Mount Sinai researchers have discovered that polyphenolics derived from red grape seeds may be useful agents to prevent or treat Alzheimer's Disease(AD).

This new study explored the possibility of developing 'wine mimetic pills' that would replace the recommended beneficial glass of red wine a day for AD prevention.

Giulio Maria Pasinetti, senior author and Director of the NCCAM-NIH funded Center of Excellence for Research in Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Alzheimer's Disease at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and his collaborator Dr. Jun Wang of Mount Sinai, through a partnership between the Research Center at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Dr. Anil Shrikhande, the Director of the Polyphenolics Division of Constellation Brands, a producer of biologically active grape products, tested the hypothesis that certain molecules contained in red wine, in particular in red grape seeds currently being developed with the name of Meganatural AZ, might offset disease progression in mice genetically modified to develop Alzheimer' disease.

The modern debate about protein has extended far beyond the Atkin's Diet and into a large part of our culture. On this site alone, you can find articles written by T. Colin Campbell, who says that 'complete' proteins in meat are a myth, to Seth Roberts and an intriguing interview with Gary Taubes.

New findings in the May issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition(1) describes the conclusions of a Protein Summit held last spring, which brought together the world's leading scientists in protein research and is certain to add fuel to the fire.

The summit's attendees report that eating a higher protein diet - still within the recommended range, but toward the top of it - may play a role in optimal health, as higher protein diets are linked with a lower risk for many health conditions such as type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular diseases and osteoporosis as well as sarcopenia, the degenerative loss of skeletal muscle mass and strength.

Nutrition researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified five common genetic variations that increase the risk of metabolic syndrome, a group of factors linked to heart disease and diabetes. Another variant they found appeared to protect against the condition.

People with metabolic syndrome have at least three of the following symptoms: abdominal obesity, high blood triglyceride levels, lower good cholesterol (HDL), elevated blood pressure and elevated fasting blood glucose. They are four times as likely to develop heart disease and at least seven times more likely to develop diabetes as individuals without metabolic syndrome.

The investigators, who report their findings in the June issue of the journal Human Molecular Genetics, looked for changes in the CD36 gene, which is located in a region of chromosome 7 that has been linked to metabolic syndrome in several genome-wide studies.

A few hundred years ago, the Germans played a practical joke on the rest of the world; they invented a medical field based on the idea that you could cure a disease by using something that caused similar symptoms.

It is called homeopathy and some people still haven't caught on to the joke. Why do I say joke? It's medicine that relies on the "energetic imprint" of substances to provoke the symptoms they already have - they're often so diluted that not even a molecule of the original substance remains - and the more diluted, the more powerful the cure, they say.

Think an octopus is just an invertebrate mollusk with a brain that contains fewer nerve cells and a much simpler anatomical organization than that of vertebrate brains? Well, you're right, and that's what makes them important for learning studies.

Octopuses and other related creatures, known as cephalopods, are considered to be the most intelligent invertebrates because they have relatively large brains and they can be trained for various learning and memory tasks, says Dr. Benny Hochner of the Department of Neurobiology at the Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Their behavior repertoire and learning and memory abilities are even comparable in their complexity to those of advanced vertebrates, which makes them ideal to tackle one of the most interesting questions in modern neuroscience - how the brain stores and recalls memories.

Researchers have long known that type-2 diabetes and depression often go hand in hand. However, it's been unclear which condition develops first in patients who end up with both. Now, a new study led by Johns Hopkins doctors suggests that this chicken-and-egg problem has a dual answer: Patients with depression have an increased risk of developing type-2 diabetes, and patients with type-2 diabetes have an increased risk of developing depression.

For the study, published in the June 18 Journal of the American Medical Association, diabetes expert Sherita Hill Golden, M.D., M.H.S., and her colleagues took advantage of data generated by the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA), which examined risk factors for atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, in an ethnically diverse group of 6,814 men and women between ages 45 to 84. Participants in the MESA study identified themselves when they enrolled as white, black, Hispanic or Chinese.

Meningiomas are tumors of the brain and nervous system and they account for 20% of all brain tumors. Doctors have a problem discriminating between the four different subtypes of meningiomas due to three key problems:

* The work can be painstakingly slow requiring up to two hours of analysis and expert consideration of a full "slide" of information.

* The finest histopathologists (tumor specialists) can at times come up with completely contradictory findings based on slight variations in their method of analysis.

* Currently the slides that specialists examine contain a few million pixels of data and the task of tumour diagnosis is painstakingly slow already. This problem is quite literally growing as medical equipment is coming out that can produce slides with hundreds of millions pixel resolution.

Clearly doctors would welcome any technological support which could speed up this process, use more of the information available and allow them time to diagnose and treat many more patients.

That convergence of media, telecommunication, information technology and consumer electronics you've been hearing about? Mostly hype, says new research from Cass Business School, London, and it's now over.

All that's left is a focus on exploiting the business opportunities created by the digital revolution, they say.

Dr Gianvito Lanzolla, Senior Lecturer in Strategy at Cass, suggests that because the revolutionary conceptual shifts from analogue to digital technology took place in 2003 – 2004, with a focus on first mover advantage and innovations, subsequent developments within digital technologies are adjustments rather than major changes.

A hernia is produced when the content of the abdominal cavity protrudes through a weakened natural orifice of the abdominal wall such as the inguinal canal, the umbilical area, the epigastrium or a previous incision in the abdomen such as from a surgical operation. The hernia manifests itself as a bulging lump since the internal lining of the abdomen protrudes in what is called a hernial sac that shrinks or grows depending on the effort exerted by the affected individual.

Hernias are more frequent in the groin or navel areas and in the area of an old surgical scar, and they never improve or disappear naturally; on the contrary, they tend to grow. Not only painful but unaesthetic too, hernias can produce complications such as bowel obstructions and strangulations.

A new study published today in Annals of Internal Medicine has good news for coffee drinkers: Regular coffee drinking (up to 6 cups per day) is not associated with increased deaths in either men or women. In fact, both caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee consumption is associated with a somewhat smaller rate of death from heart disease.

Women consuming two to three cups of caffeinated coffee per day had a 25 percent lower risk of death from heart disease during the follow-up period (which lasted from 1980 to 2004 and involved 84,214 women) as compared with non-consumers, and an 18 percent lower risk of death caused by something other than cancer or heart disease as compared with non-consumers during follow-up. For men, this level of consumption was associated with neither a higher nor a lower risk of death during the follow-up period (which lasted from 1986 to 2004 and involved 41,736 men).