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Lab Notes: Wall Street Success Genetic

MedPageToday, 2012

Intoxication may protect against the damage caused by an acute ischemic stroke, according to experiments in rats.
Yuchuan Ding, MD, PhD, of Wayne State University in Detroit, and colleagues induced ischemic strokes in rats and gave them various doses of ethanol two, three, or four hours later.
The researchers found that ethanol at levels comparable to what would cause legal intoxication in humans – 1.5 grams per kilogram of body weight – was most effective for reducing brain damage and impairments to motor function, assessed using tests of limb movement and coordination.
There was no increase in intracranial hemorrhage with ethanol, even when it was given in combination with thrombolytic therapy.
The researchers, reporting at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference in New Orleans, concluded that ethanol may be a potential neuroprotective agent for patients with acute ischemic stroke.
Running on a wheel protected obese mice from developing knee osteoarthritis even as they were fed a high-fat diet similar to the popular low-carb programs popular among human dieters, Duke University researchers found.
Knee osteoarthritis is a common hazard among the overweight, and current recommendations encourage increased physical activity to preserve function and ease pain, and to head off the potential metabolic problems associated with obesity.
But some experts have questioned whether exercise might actually worsen knees through excess joint loading and mechanical degradation.
Griffin's team compared wheel-running obese mice with sedentary ones, and in fact, the exercise was protective by disrupting inflammatory processes associated with fat-derived cytokines.
The results "suggest that 'fitness,' independent of 'fatness,' is sufficient to improve metabolic regulation and disrupt cytokine coexpression, changes that may protect against obesity-associated knee osteoarthritis," the researchers wrote in Arthritis & Rheumatism .
In a cohort study of Icelandic men, those who ate the dark bread – chock full of healthy fiber and lignans – daily as teens were 22% less likely to develop prostate cancer and 47% less likely to develop advanced prostate cancer.