A new study has revealed that whole plant therapy shows promise to beat malaria parasites' drug resistance.

University of Massachusetts Amherst microbiologist Stephen Rich and his research team said that the new treatment is based on a use of the whole plant (WP) Artemesia annua, from which the current pharmaceutical drug artemisinin (AN) is extracted.

The researchers found that the whole plant treatment withstands the evolution of resistance and remains effective for up to three times longer than the pure drug and also found the whole plant therapy effective in killing rodent parasites that have previously evolved resistance to pure AN.

Rich said that this is especially important given the recent reports of resistance to artemisinin in malaria -endemic regions of the world and drug longevity is crucial since new drugs are costly to develop, not only in dollars but in the cost of lives lost.

The authors point out that consuming the whole plant may be more effective than the single purified drug because the whole plant "may constitute a naturally occurring combination therapy that augments artemisinin delivery and synergizes the drug's activity."

The study was published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A new study has found that spices and herbs don't just add flavor to your food, but may also help boost your heart's health.

According to Penn State nutritionists, the ingredients, which are rich in antioxidants, help improve triglyceride concentrations and other blood lipids. Triglyceride levels rise after eating a high-fat meal, which can lead to an increased risk of heart disease. If a high-antioxidant spice blend is incorporated into the meal, triglyceride levels may be reduced by as much as 30 percent when compared to eating an identical meal without the spice blend.

Professor Sheila G. West, and Ann C. Skulas-Ray, looked at three categories of studies: spice blends, cinnamon and garlic. They reviewed several cinnamon studies that looked at the effect of the spice on both diabetics and non-diabetics. Cinnamon was shown to help diabetics by significantly reducing cholesterol and other blood lipids in the study participants. However, cinnamon did not appear to have any effect on non-diabetics.

The garlic studies reviewed were inconclusive, possibly because the trials had a wide range of garlic doses, from nine milligrams of garlic oil to 10 grams of raw garlic. The reviewers noted that across the studies there was an 8 percent decrease in total cholesterol with garlic consumption, which was associated with a 38 percent decrease in risk of heart problems in 50-year-old adults.

In the study conducted, meals were prepared on two separate days for six men between the ages of 30 and 65 who were overweight, but otherwise healthy. The meals were identical, consisting of chicken, bread and a dessert biscuit, except that the researchers added two tablespoons of a high-antioxidant culinary spice blend, which included garlic powder, rosemary, oregano, cinnamon, cloves, paprika, turmeric, ginger and black pepper, to the test meal.

The researchers followed the participants for three hours after each meal, drawing blood every 30 minutes. Antioxidant activity in the blood increased by 13 percent after the men ate the test meal when compared to the control meal, which may help prevent cardiovascular disease and other chronic diseases.

The study is published in the journal Nutrition Today.

A new study has recently revealed that women with atypical hyperplasia are at higher risk of developing breast cancer in future than previously thought.

Mayo Clinic study found that hundreds of women with these benign lesions indicate that their absolute risk of developing breast cancer grows by over 1 percent a year. The study found that after five years, 7 percent of these women had developed the disease; after 10 years, that number had increased to 13 percent; and after 25 years, 30 percent had breast cancer.

The finding places the more than 100,000 women diagnosed each year with atypical hyperplasia, also known as atypia, into a high-risk category, where they are more likely to benefit from intense screening and use of medications to reduce risk.

Previous research has shown that women with atypia have a fourfold to fivefold increased "relative risk," meaning that they are four to five times more likely to develop breast cancer than women who don't have these lesions. But few studies have had the patient numbers and follow-up time to report the patients' "absolute risk," the chance that she will develop breast cancer over a certain period of time.

Importantly, the Mayo findings were validated by researchers at Vanderbilt University using biopsies from a separate cohort of women with atypia. Both data sets revealed that at 25 years following biopsy, 25 to 30 percent of these women had developed breast cancer.

The researchers were able to give an even more accurate estimate of risk by incorporating information from a patient's pathology specimen. They found that as the extent of atypia in a biopsy increased, as measured by the number of separate atypia lesions or foci, so did the woman's risk of developing breast cancer. For example, at 25 years post-biopsy, 47 percent women with three or more foci of atypia in the biopsy had developed breast cancer, compared to only 24 percent of women with one focus.

Based on these results, the research team recommends that women with atypical hyperplasia be recognized as having significantly increased lifetime risk of breast cancer and thus be candidates for screening MRI. Moreover, anti-estrogen medications like tamoxifen have already been tested in clinical trials in women with atypia and shown to lower their risk of breast cancer by 50 percent or more.

Yet, Dr. Degnim said many women with atypia are not taking the medications, in part because they and their physicians have not had solid estimates of their breast cancer risk to guide them.

The study is published in the Journal of Medicine.