by Romeo Mariano, MD on August 19, 2010
Dietary intake of saturated fatty acids and mortality from cardiovascular disease in Japanese: the Japan Collaborative Cohort Study for Evaluation of Cancer Risk Study?
Yamagishi K, Iso H, Yatsuya H, Tanabe N, Date C, Kikuchi S, Yamamoto A, Inaba Y, Tamakoshi A; for the JACC Study Group.
Am J Clin Nutr. 2010 Aug 4.
OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that SFA intake is associated with the risk of cardiovascular disease mortality in Japanese whose average SFA intake is low.
DESIGN: The Japan Collaborative Cohort Study for Evaluation of Cancer Risk (JACC Study) comprised 58,453 Japanese men and women who completed a food-frequency questionnaire. Participants were aged 40-79 y at baseline (1988-1990) and were followed up for 14.1 years. Associations of energy-adjusted SFA intake with mortality from stroke (intraparenchymal and subarachnoid hemorrhages and ischemic stroke) and heart diseases (IHD, cardiac arrest, and heart failure) were examined after adjustment for age, sex, and cardiovascular disease risk and dietary factors.
RESULTS: We observed inverse associations of SFA intake with mortality from total stroke [n = 976; multivariable hazard ratio (95% CI) for highest compared with lowest quintiles: 0.69 (0.53, 0.89); P for trend = 0.004], intraparenchymal hemorrhage [n = 224; 0.48 (0.27, 0.85); P for trend = 0.03], and ischemic stroke [n = 321; 0.58 (0.37, 0.90); P for trend = 0.01]. No multivariable-adjusted associations were observed between SFA and mortality from subarachnoid hemorrhage [n = 153; 0.91 (0.46, 1.80); P for trend = 0.47] and heart disease [n = 836; 0.89 (0.68, 1.15); P for trend = 0.59].
CONCLUSION: SFA intake was inversely associated with mortality from total stroke, including intraparenchymal hemorrhage and ischemic stroke subtypes, in this Japanese cohort.
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Low saturated fat intake associated with higher stroke mortality
By Nathan Gray, 13-Aug-2010. Foodnavigator.com
If confirmed, these observations could call in to question Western societies current attitude towards saturated fats - If lower intake is not always better, then the American Heart Association’s daily intake recommendations for a maximum of 16g per day for an average person could be called into question.
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Animal-source saturated fat intake also improves intake of fat soluble vitamins and iron. The nutritional deficiencies associated with low saturated fat intake may contribute to the increased risk of stroke.
by Romeo Mariano, MD on August 1, 2010
Hematopoietic origin of pathological grooming in Hoxb8 mutant mice.
Chen SK, Tvrdik P, Peden E, Cho S, Wu S, Spangrude G, Capecchi MR.
Cell. 2010 May 28;141(5):775-85.
Mouse Hoxb8 mutants show unexpected behavior manifested by compulsive grooming and hair removal, similar to behavior in humans with the obsessive-compulsive disorder spectrum disorder trichotillomania.
As Hox gene disruption often has pleiotropic effects, the root cause of this behavioral deficit was unclear.
Here we report that, in the brain, Hoxb8 cell lineage exclusively labels bone marrow-derived microglia.
Furthermore, transplantation of wild-type bone marrow into Hoxb8 mutant mice rescues their pathological phenotype.
It has been suggested that the grooming dysfunction results from a nociceptive defect, also exhibited by Hoxb8 mutant mice. However, bone marrow transplant experiments and cell type-specific disruption of Hoxb8 reveal that these two phenotypes are separable, with the grooming phenotype derived from the hematopoietic lineage and the sensory defect derived from the spinal cord cells.
Immunological dysfunctions have been associated with neuropsychiatric disorders, but the causative relationships are unclear. In this mouse, a distinct compulsive behavioral disorder is associated with mutant microglia.
PMID: 20510925
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Immunological pathophysiology has long been suspected in obsessive-compulsive disorder. Previous studies focused on infections as a possible contributing factor.
In this rat model for obsessive-compulsive behavior, a mutation in the Hox8 gene which is expressed in brain microglia cells results in compulsive grooming and hair removal. Transplanting the stem cells containing the non-mutant Hoxb8 gene into the affected mice cured their behavior within four months. When the stem cells containing the mutant Hoxb8 gene were transplanted into normal mice, the obsessive-compulsive behavior appeared in the affected mice.