Bunch of grapes help to fight high blood pressure

Could eating a bunch of grapes help to fight high blood pressure related to a salty diet? Could they also calm other factors that are also related to heart diseases such as failure of the heart? You'd be amazed at what those oval rounds of goodness have packed inside their black, red or green skin.

A new study conducted by the University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center gives tantalizing clues to the potential of grapes in reducing the risk of cardiovascular complications. The effect is thought to be due to the high level of phytochemicals, which are naturally occurring antioxidants that grapes contain.

The current study was performed on laboratory rats. The researchers studied the effects that regular table grapes (a blend of black, green and red grapes) that were mixed into the rat diet in a powdered form, as part of either a diet low in salt or a diet high in salt. The researchers then performed many comparisons between the rats that were consuming the test diet and the control rats that were receiving no grape powder—including some that had received a mild dose of a common blood pressure medication. All of the rats were from a research breed that is prone to developing high blood pressure when they are fed a salty diet.

Mitchell Seymour, M.S., who lead the research as part of his doctoral work in nutrition science at the Michigan State University, said that in all, after 18 weeks, the rats that had received the diet with the grape-powder had reduced inflammation in their bodies, lower blood pressure, better heart function, and fewer signs of heart muscle damage that the rats that had eaten the same salty diet but did not receive any grapes. The rats that received the blood pressure pill, hydrazine, along with the salty diet also had lower blood pressure, but their hearts were not protected from damage as the rats in the grape-fed group. "These findings support out theory that something within the grapes themselves has a direct impact on cardiovascular risk, beyond the simple blood pressure-lowering impact that we already know can come from a diet rich in fruits and vegetables."

Steve Bolling, M.D., who is a professor of cardiac surgery at the U-M Medical School, notes that the rats in the study were in a put in a similar situation as millions of Americans, who have suffered from high blood pressure related to their diet, and who develop heart failure over time because of the prolonged hypertension. He also stated that the inevitable downhill sequence from hypertension to heart failure was changed by adding the grape powder to a high salt diet. Bolling explained, " Although there are many natural compounds in the grape powder itself that may have an effect, the things that we think are having an effect against the hypertension may be the flavanoids—either by direct antioxidant effects, by indirect effects on cell function, or both. These flavanoids are rich in all parts of the grape—skin, flesh, seed, all of which were in our powder."

Although the current study  was supported in part by the California Table Grape Commission, which also supplied the researchers with the grape powder, the authors note that the commission played no role in the design of the study, analysis, conduct, or preparation of the journal article for publication. Seymour has also received funding from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood institute, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, through a National Research Science Award.

This does not mean it is time to tell patients to throw all of their medication away and just eat grapes. However, the research on the grapes and other fruits that contain high levels of antioxidant phytochemicals continues to show promise. So does the research on the impact of red wine on the heath of the heart, though that issue is also far from being settled.

Bolling suggested that if people wish to lower their blood pressure, reduce the risk of having heart failure, or help their weakened hearts retain as much pumping power as possible should follow tried-and-true advice: Cut down on the amount of salt that you get through your drink and food. "There is, as we know, a great variability, perhaps genetic even, in sensitivity to salt and causing hypertension. Some people are very sensitive to salt intake, some are only moderately so, and there are perhaps some people who are salt resistant. But in general we say stay away from excess salt."

He also notes that the popular DASH diet, which is low in salt and high in vegetables and fruits, has been proven to reduce mild high blood pressure without taking any medications. The dose of whole table grape powder that was consumed in the new study was roughly equivalent to a person eating nine human-sized servings of grapes daily. Currently, five to nine servings of vegetables and fruits are recommended as part of the Dash diet plan.

In all, the researchers say that this study demonstrates that a diet enriched with grapes can have broad effects on the development of hypertension and the risk factor that come along with it. Whether the effect can be replicated on humans, the researchers say, remains yet to be seen.


http://www.healthnews.com/nutrition-diet/grapes-newest-heart-healthy-food-2044.html

Globally more than 30 million people are infected with HIV

University of Michigan scientists have identified a new reservoir for hidden HIV-infected cells that can serve as a factory for new infections. The findings, which appear online March 7 in Nature Medicine, indicate a new target for curing the disease so those infected with the virus may someday no longer rely on AIDS drugs for a lifetime. "Antiviral drugs have been effective at keeping the virus at bay. However once the drug therapy is stopped, the virus comes back," says senior author of the study Kathleen L. Collins, MD, Ph.D., associate professor of both internal medicine and microbiology and immunology at the U-M Medical School. In people infected with HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), the virus that causes AIDS, there's an unsolved problem with current antiviral drugs. Though lifesaving, they cannot root the virus out of the body. Infected cells are able to live on, undetected by the immune system, and provide the machinery for the virus to reproduce and spread. Important new research by U-M has discovered that bone marrow, previously thought to be resistant to the virus, can contain latent forms of the infection. "This finding is important because it helps explain why it's hard to cure the disease," Collins says. "Ultimately to cure this disease, we're going to have to develop specific strategies aimed at targeting these latently infected cells." "Currently people have to take antiviral drugs for their entire life to control the infection," she says. "It would be easier to treat this disease in countries that don't have the same resources as we do with a course of therapy for a few months, or even years. But based on what we know now people have to stay on drugs for their entire life." Using tissue samples, U-M researchers detected HIV genomes in bone marrow isolated from people effectively treated with antiviral drugs for more than six months. While further studies are needed to demonstrate that stem cells can harbor the HIV virus, the study results confirm that HIV targets some long-lived progenitor cells, young cells that have not fully developed but mature into cells with special immune functions. When active infection occurs the toxic effects of the virus kill the cell even as the newly made viral particles spread the infection to new target cells. "Our finding that HIV infects these cells has clear ramifications for HIV disease because some of these cells may be long-lived and could carry latent HIV for extended periods of time," she says. "These HIV cell reservoirs can be induced to generate new infections." The new research gives a broader view of how HIV overwhelms the body's immune system and devastates its ability to regenerate itself. Globally more than 30 million people are infected with HIV, including millions of children. Improvements have been made since the 1990s in the way the disease is treated that has led to an 85 percent to 90 percent reduction in mortality. "Drugs now available are effective at treating the virus, making HIV more of a chronic disease than a death sentence," Collins says. "This has made a huge impact in quality of life, however only 40 percent of people worldwide are receiving anti-viral drugs and unfortunately that means that not everybody is benefiting."




http://www.hivplusmag.com/NewsStory.asp?id=21870&StoryDate=03/09/2010

Fear of anthrax infection.People Want the Drug Cipro

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson asked Americans not to buy and hoard the pharmaceuticals, although there is some controversy over whether the country has enough drugs on hand. Claude Allen, HHS deputy secretary, told the House Committee on Veterans Affairs that part of $1.5 billion the department has requested, would be used to increase the pharmaceutical stockpile of anthrax treatment. The $1 billion-a-year drug, manufactured by German drugmaker Bayer AG, has been used in the United States since 1987 to treat a variety of infections. The Food and Drug Administration approved it for anthrax treatment last year. Fear of anthrax infection has taken hold across the country and even in Europe where several recent scares have been reported. People Want the Drug Dr. Daisy Merey, who runs a family practice in West Palm Beach, said she prescribed Cipro for several people who wanted it around just in case they got sick. "A lot of people who are coming in for checkups are also asking about Cipro," Merey told Reuters. "We don't recommend taking antibiotics as a preventive measure because there are side effects. If people really want it just to have in case something happens, we'll prescribe it to them." One reason doctors don't like to have people procuring prescriptions for Cipro online is that it's a very strong antibiotic that is generally reserved for tough cases, said Dr. Nancy Snyderman on ABCNEWS' Good Morning America. "It's not even a first-line drug of choice for most infections," Snyderman said. "This is a kind of medication you use when other things fail." Since anthrax doesn't widely disperse itself, there is no need to stock up on Cipro, said Stephen Ostroff, chief epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. "And in all of the current situations that we're aware of, it's really mostly been confined to people who've had direct contact with these contaminated envelopes," Ostroff told Good Morning America.




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