Pomegranate for prostate
Pomegranate juice stops the growth of prostate cancer in laboratory cultures and in living mice and may do the same thing in humans, researchers report.
It’s another plus for the Mediterranean fruit, which was recently reported by Italian researchers to have protective effects against heart disease in mice, preventing the buildup of fatty deposits along artery walls.
Still, it’s a long way from these findings to proof that pomegranate juice could be used to treat or prevent human prostate cancer, said Hasan Mukhtar, a professor of cancer research at the University of Wisconsin and lead author of a study in last week’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The researcher said his team’s next step is to “identify the active ingredient, establish the mechanism of action, look at them in animal models and then in humans.”
A pre-Alzheimer’s alarm
Unexplained weight loss in old age that precedes noticeable memory loss could be an early sign of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new report.
“The most likely explanation is that there is something about these individuals or about this disease that affects body mass index (BMI) before the clinical syndrome becomes apparent–that loss of BMI reflects the disease process itself,” study co-author Dr. David A. Bennett, of the Alzheimer’s Disease Center at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, said in a statement.
The study included 820 people, 65 years and older, who were checked each year for an average of 6.6 years.
People who lost about one unit of BMI per year were at a 35 percent greater risk of developing Alzheimer’s than those who had no change in BMI during the study, the researchers report. People who had no change in their BMI were at a 20 percent greater risk of developing Alzheimer’s than those who gained six-tenths of a unit of BMI per year.
Exact links between unexplained weight loss and Alzheimer’s remain unclear.
Dog virus linked to horses
A sometimes-fatal virus that recently emerged in the nation’s greyhound racetracks and has spread to pet dogs in a few states appears to be a new strain of influenza normally found in horses, experts report.
They also note something relatively unique about the new strain: Unlike other “species-jumpers” like avian flu, this virus appears to pass quite easily from dog to dog.
The virus poses no health threat to humans but has proved fatal for some of the infected dogs. Infection has been reported in pet dogs in Florida, New York and possibly Massachusetts, experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a press conference Monday.
While dog owners need to be aware of possible risks to their pets, humans are not considered vulnerable, said CDC researcher Ruben Donis.
Although the virus is transmitting easily among dogs, not all dogs get sick and not all dogs that get sick die. The mortality rate has declined to between 5 and 8 percent.
The virus causes a syndrome similar to “kennel cough” in dogs and is spread much the same way as the flu spreads among humans.
