Day: November 21, 2024

Categories : Cardiovascular DiseaseTags :

Tirzepatide Found to Protect against Worsening Heart Failure

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Right side heart failure. Credit: Scientific Animations CC4.0

The diabetes drug tirzepatide can reduce the risk of death or worsening heart failure for patients with heart failure, preserved heart pump function and obesity, new research from UVA Health reveals.

Researchers tested the GLP-1 receptor agonist in the SUMMIT clinical trial, where a total of 731 patients with diastolic heart failure and a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or above were randomised to receive injections of either tirzepatide or a harmless placebo. The researchers then followed the patients for a median period of two years. Tirzepatide is also prescribed as a weight loss drug in certain countries.

During that time, 56 placebo recipients died or suffered worsening heart failure, compared with only 36 of those receiving tirzepatide. Participants taking tirzepatide also lost 11.6% of their body weight.

“This class of drugs continue to show benefits far beyond weight loss,” said researcher Christopher Kramer, MD, chief of UVA Health’s Division of Cardiovascular Medicine. “This drug will become an important part of the armamentarium for patients with obesity-related heart failure and preserved heart function.”

Obesity and heart failure

Obesity is a major contributing factor to heart failure, so Kramer and his collaborators in the SUMMIT trial wanted to see if tirzepatide, a weight-loss drug already approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration, could help. 

The trial found that tirzepatide offered substantial benefits for managing diastolic heart failure, reducing deaths, preventing hospitalizations and generally benefiting recipients’ health and quality of life. For example, recipients saw improvements in how far they could walk in six minutes, as well as substantial decreases in a biological indictor used to measure inflammation and predict risk of serious cardiovascular events.

Side effects seen in the tirzepatide group consisted of gastrointestinal issues such as nausea and diarrhea, and these were mostly mild or moderate, the researchers reported Saturday at a meeting of the American Heart Association in Chicago.

Tirzepatide Findings

Kramer, a cardiovascular imager, also led a magnetic resonance imaging substudy looking at how tirzepatide affected recipients’ heart structure and function. The researchers found beneficial reductions in both left ventricular mass (weight of the heart) and in the amount of surrounding fat tissue. The reduction in LV mass correlated with the reduction in body weight, as well as with decreases in left ventricular volumes.

“This drug is reversing the abnormal properties of the heart brought on by obesity,” Kramer said. “There is much more to these drugs than weight loss alone.”

The findings from these studies by Kramer and his fellow researchers from SUMMIT are being published simultaneous with the American Heart meeting in Chicago in four separate manuscripts, including the New England Journal of Medicine, Nature Medicine, Circulation and the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Source: University of Virginia Health System

Categories : General Interest Obstetrics & GynaecologyTags :

Researcher Discovers Ancient Egyptian Mugs Contained Hallucinogens

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(a) Drinking vessel in shape of Bes head; El-Fayūm Oasis, Egypt; Ptolemaic-Roman period (4th century BCE − 3rd century CE), (courtesy of the Tampa Museum of Art, Florida). (b) Bes mug from the Ghalioungui collection, 10.7 × 7.9 cm (Ghalioungui, G. Wagner 1974, Kaiser 2003, cat. no. 342). (c) Bes mug inv. no. 14.415 from the Allard Pierson Museum, 11.5 × 9.3 cm (courtesy of the Allard Pierson Museum, Amsterdam; photo by Stephan van der Linden). (d) Bes mug from El-Fayum, dimensions unknown (Kaufmann 1913; Kaiser 2003, cat. no. 343). Credit: Scientific Reports, 2024

The first-ever physical evidence of hallucinogens in an Egyptian mug has been found, validating written records and centuries-old myths of ancient Egyptian rituals and practices. Through advanced chemical analyses, University of South Florida professor Davide Tanasi examined one of the world’s few remaining Egyptian Bes mugs.

Such mugs, including the one donated to the Tampa Museum of Art in 1984, are decorated with the head of Bes, an ancient Egyptian god or guardian demon worshiped for protection, fertility, medicinal healing and magical purification. Published in Nature’s Scientific Reports, the study sheds light on an ancient Egyptian mystery: The secret of how Bes mugs were used about 2000 years ago. 

“There’s no research out there that has ever found what we found in this study,” Tanasi said. “For the first time, we were able to identify all the chemical signatures of the components of the liquid concoction contained in the Tampa Museum of Art’s Bes mug, including the plants used by Egyptians, all of which have psychotropic and medicinal properties.”

The presence of Bes mugs in different contexts over a long period of time made it extremely difficult to speculate on their contents or roles in ancient Egyptian culture.

“For a very long time now, Egyptologists have been speculating what mugs with the head of Bes could have been used for, and for what kind of beverage, like sacred water, milk, wine or beer,” said Branko van Oppen, curator of Greek and Roman art at the Tampa Museum of Art. “Experts did not know if these mugs were used in daily life, for religious purposes or in magic rituals.”

Several theories about the mugs and vases were formulated on myths, but few of them were ever tested to reveal their exact ingredients until the truth was extracted layer by layer.

Tanasi, who developed this study as part of the Mediterranean Diet Archaeology project promoted by the USF Institute for the Advanced Study of Culture and the Environment, collaborated with several USF researchers and partners in Italy at the University of Trieste and the University of Milan to perform chemical and DNA analyses. With a pulverised sample from scraping the inner walls of the vase, the team combined numerous analytical techniques for the first time to uncover what the mug last held.

The new tactic was successful and revealed the vase had a cocktail of psychedelic drugs, bodily fluids and alcohol – a combination that Tanasi believes was used in a magical ritual re-enacting an Egyptian myth, likely for fertility. The concoction was flavoured with honey, sesame seeds, pine nuts, liquorice and grapes, which were commonly used to make the beverage look like blood.

“This research teaches us about magic rituals in the Greco-Roman period in Egypt,” Van Oppen said. “Egyptologists believe that people visited the so-called Bes Chambers at Saqqara when they wished to confirm a successful pregnancy because pregnancies in the ancient world were fraught with dangers. So, this combination of ingredients may have been used in a dream-vision inducing magic ritual within the context of this dangerous period of childbirth.”

“Religion is one of the most fascinating and puzzling aspects of ancient civilizations,” Tanasi said. “With this study, we’ve found scientific proof that the Egyptian myths have some kind of truth and it helps us shed light on the poorly understood rituals that were likely carried out in the Bes Chambers in Saqqara, near the Great Pyramids at Giza.”

The Bes mug is on display now at the Tampa Museum of Art and can be viewed in the exhibition, “Prelude: An Introduction to the Permanent Collection.” View a 3D model of the Bes mug produced by the USF Institute for Digital Exploration.

Categories : Diet and Nutrition Obstetrics & GynaecologyTags :

Many not Getting Enough Nutrients in Their Pregnancy, Study Finds

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Source: Pixabay CC0

It’s generally estimated that around 10% of pregnant people struggle to meet their nutritional needs – but the real number could be far higher, according to new research in The Journal of Nutrition.

Over 90% of pregnant individuals are potentially failing to get enough iron, vitamin D, or vitamin E from the food they eat, while over one-third could be short of calcium, vitamin C, and vitamin A. Troublingly, almost two-thirds of pregnant people were also found to be getting insufficient dietary folate – a critical nutrient that helps prevent birth defects in the baby’s brain and spine.

“It’s important to remember that many pregnant people take prenatal vitamin supplements, which might help prevent nutritional deficiencies,” says lead author Dr Samantha Kleinberg, professor at Stevens Institute of Technology. “Nonetheless, this is a startling finding that suggests we need to be looking much more closely at whether pregnant individuals are getting the nutrients they need.”

Where most previous studies of nutrition during pregnancy relied on a few days of food diaries, or on simply asking people what they remembered eating, the Stevens team asked pregnant people to take before-and-after photos of everything they ate over two 14-day periods. Experts then reviewed the photos to assess the amount of food actually eaten and determine the nutrients consumed during each meal.

That’s a far more accurate approach, because people are notoriously bad at estimating portion size or accurately reporting what they’ve eaten, Dr Kleinberg explains. A photo-based approach is also much less laborious for pregnant people, making it easy to collect data over a period of weeks instead of just a few days.

“Most surveys only track diet over a day or two – but if you feel off one day and don’t eat much, or have a big celebratory meal over the weekend, that can skew the data,” Dr Kleinberg says. “By looking at a longer time period, and using photos to track diet and nutrition, we’re able to get a much richer and more precise picture of what people actually ate.”

The study found significant dietary variations between individuals, but also among the same individuals from one day to the next, suggesting that shorter studies and population-based reports might be failing to spot important nutritional deficits. “Some people eat really well, and others don’t – so if you just take an average, it looks like everything’s fine,” Dr Kleinberg explains. “This study suggests that in reality, an alarming number of pregnant people may not be getting the nutrients they need from their food.”

Using food photos also recorded the exact timing of meals and snacks, and to explore the way that patterns of eating behaviour correlated with total energy and nutrient intake. When pregnant people ate later in the day, the data shows, they were likely to consume significantly more total calories – potentially an important finding as researchers explore connections between eating behaviours and health problems such as gestational diabetes.

The current research didn’t directly study health outcomes, so it’s too early to say whether insufficient nutrition or excessive energy consumption is adversely impacting pregnant individuals or their babies. “We’ll be digging into that in future studies, and looking at possible connections with eating patterns and changes in glucose tolerance,” Dr Kleinberg says.

Source: Stevens Institute of Technology

Categories : Metabolic DisordersTags :

New Study Investigates How Jetlag can Disrupt Metabolism

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Photo by Andrea Piacquadio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/young-man-in-sleepwear-suffering-from-headache-in-morning-3771115/

A new study from the University of Surrey and the University of Aberdeen has found that disruptions to our body clock, such as those experienced during jetlag, impact our metabolism – but to a lesser extent than sleepiness and the primary clock in the brain. 

Led by Professor Jonathan Johnston at the University of Surrey and Professor Alexandra Johnstone at the University of Aberdeen, the research involved a controlled experiment where participants experienced a 5-hour delay in their bedtime and mealtimes.  

The study, published on iScience, highlights that the time shifts lead to: 

  • Reduced energy spent processing meals. 
  • Changes in blood sugar and fat levels. 
  • Slower release of breakfast contents from the stomach. 

These metabolic effects were temporary, however, and mostly recovered within 2-3 days of the 5-hour time delay. This was in marked contrast to the main clock in the brain, plus feelings of sleepiness and alertness, which had not recovered within 5 days of the 5-hour time delay. 

Our research underscores the importance of maintaining a consistent sleep schedule, particularly in our fast-paced world in which long trips and shift work are ever so common. Even a small time shift can impact many aspects of metabolism, but it now seems that metabolic consequences of jetlag recover far more quickly than impairment of sleep and alertness. Understanding the impact of circadian rhythms on our health can help us make informed choices about our lifestyle. By optimising our sleep and eating patterns, we can improve our overall wellbeing. 

Professor Jonathan Johnston, Professor of Chronobiology and Integrative Physiology

Source: University of Surrey

Categories : Metabolic Disorders Neurodegenerative DiseasesTags :

Long-term Study Finds Link between Earlier Diabetes Diagnosis and Dementia Risk

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Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich on Pexels

People diagnosed with type 2 diabetes at a younger age are at a higher risk for developing dementia than those diagnosed later in life, according to a study led by researchers at the NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing. The findings, published in PLOS ONE, show that the increased risk is especially pronounced among adults with obesity.

“Our study suggests that there may be cognitive consequences to earlier onset type 2 diabetes, and it points to the need for strategies to prevent dementia that consider both diabetes and obesity,” said Xiang Qi, assistant professor at NYU Meyers and the study’s first author.

Type 2 diabetes is a known risk factor for dementia. Although the underlying mechanisms are not fully understood, scientists think that some of the hallmarks of diabetes, such as high blood sugar, insulin resistance, and inflammation, may encourage the development of dementia in the brain.

While type 2 diabetes was once a disease of older adults, it is increasingly prevalent among younger individuals: one in five people with type 2 diabetes worldwide is under 40 years old.

To understand how the timing of a type 2 diabetes diagnosis relates to dementia risk, the research team analyzed data from 2002 to 2016 in the Health and Retirement Study, a longitudinal study conducted by the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. The PLOS ONE study included 1213 US adults aged 50 and over with type 2 diabetes confirmed by blood tests, without dementia at baseline. Following participants for up to 14 years, 216 (17.8%) developed dementia based on follow-up telephone interviews.

The researchers found that adults diagnosed with type 2 diabetes at younger ages were at increased risk for developing dementia, compared to those diagnosed at 70 years or older. Adults diagnosed with diabetes before age 50 were 1.9 times as likely to develop dementia as those diagnosed at 70 and older, while those diagnosed between 50–59 years were 1.72 times as likely and those diagnosed between 60–69 years were 1.7 times as likely.

Using linear trend tests, the researchers found a graded association between age at diagnosis and dementia risk: for each year younger a person is at the time of their type 2 diabetes diagnosis, their risk for developing dementia increases by 1.9%.

“While we do not know for sure why an earlier diabetes diagnosis would increase the risk for dementia, prior studies show that people diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in mid-life may experience more vascular complications, poor blood sugar control, and insulin resistance – all of which are known risk factors for cognitive impairment,” said Bei Wu, the Dean’s Professor in Global Health and vice dean for research at NYU Meyers and the study’s senior author.

In addition, obesity appeared to influence the relationship between type 2 diabetes and dementia. Individuals with obesity who were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes before age 50 had the highest dementia risk in the study.

The researchers note that this greater understanding of the connection between diabetes onset, obesity, and dementia may help inform targeted interventions to prevent dementia.

“Our study highlights the importance of one’s age at diabetes diagnosis and suggests that specifically targeting obesity – whether through diet and exercise or perhaps medication – may play a role in staving off dementia in younger adults with diabetes,” said Wu.

Source: New York University