The risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease was dramatically reduced for older people who drank fruit or vegetable juices regularly in a 10-year study, researchers report. The incidence of Alzheimer’s was 76 percent lower for those who drank juice three or more times a week than for those who drank juice less than once a week. It was 16 percent lower for those drinking juice once or twice a week, according to the report. It’s not the general kind of antioxidants in fruit juices that produce the benefit, said Dr. Qi Dai, assistant professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and lead author of the report. Rather, he attributed the effect to polyphenols, a particularly strong antioxidant. ‘That is why we chose to look at fruit and vegetable juice,’ Dai said. ‘They [polyphenols] are found in the outer sections of fruits and vegetables, only in the peel or skin. When you process the whole fruit, they go into the juice.’ Studies of the biochemistry of Alzheimer’s disease have focused on deposits of beta-amyloid proteins that form in the brain and the potential for antioxidants in the diet to prevent those deposits, Dai said. But studies […]

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BETHESDA, Maryland — Instead of using surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation, researchers from the National Institutes of Health are finding so-far limited but inspiring success in a new approach for fighting cancer, using the immune system to attack the tumors the way it would a cold or flu. The human immune system doesn’t usually fight cancer on its own, so Dr. Steven Rosenberg and his NIH colleagues are trying to genetically engineer it, using a virus they created in the lab that seeks out cancer tumors and attaches to them. Rosenberg’s idea: Mix the cells that seek out the cancer with the immune cells that destroy things and see whether it would create a sort of smart bomb for the cancer. (Rosenberg: ‘Just a start’) In the study, Rosenberg tested the approach in 17 patients with advanced melanoma, a dangerous form of skin cancer. All the conventional treatments for the disease already had failed in all of the patients. In 15 of the patients Rosenberg’s engineered immune-cell treatment didn’t work, but in two of the patients the cancer seems to have completely disappeared. The findings are published in this week’s issue of the journal Science. (Watch […]

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