Potatoes can be part of a healthy diet

 

When we think of healthy vegetables, we don’t think of potatoes, but we should. Potatoes have developed a reputation for causing weight gain and an increased risk for type 2 diabetes, and often find themselves on a list of foods to avoid, especially for individuals with insulin resistance. However, a new study from Pennington Biomedical Research Center, published in the Journal of Medicinal Food, says that potatoes actually did not increase that risk, are filled with key nutrients, and packed with health benefits.

Candida Rebello, PhD, an assistant professor at Pennington Biomedical, served as co-investigator of the study which examined how a diet including potatoes affects key health measures. Rebello, who is also a registered dietitian, said, “We demonstrated that contrary to common belief, potatoes do not negatively impact blood glucose levels. In fact, the individuals who participated in our study lost weight.”

“People tend to eat the same weight of food regardless of calorie content in order to feel full,” Rebello explained. “By eating foods with a heavier weight that are low in calories, you can easily reduce the number of calories you consume. The key aspect of our study is that we did not reduce the portion size of meals but lowered their caloric content by including potatoes. Each participant’s meal was tailored to their personalized caloric needs, yet by replacing some meat content with potato, participants found themselves fuller, quicker, and often did not even finish their meal. In effect, you can lose weight with little effort.”

The study involved 36 participants between the ages of 18 and 60 who were overweight, had obesity, or insulin resistance. Insulin resistance refers to a health condition in which the body’s cells do not respond well to insulin and glucose does not enter into the cells to make energy. Insulin resistance is linked to obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and type 2 diabetes

Participants were fed precisely-controlled diets of widely available common foods including either beans, peas, and meat or fish, or white potatoes with meat or fish. Both diets were high in fruit and vegetable content and substituted an estimated 40% of typical meat consumption with either beans and peas or potatoes. Previous studies have shown that eating beans and peas improves blood glucose levels in individuals with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes. To increase the dietary fiber component of the potatoes, they were boiled with the skin intact and then refrigerated between 12 and 24 hours. Potatoes were incorporated into the main lunch and dinner entrées, such as shepherd’s pie and creamy shrimp and potatoes, and served together with sides such as mashed potatoes, oven-roasted potato wedges, potato salad, and scalloped potatoes with lunch and dinner entrees.

“We prepared the potatoes in a way that would maximize their fiber content. When we compared a diet with potatoes to a diet with beans and peas, we found them to be equal in terms of health benefits,” Rebello said. “People typically do not stick with a diet they don’t like or isn’t varied enough. The meal plans provided a variety of dishes, and we showed that a healthy eating plan can have varied options for individuals striving to eat healthy. In addition, potatoes are a fairly inexpensive vegetable to incorporate into a diet.”

Pennington Biomedical Research Center’s Executive Director John Kirwan, PhD, and Principal Investigator on the study said, “Obesity is an incredibly complex disease that Pennington Biomedical is tackling on three different fronts: research that looks at how and why our bodies react the way they do, research that looks at individual responses to diet and physical activity, and policy-level discussions and community programs that bring our research into strategies our local and global communities can use to live healthier lives. These new data on the impact of potatoes on our metabolism is an exciting addition to the arsenal of evidence we have to do just that.”

A new study identifies the connection between diabetes medications, multiple sclerosis

Close-Up Of Woman Holding Injection Pen At Table - stock photo


A new study found that anti-hyperglycemic medications used to treat Type 2 diabetes resulted in an increased risk of multiple sclerosis for people older than 45, particularly among women. CREDIT Getty Images

A new University of Arizona Health Sciences study found that people older than 45 whose Type 2 diabetes was treated with anti-hyperglycemic medications had an increased risk of multiple sclerosis, particularly among women, while anti-hyperglycemic exposure in people younger than 45 reduced that risk.

“Our findings reinforce the need for a precision medicine approach to preventing MS in these vulnerable populations,” said lead researcher Kathleen Rodgers, PhD, associate director of translational neuroscience at the Center for Innovation in Brain Science.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an unpredictable autoimmune neurological disorder that affects the central nervous system and leads to severe physical and cognitive disability. It is estimated that nearly 1 million adults in the U.S. and more than 2.8 million worldwide are living with MS.

For people with Type 2 diabetes, there is mounting evidence linking metabolic disorders and MS through a common driver of increased autoimmunity. This brings into question the impact of anti-hyperglycemic therapeutics used to treat Type 2 diabetes, including insulin, on the incidence of MS.

“Previous research has shown a neuroprotective effect of anti-hyperglycemic medications in Alzheimer’s disease and other related dementias,” Dr. Rodgers said. “For MS, we wanted to further examine age and sex differences, particularly among men and women under 45 with Type 2 diabetes.”

They found that men older than 45 years old had a slightly significant increase of MS risk and women older than 45 years exhibited a significant increase in MS incidence after anti-hyperglycemic exposure. In addition to age differences, the risk analysis by drug class showed that exposure to insulin in patients older than 45 years old was associated with a greater increased risk compared with other therapies.

In patients younger than 45, anti-hyperglycemic exposure was protective against the development of MS.

The study utilized a U.S.-based insurance claims database of 151 million participants to identify more than 5 million patients with a diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes and either early-onset or late-onset MS. Researchers segmented the data by age – patients diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes prior to or after age 45 – and sex to decode the factors driving MS risk in both populations, especially in women over 45 years of age. 

Genetic markers for autism, hiding in plain sight

ORNL's Michael Garvin, left, and David Kainer


A research team led by ORNL’s Michael Garvin, left, and David Kainer discovered genetic mutations called structural variants and linked them to autism spectrum disorders, demonstrating an approach that could be used to develop better diagnostics and drug therapies.

An Oak Ridge National Laboratory-led research team discovered genetic mutations that underlie autism using a new approach that could lead to better diagnostics and drug therapies.

Scientists estimate 80% of autism is inherited, but they have yet to identify causative genes.

“We realized the value of unexplored heritable information from others’ research,” said ORNL’s Michael Garvin. Garvin and colleagues focused on genomic mutations called structural variants and established a direct link to autism traits.

The key was observing that many structural variants are excluded because they often display nontraditional inheritance patterns. By focusing on these variants, ORNL scientists found a mutation in the ACMSD gene that is associated with nonverbal types of autism. They then used artificial intelligence and high-performance computing to find additional variants related to three autism subtypes.

“We’ve established a workflow for using this often-ignored data that can be applied not only to autism, but also to other disorders,” said ORNL’s David Kainer. 

How an emerging drug class dampens harmful immune reactions


Although the complement system forms part of the innate immune system, it can cause damage to the body in some cases. This is because unwanted complement activation contributes to many autoimmune and chronic inflammatory diseases. Now, researchers have described molecular details of a recently approved class of drugs that can inhibit the complement system. These findings pave the way for further optimization of such inhibitors.

The complement system defends the body against microbial intruders, but it can also attack the body’s own cells for various reasons and therefore contribute to clinical complications. These complications range from age-related and chronic inflammatory diseases such as macular degeneration to the rejection of organ transplants. In such cases, it would make sense from a medical perspective to shut the complement system down in a controlled manner with the use of drugs.

Despite the wide range of medical applications, there has long been only a single substance class of “complement inhibitors,” which are in any case only authorized for a few very rare diseases. It wasn’t until 2021 that a new therapeutic option came to the market in the form of the compstatins, a class of drugs that bring a central factor of the complement system to a standstill. The discovery and development of this substance family is rooted in research by Professor John Lambris’ group at the University of Pennsylvania, USA.

Now, a research group led by Professor Daniel Ricklin at the University of Basel has worked with Lambris and an international team of researchers in order to study these compstatins’ mode of action in detail. Writing in the journal Nature Communications, the researchers describe how different variants of this family of active substances interact with the central factor of the complement system and how exactly they operate at the molecular level.

Optimizing active substances and facilitating research

On the one hand, the results pave the way for the further optimization of active substances in the compstatin family. “On the other hand, the findings also help us understand why compstatins have a highly specific effect on the human complement system,” Ricklin explains.

What is beneficial in therapy can prove to be a hindrance in basic research because it impedes working with model organisms. With this in mind, an interdisciplinary research project at the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences aims to provide clinical research with new variants of the inhibitor that can help gain a better understanding of various diseases and pave the way for novel therapeutic strategies.

Are climate change and air pollution making neurologic diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, worse?

Are climate change and air pollution making neurologic diseases worse?
Are climate change and air pollution making neurologic diseases worse?

 

People with neurologic diseases like headache, dementia, multiple sclerosis (MS) and Parkinson’s disease may experience worsening symptoms due to climate change, according to a scoping review of research published in the November 16, 2022, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The review also found that stroke may become more prevalent due to climate change.

“Although the international community seeks to reduce global temperature rise to under 2.7 ºF before 2100, irreversible environmental changes have already occurred, and as the planet warms these changes will continue to occur,” said review author Andrew Dhawan, MD, DPhil, of Cleveland Clinic in Ohio and a member of the American Academy of Neurology. “As we witness the effects of a warming planet on human health, it is imperative that neurologists anticipate how neurologic disease may change.”

For the review, researchers looked at studies published on climate change, pollutants, temperature extremes and neurologic disease between 1990 and 2022. They identified 364 relevant studies in three categories, including 289 studies on the impact of pollution, 38 studies on extreme weather events and temperature fluctuations and 37 studies on emerging neuroinfectious diseases. They included only studies on adults, not children.

The studies highlighted the relationships between temperature variability and worsening neurologic symptoms, warming climates and tick- and mosquito-borne infections, as well as airborne pollutants and cerebrovascular disease rate and severity.

The review showed extreme weather events and temperature fluctuations were associated with stroke incidence and severity, migraine headaches, hospitalization in dementia patients, and worsening of MS.

It showed for emerging neuroinfectious diseases like West Nile virus, meningococcal meningitis and tick-borne encephalitis, climate change expanded the favorable conditions beyond the traditional geographic areas, and these diseases carried by animals and insects pose the risk of disease in new populations.

The review also showed exposure to airborne pollutants, especially nitrates and fine particulate matter, also known as PM 2.5, pollutant particles of less than 2.5 microns in diameter, was associated with stroke incidence and severity, headaches, dementia risk, Parkinson’s disease, and worsening of MS.

“Climate change poses many challenges for humanity, some of which are not well-studied,” said Dhawan. “For example, our review did not find any articles related to effects on neurologic health from food and water insecurity, yet these are clearly linked to neurologic health and climate change. More studies are needed on ways to reduce neuroinfectious disease transmission, how air pollution affects the nervous system, and how to improve delivery of neurologic care in the face of climate-related disruptions.”