Your Blood Sample Can Reveal Your Eating Habits, Study

California, May 13: A fasting-mimicking diet could be more effective at treating some types of cancer when combined with vitamin C, suggests a new study conducted by the scientists from USC and the IFOM Cancer Institute in Milan.

In studies on mice, researchers found that the combination delayed tumour progression in multiple mouse models of colorectal cancer; in some mice, it caused disease regression. The results were published in the journal Nature Communications.

"For the first time, we have demonstrated how a completely non-toxic intervention can effectively treat an aggressive cancer," said Valter Longo, the study senior author and the director of the USC Longevity Institute at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology and professor of biological sciences at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

"We have taken two treatments that are studied extensively as interventions to delay ageing-- a fasting-mimicking diet and vitamin C -- and combined them as a powerful treatment for cancer," added Longo.

The researchers said that while fasting remains a challenging option for cancer patients, a safer, more feasible option is a low-calorie, plant-based diet that causes cells to respond as if the body were fasting.

Their findings suggest that a low-toxicity treatment of fasting-mimicking diet plus vitamin C has the potential to replace more toxic treatments.

Results of prior research on the cancer-fighting potential of vitamin C have been mixed. Recent studies, though, are beginning to show some efficacy, especially in combination with chemotherapy.

In this new study, the research team wanted to find out whether a fasting-mimicking diet could enhance the high-dose vitamin C tumour-fighting action by creating an environment that would be unsustainable for cancer cells but still safe for normal cells.

"Our first in vitro experiment showed remarkable effects. When used alone, fasting-mimicking diet or vitamin C alone reduced cancer cell growth and caused a minor increase in cancer cell death. But when used together, they had a dramatic effect, killing almost all cancerous cells," said Longo.

Longo and his colleagues detected this strong effect only in cancer cells that had a mutation that is regarded as one of the most challenging targets in cancer research.

These mutations in the KRAS gene signal the body is resisting most cancer-fighting treatments, and they reduce a patient's survival rate. KRAS mutations occur in approximately a quarter of all human cancers and are estimated to occur in up to half of all colorectal cancers.

The study also provided clues about why previous studies of vitamin C as a potential anticancer therapy showed limited efficacy. By itself, a vitamin C treatment appears to trigger the KRAS-mutated cells to protect cancer cells by increasing levels of ferritin, a protein that binds iron.

But by reducing levels of ferritin, the scientists managed to increase vitamin C's toxicity for the cancer cells. Amid this finding, the scientists also discovered that colorectal cancer patients with high levels of the iron-binding protein have a lower chance of survival.

"In this study, we observed how fasting-mimicking diet cycles are able to increase the effect of pharmacological doses of vitamin C against KRAS-mutated cancers," said Maira Di Tano, a study co-author at the IFOM, FIRC Institute of Molecular Oncology in Milan, Italy.

"This occurs through the regulation of the levels of iron and of the molecular mechanisms involved in oxidative stress. The results particularly pointed to a gene that regulates iron levels: heme-oxygenase-1," added Tano.

The research team's prior studies showed that fasting and a fasting-mimicking diet slow cancer's progression and make chemotherapy more effective in tumour cells while protecting normal cells from chemotherapy-associated side effects. The combination enhances the immune system's anti-tumour response in breast cancer and melanoma mouse models.

The scientists believe cancer will eventually be treated with low-toxicity drugs in a manner similar to how antibiotics are used to treat infections that kill particular bacteria, but which can be substituted by other drugs if the first is not effective.

To move toward that goal, they say they needed to first test two hypotheses: that their non-toxic combination interventions would work in mice, and that it would look promising for human clinical trials.

In this new study, they said that they've demonstrated both. At least five clinical trials, including one at USC on breast cancer and prostate cancer patients, are now investigating the effects of the fasting-mimicking diets in combination with different cancer-fighting drugs.

Washington D.C., Jan 12: Disruption in one night's sleep can lead to getting Alzheimer's disease, a recent study has stated.

The interruption in the sound sleep for a single night aggravates the level of tau protein in any young male's body, thus gives rise to the chances of developing the disease.

According to CNN, the report was published on Wednesday in neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

"Our study focuses on the fact that even in young, healthy individuals, missing one night of sleep increases the level of tau in blood suggesting that over time, such sleep deprivation could possibly have detrimental effects," says study author Dr Jonathan Cedernaes, a neurologist at Uppsala University in Sweden.

As defined by the Alzheimer's Association, tau is the name of a protein that helps in stabilizing the internal structure of the brain's nerve cells. An abnormal build-up of tau protein in the body can end up in causing interior cells to fall apart and eventually developing Alzheimer's.

"When you get more of that deep sleep and you get the REM sleep in the normal amounts, that improves clearance of abnormal proteins which we think is good," said Mayo Clinic neurologist Dr Donn Dexter, not the study author but a fellow of the American Academy of Neurology.

Earlier studies have also shown that getting deprived of sleep can allow higher tau development and accumulation. Thus that poor sleep can hasten the development of cognitive issues.

Researchers caution that the study is small and inconclusive, and acknowledged they were not able to determine what the increased levels might mean.

"This study raises more questions than answers," agreed Dexter on a concluding note, sharing, "What this is telling us is that we have to dig more deeply. Despite something we do for a third of our lives, we know so little about sleep and we're learning every day, particularly when it comes to sleep and dementia."

The World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that more research needs to be done to better understand the extent to which COVID-19 is being spread by people who don't show symptoms.

"Since early February, we have said that asymptomatic people can transmit COVID-19, but that we need more research to establish the extent of asymptomatic transmission," the WHO chief said at a virtual press conference from Geneva on Wednesday, Xinhua news agency reported.

"That research is ongoing, and we're seeing more and more research being done," he added.

Saying that the world has been achieving a lot in knowing the new virus, the WHO chief told reporters that "there's still a lot we don't

"WHO's advice will continue to evolve as new information becomes available," he said.

Tedros stressed that the most critical way to stop transmission is to find, isolate and test people with symptoms, and trace and quarantine their contacts.

"Many countries have succeeded in suppressing transmission and controlling the virus doing exactly this," Tedros said.

Meanwhile, Michael Ryan, executive director of WHO Health Emergencies Program, said Wednesday that the COVID-19 pandemic is still evolving.

"If we look at the numbers... this pandemic is still evolving. It is growing in many parts of the world," he said. "We have deep concerns that health systems of some countries are struggling, under a huge strain and require our support, our help and our solidarity."

He said "each and every country has a different combination of risks and opportunities, and it's really down to national authorities to carefully consider where they are in the pandemic."

In Europe, the risk issue now are about travels and the opening of the schools, around risk management, mass gathering, surveillance and contact tracing, said the WHO official.

In Southeast Asian countries, where to a great extent transmissions have been under control, governments are more concerned about the re-emergence of clusters, while in South America, the issue of PPE for health workers has not gone away, said Ryan.

As regards Africa, Ryan said the death rates have been very low in the past week, but the health system can be overwhelmed, as it would have to cope with other diseases such as malaria.