Vegan diet alleviates fibromyalgia symptoms.

The effect of a strict, low-salt, uncooked vegan diet rich in lactobacteria on symptoms in 18 fibromyalgia patients during and after a 3-month intervention period in an open, non-randomized controlled study was evaluated. As control 15 patients continued their omnivorous diet. The groups did not differ significantly from each other in the beginning of the study in any other parameters except in pain and urine sodium. The results revealed significant improvements in Visual analogue scale of pain (VAS) (p=0.005), joint stiffness (p=0.001), quality of sleep (p=0.0001), Health assessment questionnaire (HAQ) (p=0.031), General health questionnaire (GHQ) (p=0.021), and a rheumatologist's own questionnaire (p=0.038). The majority of patients were overweight to some extent at the beginning of the study and shifting to a vegan food caused a significant reduction in body mass index (BMI) (p=0.0001). Total serum cholesterol showed a statistically significant lowering (p=0.003). Urine sodium dropped to 1/3 of the beginning values (p=0.0001) indicating good diet compliance. It can be concluded that vegan diet had beneficial effects on fibromyalgia symptoms at least in the short run.

Antioxidants in vegan diet and rheumatic disorders.

Plants are rich natural sources of antioxidants in addition to other nutrients. Interventions and cross sectional studies on subjects consuming uncooked vegan diet called living food (LF) have been carried out. We have clarified the efficacy of LF in rheumatoid diseases as an example of a health problem where inflammation is one of the main concerns. LF is an uncooked vegan diet and consists of berries, fruits, vegetables and roots, nuts, germinated seeds and sprouts, i.e. rich sources of carotenoids, vitamins C and E. The subjects eating LF showed highly increased levels of beta and alfa carotenes, lycopen and lutein in their sera. Also the increases of vitamin C and vitamin E (adjusted to cholesterol) were statistically significant. As the berry intake was 3-fold compared to controls the intake of polyphenolic compounds like quercetin, myricetin and kaempherol was much higher than in the omnivorous controls. The LF diet is rich in fibre, substrate of lignan production, and the urinary excretion of polyphenols like enterodiol and enterolactone as well as secoisolaricirecinol were much increased in subjects eating LF. The shift of fibromyalgic subjects to LF resulted in a decrease of their joint stiffness and pain as well as an improvement of their self-experienced health. The rheumatoid arthritis patients eating the LF diet also reported similar positive responses and the objective measures supported this finding. The improvement of rheumatoid arthritis was significantly correlated with the day-to-day fluctuation of subjective symptoms. In conclusion the rheumatoid patients subjectively benefited from the vegan diet rich in antioxidants, lactobacilli and fibre, and this was also seen in objective measures.

Vegan diet in physiological health promotion.

We have performed a number of studies including dietary interventions and cross-sectional studies on subjects consuming uncooked vegan food called living food (LF) and clarified the changes in several parameters related to health risk factors. LF consists of germinated seeds, cereals, sprouts, vegetables, fruits, berries and nuts. Some items are fermented and contain a lot of lactobacilli. The diet is rich in fiber. It has very little sodium, and it contains no cholesterol. Food items like berries and wheat grass juice are rich in antioxidants such as carotenoids and flavonoids. The subjects eating living food show increased levels of carotenoids and vitamins C and E and lowered cholesterol concentration in their sera. Urinary excretion of sodium is only a fraction of the omnivorous controls. Also urinary output of phenol and p-cresol is lowered as are several fecal enzyme levels which are considered harmful. The rheumatoid arthritis patients eating the LF diet reported amelioration of their pain, swelling of joints and morning stiffness which all got worse after finishing LF diet. The composite indices of objective measures showed also improvement of the rheumatoid arthritis patients during the intervention. The fibromyalgic subjects eating LF lost weight compared to their omnivorous controls. The results on their joint stiffness and pain (visual analogue scale), on their quality of sleep, on health assessment questionnaire and on general health questionnaire all improved. It appears that the adoption of vegan diet exemplified by the living food leads to a lessening of several health risk factors to cardiovascular diseases and cancer. Rheumatoid patients subjectively benefited from the vegan diet which was also seen in serum parameters and fecal analyses.

Androgen receptor gene mutations in hormone-refractory prostate cancer.

Prostate cancer is considered to be one of the most hormone-dependent human malignancies. As a key mediator of hormonal response, the androgen receptor (AR) is believed to have an important role in the progression of prostate cancer. Mutations in the coding region of the AR gene have been found in both untreated and hormone-refractory prostate cancer, but the frequency of such mutations at different stages of the disease is poorly documented and even contradictory results have been published. In the present study, the frequency of AR gene mutations was determined in 30 locally recurrent and two metastatic hormone-refractory prostate tumours using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), non-radioactive single strand conformation polymorphism (SSCP), and sequencing. The length of the polymorphic CAG repeat, which is inversely correlated with the ability of the AR to activate transcription, was also analysed as well as the GGC repeat. Twelve samples were known to contain an AR gene amplification. Altogether, one point mutation (Gly(674)-->Ala) and one microsatellite mutation (CAG(20)-->CAG(18)) were found, both in cancers containing the AR gene amplification. The mean lengths of the polymorphic CAG and GGC repeats were similar to those observed in the normal population. These results favour the view that mutations in the AR gene are rare in hormone-refractory prostate cancer and do not play an important role, at least, in local relapse. Instead, the amplification and consequent overexpression of the wild-type AR gene seem to be the most common alteration involving the AR in hormone-refractory prostate cancer.

Colocalization of dopamine and serotonin in the rat pituitary gland and in the nuclei innervating it.

The nerve terminals in the intermediate and posterior lobes of the rat pituitary gland are reported to show colocalization of serotonin and tyrosine hydroxylase. This study examined the extent of this colocalization in the pituitary gland and in the nuclei considered to project to the pituitary. In the intermediate lobe, two types of nerve fibers were encountered, one containing serotonin (5-HT-IR) and tyrosine hydroxylase (TH-IR) immunoreactivities and the other showing 5-HT-IR only. Instead, there was no colocalization in the posterior lobe. In the hypothalamus, colchicine treatment with L-tryptophan and pargyline injections resulted in 5-HT-IR in some neurons in the dorsomedial, periventricular and arcuate nuclei, some of which in the arcuate and periventricular nuclei were also TH-IR. In the raphe nuclei no colocalization of 5-HT-IR and TH-IR was observed. Catecholamine neurotoxin, 6-hydroxydopamine, abolished the 5-HT-IR and dramatically reduced the TH-IR in the intermediate lobe nerve fibers. Both effects were prevented by cocaine, a monoamine uptake inhibitor, but not by fluoxetine, a specific serotonin uptake inhibitor. Serotonin neurotoxin p-chloroamphetamine (PCA) had no effect on intermediate lobe fibers, although it caused complete disappearance of 5-HT-IR from the posterior lobe nerve fibers. This effect was prevented by fluoxetine. Our results indicate, that colocalization of serotonin and TH observed in the intermediate lobe occurs both in the nerve terminals within the lobe and in some nuclei that innervate it. Furthermore, drug treatments suggest that serotonin in the intermediate lobe is localized in catecholaminergic fibers, which do not posses a specific serotonin uptake mechanism.