An analysis of 21 studies has shown that exposure to pesticides is associated with increased risk of developing diabetes by 61 percent, with different types of pesticides showing varying levels of risk.

How diabetes develops is considered to be interplay between genetic and environmental factors. Emerging evidence suggests that environmental contaminants, including pesticides may play an important role in the pathogenesis of diabetes.

In this study by Giorgos Ntritsos, University of Ioannina, Greece, and Ioanna Tzoulaki and Evangelos Evangelou, Imperial College London, UK, and colleagues, the researchers performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies that assessed the association between exposure to pesticides and diabetes.

The association between exposure to any pesticide and all types of diabetes was examined. Separate analyses for studies that looked only at type 2 diabetes (T2D) participants were performed.

The authors concluded that this systematic review supports the hypothesis that exposure to various types of pesticides increases the risk of diabetes. Subgroup analyses did not reveal any differences in the risk estimates based on the type of studies or the measurement of the exposure.

They noted that analysing each pesticide separately suggests that some pesticides are more likely to contribute to the development of diabetes than others.

The study is presented at the meeting the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD).

Researchers have recently connected the molecular dots between Periodontitis and heart disease.

Periodontitis is a risk factor for heart disease. Now, the team has shown that a periodontal pathogen causes changes in gene expression that boost inflammation and atherosclerosis in aortic smooth muscle cells.

The circumstantial evidence that led to this study was ample. The periodontal pathogen, Porphyromonas gingivalis, has also been found in coronary artery plaques of heart attack patients. And in two species of animal models, P. gingivalis has been shown to cause and accelerate formation of coronary and aortic atherosclerosis.

The investigators, led by Torbjorn Bengtsson of the Department of Clinical Medicine, School of Health Sciences, orebro University, orebro, Sweden, showed how this happens.

They began by culturing human aortic smooth muscle cells, and infecting them with P. gingivalis. They found that gingipains, virulence factors produced by P. gingivalis, boost expression of the pro-inflammatory angiopoietin 2, while dampening expression of the anti-inflammatory angiopoietin 1 in the smooth muscle cells, with the net effect of increasing inflammation. Inflammation is strongly implicated in atherosclerosis.

Although unstimulated [aortic smooth muscle cells] produce angiopoietin 2 at a low level, stimulation with wild-type P. gingivalis dramatically increases the gene expression of angiopoietin 2 in [aortic smooth muscle cells], the investigators wrote.

First author Boxi Zhang said that the research clarifies the mechanism behind the association of periodontitis and cardiovascular disease, adding that their aim is to find biomarkers that can help us diagnose and treat both diseases.

The research is published ahead of print in Infection and Immunity.

While discovering a protein that causes muscle weakness and loss during ageing, scientists from University of Iowa have also stumbled upon two natural compounds, one found in apples and one in green tomatoes, which reduce the protein's activity in aged muscle.

The protein called ATF4 alters gene expression in skeletal muscle, causing reduction of muscle protein synthesis, strength and mass.

The team identified ursolic acid, which is found in apple peel, and tomatidine, which comes from green tomatoes, as small molecules that can prevent acute muscle wasting caused by starvation and inactivity.

Those studies set the stage for testing whether ursolic acid and tomatidine might be effective in blocking the largest cause of muscle weakness and atrophy: aging."Ursolic acid and tomatidine appear to have a lot of potential as tools for dealing with muscle weakness and atrophy during ageing," said Christopher Adams, professor of internal medicine and senior study author.

We might be able to use ursolic acid and tomatidine as tools to find a root cause of muscle weakness and atrophy during ageing, he added.

The findings could lead to new therapies for age-related muscle weakness and atrophy.

In the latest study, Adams' team found that ursolic acid and tomatidine dramatically reduce age-related muscle weakness and atrophy in mice.

The scientists found that both compounds increased muscle mass by 10 percent, and more importantly, increased muscle quality or strength by 30 percent.

"By reducing the protein's activity, ursolic acid and tomatidine allow skeletal muscle to recover from effects of ageing," Adams pointed out in a paper published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

In a new study, researchers have shown that endurance exercise may help prevent cognitive decline, keeping your brain working fully as you age.

University of Texas researchers attempted to determine the correlation between a person's cardio fitness and cognitive function in middle-aged adults, and tested the participants by engaging them in moderate or strenuous aerobic exercise for at least four days or seven hours a week, while the sedentary subjects exercised less than one hour a week.

The result? People who exercised also displayed better vascular function, or blood flow in the brain, than the sedentary individuals.

Dr. Martha Pyron, a co-author of the study, said that the findings suggest that middle-age runners not only have better cardiovascular function and health, but also enhanced cognitive performance particularly in the domains linked with age related cognitive decline and impairment.

The study concluded, "Habitual aerobic exercise ameliorates vascular health, an effect which may further translate into improved cognitive performance."

The study is published in the journal Medicine, and Science in Sports and Exercise.

People suffering from psoriasis that causes itchy, dry and red skin may soon benefit from a drug that offers greater efficacy than the current standard of care for the chronic skin condition, shows phase II human trial.

Nine-month treatment with the new drug was found to clear skin in more than 80 percent of psoriasis-affected patients.

Besides causing itchy red skin, psoriasis that affects nearly three percent of the world's population also increases a patient's risk for depression, heart disease and diabetes, among other conditions.

"The possibility of getting almost all patients nearly clear and able to live their lives without the burden of this disease impacting them every day is getting close to reality," said first author Kenneth Gordon, professor of dermatology at Northwestern University in the US.

"For patients, the concept that psoriasis is 'just something you live with' is no longer appropriate," he said.

In the study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, examiners compared the new drug guselkumab to adalimumab, the most common medication currently used to treat psoriasis.

In the trial, 293 adult patients with moderate-to-severe psoriasis (defined as covering ten percent or more of the body) were randomly assigned to receive varying doses of one of the two drugs or a placebo over 52 weeks.

At weeks 16 and 40, efficacy of the drugs was measured on a scale of zero to five.

A significantly higher proportion of patients in the guselkumab group had a score of zero (cleared psoriasis) or one (minimal psoriasis) in both the short and long term periods compared to the adalimumab and placebo groups.

At week 40, for example, 81 percent of patients taking a 200-mg dose of guselkumab had a score of zero or one, compared to 49 percent of patients taking adalimumab.

The drug works by blocking a protein specifically implicated in psoriasis, called interluekin 23; older drugs affect the immune process more generally, the study said.

An ongoing phase III trial is continuing to test the safety and efficacy of guselkumab as a psoriasis treatment.