Seminar
Seminar : Seminar on Functional Foods
On behalf of Professor Jeya Henry, Director, Clinical Nutrition Research Centre, SICS,A*STAR, we would like to cordially invite you to attend a seminar on Functional Foods.
Functional foods in health and disease
Rodents are widely used to understand human physiology and pathology. The first aim was to develop a rat model of diet-induced metabolic, cardiovascular and liver changes that mimicked the human metabolic syndrome. Male Wistar rats were fed a high carbohydrate/high fat diet containing condensed milk (39.5%), beef tallow (20%), fructose (17.5%), rat food (15%)and minerals (1%) supplemented with fructose (25%) in the drinking water, for 16 weeks; condensed milk, beef tallow and fructose were replaced by corn starch in control rats. The high carbohydrate/high fat diet increased body fat mass, systolic blood pressure, heart weights, abdominal circumference, visceral fat pad deposition, glucose tolerance after oral glucose loading, infiltration of inflammatory cells in left ventricle and liver, cardiac collagen deposition, left ventricular diastolic stiffness, liver collagen deposition and plasma liver enzyme markers. This diet then mimics most of the symptoms of the human metabolic syndrome, including hypertension, abdominal obesity, glucose/insulin intolerance, fatty liver and inflammation.
Nutraceuticals and functional foods have been used for thousands of years to treat human disease, including the symptoms of the metabolic syndrome such as obesity, diabetes, hypertension and liver dysfunction. The second aim was to determine whether these diet-induced symptoms could be reversed by supplementation with purple carrots, rutin, quercetin, ellagitannins, ellagic acid, chia seeds or olive leaf extract as additions to the diet for 8 weeks starting 8 weeks after the diet was initiated. Treatment prevented or attenuated most cardiovascular, metabolic and liver changes. The interventions prevented inflammatory cell infiltration into the heart, liver and fat pads, and decreased plasma inflammatory biomarkers. These results strongly suggest that functional foods reverse the chronic low-grade inflammatory state that induces the cardiovascular, metabolic and liver signs in this rat model of diet-induced metabolic syndrome.
Speaker: Professor Lindsay Brown, University of Southern Queensland
2009 – present Professor of Biomedical Sciences, University of Southern Queensland
2003 –present: Associate Professor (full-time until November 2009, then adjunct position), School of Biomedical Sciences, The University of Queensland; Adjunct Professor, Manipal College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Manipal University, India.
Professor Brown’s research group is internationally recognised for studies on rat models that adequately mimic cardiovascular and endocrine disease. They have used these rat models to determine whether interventions, either with selective drugs or natural products, can reverse or prevent disease-induced changes in structure and function, especially of the heart, liver, kidney and adipose tissue, to indicate whether these interventions should be tested in humans with these diseases. These studies have shown that selective anti-inflammatory compounds such as phospholipase A2 inhibitors (NHMRC 2010-2012) and complement receptor antagonists (NHMRC 2012-2014) as well as natural products such as olive leaf, purple carrots, chia seeds and rutin can prevent or reverse high carbohydrate, high fat diet-induced structural and functional changes in the heart, liver and kidney as well as reversing increased abdominal fat pads.
His studies on the DOCA-salt hypertensive rat model show that this is the most relevant model to evaluate drugs that decrease oxidative and inflammatory stress on the heart, including new anti-inflammatory compounds such as the HDAC inhibitors. Promising results with diet-induced models of kidney and liver damage as well as adjuvant-induced arthritis showing that they can mimic the chronic damage to these organs in obese humans have been obtained. These models will provide the basis for intervention studies with new selective compounds as well as with natural products.
Professor Brown has 150 publications emphasising interventions in properly characterised rat models of human disease in international journals. Over $2 million has been obtained from NGO’s and Australian State and Federal Governments over the last 5 years for support of his research group.
Date: 30 July 2012
Time: 11.30am to 1.30pm
Venue: Level 6 Conference Room, Brenner Centre for Molecular Medicine, 30 Medical Drive, Singapore 117609
To register your participation, kindly email your attendance and particulars to cassandra_ho@sics.a-star.edu.sg
Your assistance in disseminating this communication to your colleagues and contacts for their information and participation will be much appreciated.
Thank you and we look forward to your participation.
