Current Nutrition & Food Science - Volume 3, Issue 4, 2007

Nutrition plays an important role in various diseases. It is known that consumption of energy dense diet, lack of exercise, and other life style factors lead to obesity and its associated conditions such as type 2 diabetes mellitus, dyslipidemia, hypertension, and coronary heart disease. There is reasonable evidence to support the contention that certain types of cancers are more common in subjects with obesity. With an increas Read More

Using bioinformatics techniques and sequence analyses algorithms, we identified that tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) and nitric oxide (NO) have a significant role in the pathobiology of insulin resistance syndrome, a condition that is common in subjects with abdominal obesity, hypertension, dyslipidemia, atherosclerosis, and coronary heart disease and are accompanied by endothelial dysfunction due to reduced endothelial ni Read More

Lipid mediators are a heterogenous group of bioactive lipids which includes eicosanoids, resolvins, endocannabinoids, sphingolipids, phospholipids and oxidized lipids. They mediate several physiological cellular functions but also participate in the pathogenesis of many diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, autoimmune diseases and cancer. Many food-derived bioactive compounds can beneficially alter their metaboli Read More

Metabolic syndrome X is an inflammatory condition. Increased consumption of high-energy diet, saturated and trans-fats by pregnant women and lactating mothers suppresses the activities of enzymes Δ6 and Δ5 desaturases in maternal and fetal tissues resulting in a decrease in the concentrations of long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LCPUFAs) such as arachidonic acid (AA), eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), docosap Read More

The metabolic syndrome is a clustering of metabolic abnormalities and cardiovascular risk factors (like visceral obesity, dyslipidemia, hypertension and hyperglycemia) that occur in individuals with impaired insulin resistance and subclinical inflammation. During the past years this syndrome has become one of the major public health threats worldwide. Growing evidence demonstrates that dietary patterns, such as Mediterranean Read More

Vitamin E is known to improve antioxidant status, but the effect of vitamin E on bone quality in orchidectomized rats is unknown. In the present study, thirty-two 1-y-old male rats were randomized to two groups: a sham-control group (n=8) and an orchidectomized group (n=24). The orchidectomized group was divided into three groups of eight and assigned to one of the following treatments: orchidectomy (ORX), low Read More

Propolis is a natural substance collected by bees from local flora. Propolis is increasingly used in health-food manufacturing practices since in addition to the antibacterial, antifungal, and antiviral characteristics, it also strengthens the immunity and has a strong antioxidative effect. We investigated the chemical composition and antimicrobial activity of 10 samples of propolis, which were collected in different regions of Li Read More

Conjugated fatty acids (CFA) being novel type of biologically functional lipid substances, have received increased interest owing to their beneficial effects on human health. Among CFAs, conjugated linoleic acids (CLA) have been reviewed extensively for their occurrence, health benefits, industrial production and applications. On the contrary, it is worth noting that some plant seeds contain conjugated linolenic acids (CLN) Read More

An experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of feeding orange pulp on plasma antioxidant status and bone quality in orchidectomized rats. Forty-five one-year-old male rats were randomly placed in a sham-control group and four orchidectomized groups. Orchidectomized rats were assigned to one of the following treatments: orchidectomy (ORX), ORX+2.5% orange pulp (OP); ORX+5.0% OP; ORX+10.0% OP. Four m Read More

Green tea preparations are currently widely used in Lithuania, and therefore capsules with dry green tea extract were chosen with the aim of determination of their polyphenol and caffeine contents and antioxidant activity, as well as for the evaluation of the correlation between possible indicators. The amount of polyphenolic compounds was determined using the Foulin - Ciocalteau reagent, standard galic acid, and follow Read More