make ...
