Too many soft drinks make child aggressive

, TNN | Aug 19, 2013, 07.37 AM IST
READ MORE soft drinks|children|aggression
MUMBAI: Young children who have more than four soft drinks a day are twice as likely to destroy things belonging to others, get into fights and physically attack people.

This is the conclusion of a new research by Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health that has been published in The Journal of Pediatrics. Stating that Americans buy more soft drinks per capita than people in any other countries, the study said that aggression, attention problems, and withdrawal behavior are all associated with soft drink consumption in young children.

Shakira Suglia and colleagues assessed approximately 3,000 5-year-old children enrolled in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a study that follows mother-child pairs from 20 large US cities. Mothers reported their child's soft drink consumption and completed the child behavior checklist based on their child's behavior during the previous two months. The researchers found that 43% of the children consumed at least 1 serving of soft drinks per day, and 4% consumed 4 or more.

Aggression, withdrawal, and attention problems were associated with soda consumption. ``Children who drank 4 or more soft drinks per day were more than twice as likely to destroy things belonging to others, get into fights, and physically attack people,'' said the study. They also had increased attention problems and withdrawal behavior compared with those who did not consume soft drinks.

"We found that the child's aggressive behavior score increased with every increase in soft drinks servings per day," said Dr Suglia.
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Decoded: How females choose the right sperm

PTI | Aug 19, 2013, 06.07 AM IST
WASHINGTON: Scientists have decoded how females select the 'right' sperm to fertilize their eggs when faced with the risk of being fertilized by sperm from a different species.

Researchers from the University of East Anglia investigated salmon and trout, which fertilize externally in river water. Since hybrid offspring of the two species become reproductive deadends , females of both species practice selection to avoid hybrid fertilizations.

The study shows that when eggs from each species are presented with either salmon or trout, they happily allow complete fertilization by either species' sperm. However, if eggs are given a simultaneous choice of both species' sperms, they clearly favour their own species' sperm.

"It is actually the ovarian fluid that controls which species' sperm wins the fertilizations... If we put salmon ovarian fluid onto salmon eggs, then salmon sperm win, but if we put trout ovarian fluid onto eggs from that same salmon female, trout sperm now win," researchers said.

"Ovarian fluid gives a chemical signal to the sperm of its own species, causing changes in the way their tails beat, so that they swim in a straighter trajectory, and therefore guided more effectively towards the site of fertilization. These findings allow us to establish that females have indeed evolved mechanisms of 'cryptic choice' at the level of the sperm and egg," said researchers.

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Celery, artichokes can help fight pancreatic cancer

PTI | Aug 18, 2013, 06.13 PM IST
READ MORE Pancreatic Cancer|celery|artichokes
WASHINGTON: Vegetables such as celery and artichokes contain flavonoids that can kill human pancreatic cancer cells, two new studies have found.

Researchers from the University of Illinois found that the flavonoids apigenin and luteolin - also found in herbs, especially Mexican oregano - can kill human pancreatic cancer cells in the lab by inhibiting an important enzyme.

"Apigenin alone induced cell death in two aggressive human pancreatic cancer cell lines. But we received the best results when we pre-treated cancer cells with apigenin for 24 hours, then applied the chemotherapeutic drug gemcitabine for 36 hours," said Elvira de Mejia, a U of I professor of food chemistry and food toxicology.

The trick seemed to be using the flavonoids as a pre-treatment instead of applying them and the chemotherapeutic drug simultaneously, said Jodee Johnson, a doctoral student in de Mejia's lab who has since graduated.

"Even though the topic is still controversial, our study indicated that taking antioxidant supplements on the same day as chemotherapeutic drugs may negate the effect of those drugs," she said.

"That happens because flavonoids can act as antioxidants. One of the ways that chemotherapeutic drugs kill cells is based on their pro-oxidant activity, meaning that flavonoids and chemotherapeutic drugs may compete with each other when they're introduced at the same time," she added.

Pancreatic cancer is a very aggressive cancer, and there are few early symptoms, meaning that the disease is often not found before it has spread.

Ultimately the goal is to develop a cure, but prolonging the lives of patients would be a significant development, Johnson added.

The scientists found that apigenin inhibited an enzyme called glycogen synthase kinase-3 beta (GSK-3 beta), which led to a decrease in the production of anti-apoptotic genes in the pancreatic cancer cells.

Apoptosis means that the cancer cell self-destructs because its DNA has been damaged.

In one of the cancer cell lines, the percentage of cells undergoing apoptosis went from 8.4 per cent in cells that had not been treated with the flavonoid to 43.8 per cent in cells that had been treated with a 50-micromolar dose.

In this case, no chemotherapy drug had been added. Treatment with the flavonoid also modified gene expression.

"Certain genes associated with pro-inflammatory cytokines were highly upregulated," de Mejia said.

Pancreatic cancer patients would probably not be able to eat enough flavonoid-rich foods to raise blood plasma levels of the flavonoid to an effective level. But scientists could design drugs that would achieve those concentrations, de Mejia said.
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