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Food as Medicine?
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Page: << Prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | Next >> Bynoe believes her team is the first to demonstrate this mechanism.
In the animals given caffeine, the equivalent of 6 to 8 cups of coffee a day for humans, "there was a reduction in the inflammation, the pathology, a reduction in the brain pathology," Bynoe said.
Adenosine plays a crucial role in many body processes, including energy transfer, the promotion of sleep and the suppression of arousal. On the cellular level, caffeine can bind to the same receptors as adenosine, preventing the adenosine from attaching to cells in the central nervous system.
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The new finding is "certainly deserving of further study," said Dr. John Richert, executive vice president of research and clinical programs for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.
But he had a caveat: "It's important to note that EAE [the animal model of MS] is not MS, and many potential treatments that have worked on EAE have not worked on MS."
In a second study, green tea extracts, already known for their antioxidant properties that help protect against cancer, had anticancer effects on cancer cell lines in the laboratory.
Scientists wanted to find out whether undigested extracts of black and green tea cancer-fighting compounds, known as catechins, would have more anticancer activity against the cancer cells than digested extracts, said study author Joshua Bomser, an associate professor of nutrition at Ohio State University.
"We set out to look at the effect of digestion, subjecting tea extracts to simulated digestion in the lab setting and looking for changes in biological activity between digested and undigested samples exposed to cancer cell lines," Bomser said.
In the laboratory study, they found that whether the extracts were digested or not and the type of tea affected the anticancer activity, as did the type of cancer cell.
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Copyright © 2008 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.
Last updated 4/8/2008
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SOURCES: Margaret Bynoe, Ph.D., assistant professor, microbiology and immunology, Cornell University School of Veterinary Medicine, Ithaca, N.Y.; John Richert, M.D., executive vice president, research and clinical programs, National Multiple Sclerosis Society, New York City, Tom Gasiewicz, Ph.D., professor and chairman, department of environmental medicine, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, N.Y.; Joshua Bomser, Ph.D., associate professor, nutrition, Ohio State University, Columbus; April 6-7, 2008, presentations, Experimental Biology annual meeting, San Diego
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