A study conducted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and AARP has reportedly found that older adults who drank either caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee “had a lower risk of death overall than others who did not drink coffee,” according to a May 16, 2012, NIH press release. Neal Freedman, et al., “Association of Coffee Drinking with Total and Cause-Specific Mortality,” New England Journal of Medicine, May 2012. After analyzing data from 400,000 men and women ages 50 to 71 who participated in the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study, researchers evidently concluded that coffee drinkers “were less likely to die from heart disease, respiratory disease, stroke, injuries and accidents, diabetes, and infections, although the association was not seen for cancer.” In particular, the study’s authors noted that the “association between coffee and reduction in risk of death increased with the amount of coffee consumed,” as subjects who reported consuming three or…
Category Archives Scientific/Technical Items
A study published in Marine Policy has claimed that many fish stocks certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) and Friends of the Sea (FOS) are nevertheless overfished or subject to overfishing as defined by the international standards accepted by both certifying organizations. Rainer Froese and Alexander Proelss, “Evaluation and legal assessment of certified seafood,” Marine Policy, May 2012. The two researchers apparently examined data from 71 MSC-certified stocks and 76 FOS-certified stocks to determine how many fish were present in each stock and how many were being removed. They ultimately found that, of the fishing stocks with available status information, 19 percent of those certified by FOS and 31 percent certified by MSC were overfished or subject to ongoing overfishing. According to the study, a stock is deemed “overfished” if its biomass falls below “the level that can produce the maximum sustainable yield” or “subject to overfishing”…
A recent study has claimed that rats fed a diet high in fructose had more difficulty navigating a maze than those that also consumed omega-3 fatty acids, thereby raising questions about the impact of sugar consumption on cognition. Rahul Agrawal and Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, “’Metabolic Syndrome’ in the brain: deficiency in omega-3 fatty acid exacerbates dysfunctions in insulin receptor signaling and cognition,” The Journal of Physiology, May 2012. University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), researchers for six weeks supplied two groups of rats with a fructose solution instead of drinking water while supplementing one group’s rat chow with flaxseed oil and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). According to the results, the rats in the fructose-only group were not only slower than their counterparts during the maze task, but their brain tissues exhibited an increased resistance to insulin. “The second group of rats navigated the maze much faster than the rats that did not receive omega-3…
A recent study has reportedly claimed that bisphenol A (BPA) alters mammary gland development in rhesus monkeys, raising concerns about the chemical’s alleged link to breast cancer in humans. Andrew Tharp, et al., “Bisphenol A alters the development of the rhesus monkey mammary gland,” PNAS, May 2012. According to the study, researchers fed fruit containing 400 µg of BPA per kilogram of body weight to pregnant rhesus monkeys to achieve BPA serum levels “comparable to [those] found in humans.” The authors then examined the mammary glands of female offspring after birth, noting that “the density of mammary glands was significantly increased in BPA-exposed monkeys, and the overall development of their mammary gland was more advanced compared with unexposed monkeys.” Based on these results, one study author told media sources that the sum of scientific evidence suggests that BPA is also “a breast carcinogen in humans” and that its use should be…
Researchers with the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention have published an article discussing the development of a database that compiles reports on food fraud and highlights those ingredients most prone to fraud in the food supply. Jeffrey Moore, et al., “Development and Application of a Database of Food Ingredient Fraud and Economically Motivated Adulteration from 1980 to 2010,” Journal of Food Science, April 2012. The database “provides baseline information and data useful to governments, agencies, and individual companies assessing the risks of specific products produced in specific regions as well as products distributed and sold in other regions.” Among other matters, the information collected shows that olive oil, milk, honey, saffron, orange juice, coffee, and apple juice “were the most common targets for adulteration reported in scholarly journals.” They are represented in more than 50 percent of the scholarly records in the database. Other “potentially harmful issues identified include spices diluted with…
A recent study has claimed that sodium intake exceeding the 1,500 mg per day recommended by the American Heart Association (AHA) was “associated with an increased risk of stroke independent of vascular risk factors.” Hannah Gardener, et al., “Dietary Sodium and Risk of Stroke in the Northern Manhattan Study,” Stroke, April 2012. Researchers evidently relied on data from 2,657 Northern Manhattan Study participants, of whom only 12 percent met the AHA-recommended levels for sodium. In particular, the 21 percent of subjects who consumed more than 4,000 mg sodium daily based on self-reported food surveys had an increased risk of stroke compared with those who consumed less than 1500 mg. Although the study authors also identified “a 17 percent relative increase in the hazard of stroke for every 500-mg/day increase in dietary sodium intake,” their findings did not suggest “a linear dose-response relationship between sodium consumption and stroke risk.” “Our study…
A recent study attempting “to isolate the causal effect of junk food availability on children’s food consumption and body mass index (BMI)” has concluded that access to competitive foods in schools “does not significantly increase BMI or obesity among this fifth-grade cohort despite the increased likelihood of in-school junk food purchases.” Ashlesha Datar and Nancy Nicosia, “Junk Food in Schools and Childhood Obesity,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Spring 2012. According to the researchers, who used data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Kindergarten Class as well as an instrumental variables (IV) approach leveraging “the well-documented fact that junk foods are significantly more prevalent in middle and high schools relative to elementary schools,” the results evidently revealed that where previous models had identified “any small positive associations” between junk food availability and obesity, those associations became insignificant “when controls for BMI at school entry and fixed state effects are added.”…
A recent study has purportedly found that “neither caffeinated nor decaffeinated coffee was associated with an increased risk of total chronic disease, CVD [cardiovascular disease], or cancer,” according to a concurrent editorial published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Anna Floegel, “Coffee Consumption and Risk of Chronic Disease in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC)-Germany Study,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, April 2012. Researchers analyzed data from medical followups and food frequency questionnaires gathered from 42,659 participants in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC)- Germany, reporting the effects of coffee on overall health. The results not only failed to reveal a link between coffee and chronic disease, but suggested that the beverage may be associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes. “The association between coffee consumption and risk of chronic disease is of considerable relevance because coffee is consumed worldwide and any…
A recent study has allegedly linked sugary drink consumption to narrowed retinal blood vessels in children as young as age 12, raising concerns about the youths’ long-term cardiovascular health. Bamini Gopinath, et al., “Carbohydrate nutrition is associated with changes in the retinal vascular structure and branching pattern in children,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, May 2012. Designed to determine whether high-glycemic index (high-GI), high-glycemic load (high-GL) or carbohydrate-laden diets could lead to small vessel dysfunction, the study selected 12-year-old students from 21 schools to undergo “detailed eye examinations” measuring retinal vessel caliber and fractal dimension, that is, “the single ‘global’ measure of the branching pattern of retinal blood vessels as a whole.” In particular, the study noted that narrower arteriolar caliber and wider venular caliber have been associated with incident hypertension and CVD [cardiovascular disease], whereas fractal dimension has been associated with higher blood pressure, acute lacunar stroke and coronary…
Researchers with the Medical Investigation of Neurodevelopmental Disorders (MIND) Institute at the University of California, Davis, have published a study claiming that maternal metabolic conditions (MCs) during pregnancy “may be broadly associated” with neurodevelopment problems, including autism spectrum disorder (ASD), in children. Paula Krakowiak, et al., “Maternal Metabolic Conditions and Risk for Autism and Other Neurodevelopmental Disorders,” Pediatrics, April 2012. The authors apparently analyzed data from children ages 2-5 years enrolled in the Childhood Autism Risks from Genetics and the Environment (CHARGE) study, focusing on 517 children diagnosed with ASD, 172 with developmental delays (DD) and 315 controls. The results evidently suggested that not only were diabetes, hypertension and obesity “more common among mothers of children with ASD and DD compared with controls,” but mothers with obesity “were 67 percent more likely to have a child with ASD than normal-weight mothers without diabetes or hypertension, and were more than twice as…
