Longevity effect of chromium picolinate--'rejuvenation' of hypothalamic function?

The underexplored links between cancer and the internal body climate: Implications for cancer prevention and treatment

In order to effectively manage and cure cancer we should move beyond the general view of cancer as a random process of genetic alterations leading to uncontrolled cell proliferation or simply a predictable evolutionary process involving selection for traits that increase cell fitness. In our view, cancer is a systemic disease that involves multiple interactions not only among cells within tumors or between tumors and surrounding tissues but also with the entire organism and its internal "milieu". We define the internal body climate as an emergent property resulting from spatial and temporal interactions among internal components themselves and with the external environment. The body climate itself can either prevent, promote or support cancer initiation and progression (top-down effect; i.e., body climate-induced effects on cancer), as well as be perturbed by cancer (bottom-up effect; i.e., cancer-induced body climate changes) to further favor cancer progression and spread. This positive feedback loop can move the system towards a "cancerized" organism and ultimately results in its demise. In our view, cancer not only affects the entire system; it is a reflection of an imbalance of the entire system. This model provides an integrated framework to study all aspects of cancer as a systemic disease, and also highlights unexplored links that can be altered to both prevent body climate changes that favor cancer initiation, progression and dissemination as well as manipulate or restore the body internal climate to hinder the success of cancer inception, progression and metastasis or improve therapy outcomes. To do so, we need to (i) identify cancer-relevant factors that affect specific climate components, (ii) develop 'body climate biomarkers', (iii) define 'body climate scores', and (iv) develop strategies to prevent climate changes, stop or slow the changes, or even revert the changes (climate restoration).

Joint replenishment of zinc and folic acid enhances the anti-depressive effect of paroxetine via increasing serum calcium and copper and decreasing serum arsenic

Insufficient zinc and folic acid levels are associated with depression and poor response to antidepressants. This study aimed to investigate the influences of combined zinc and folic acid replenishment on the anti-depressive effect of paroxetine. Male rats were randomly divided into five groups: control (C), model (M), paroxetine (MP), zinc + folic acid (MZnF), and zinc + folic acid + paroxetine (MZnFP) groups. Rats were exposed to mild unpredictable stress for 3 weeks as a depression model. The combinations of drug and supplements were applied via daily gavage for 4 weeks. The open field test was conducted to observe behavioral changes. A chemiluminescence method was used to detect folacin, and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry was used to detect serum elements. Supplementation of zinc and folic acid significantly improved behavior responses to paroxetine, including movement speed, total distance, and central zone frequency. In addition, higher calcium and copper levels and a lower arsenic level were found in the serum of the MZnFP group. Thus, supplementation of zinc and folacin can enhance the anti-depressive effect of paroxetine, and the mechanism is potentially related to the improved levels of calcium and copper and a reduced level of arsenic.

Analysis of Density Changes of Selected Brain Receptors After a 14-Day Supply of Chromium(III) and Evaluation of Chromium(III) Affinity to Selected Receptors and Transporters

Chromium(III) is one of the most controversial biometals. Although, it is no longer on the list of minerals necessary for the proper functioning of the human body, and its pharmacological effect is still under discussion. One of the purposes of Cr(III) administration is to use it in patients with mood disorders and it is strictly related to its pharmacological, not dietary effect. This is because its high doses are necessary to obtain the results and additionally, no deficiencies in human population have been noted. In this study, the affinity of chromium(III) to selected receptors and transporters in the rat brain was evaluated, and the effect of the 14-day administration of this metal was assessed on the density of selected receptors. All analyses were performed in vitro using radioligand binding assays, and the results indicated lack of affinity to β₁ and α₁ receptors and serotonin transporter (SERT), furthermore very weak affinity to the 5-HT_1A receptor (30% inhibition at 10^-4 and 10^-5 M). Analysis of the α₁ and β₁ adrenergic receptor density indicated lack of any adaptive effects after 14 days of Cr(III) administration through intraperitoneal injections (doses 6 and 12 mg/kg). The antidepressant activity of chromium(III) indicated in clinical trials concerned patients with atypical, seasonal, or dystonic symptoms. This effect, as it seems based on the presented results, does not depend on direct affinity to serotonin receptors and transporter nor is the result of adaptive changes in the adrenoreceptor system.

The key role of growth hormone-insulin-IGF-1 signaling in aging and cancer

Studies in mammals have led to the suggestion that hyperglycemia and hyperinsulinemia are important factors in aging. GH/Insulin/insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) signaling molecules that have been linked to longevity include daf-2 and InR and their homologues in mammals, and inactivation of the corresponding genes increases lifespan in nematodes, fruit flies and mice. The life-prolonging effects of caloric restriction are likely related to decreasing IGF-1 levels. Evidence has emerged that antidiabetic drugs are promising candidates for both lifespan extension and prevention of cancer. Thus, antidiabetic drugs postpone spontaneous carcinogenesis in mice and rats, as well as chemical and radiation carcinogenesis in mice, rats and hamsters. Furthermore, metformin seems to decrease the risk for cancer in diabetic patients.

Nutrient-based therapies for bipolar disorder: a systematic review

BACKGROUND

Pharmacotherapy is the first line of treatment for bipolar disorder, but many patients continue to experience persistent subthreshold symptoms. Alternative adjunct treatments, including nutritional therapies, may have the potential to alleviate residual symptoms and improve the outcomes of standard pharmacotherapy. The aim of this paper is to critically review the current clinical evidence and mechanisms of action of nutrient-based therapies alone or in combination with commonly used pharmacotherapies for mania and bipolar depression.

METHODS

We conducted a Medline search for clinical trials conducted with humans, published in English from 1960 to 2012 using nutritional supplements such as n-3, chromium, inositol, choline, magnesium, folate and tryptophan alone or in combination with pharmacotherapies for the treatment of bipolar disorder.

RESULTS

Preliminary data yields conflicting but mainly positive evidence for the use of n-3 fatty acids and chromium in the treatment of bipolar depression. Limited evidence found that inositol may be helpful for bipolar depression, but larger sample sizes are needed. Preliminary randomized, controlled trials suggest that choline, magnesium, folate and tryptophan may be beneficial for reducing symptoms of mania.

CONCLUSIONS

Given the potential public health impact of identifying adjunct treatments that improve psychiatric as well as physical health outcomes, nutritional treatments appear promising for the management of bipolar disorder but require further study.

Metformin for aging and cancer prevention

Studies in mammals have led to the suggestion that hyperglycemia and hyperinsulinemia are important factors in aging. Insulin/insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) signaling molecules that have been linked to longevity include daf-2 and InR and their homologues in mammals, and inactivation of the corresponding genes increases life span in nematodes, fruit flies and mice. It is possible that the life-prolonging effect of caloric restriction is due to decreasing IGF-1 levels. Evidence has emerged that antidiabetic drugs are promising candidates for both life span extension and prevention of cancer. Thus, antidiabetic drugs postpone spontaneous carcinogenesis in mice and rats, as well as chemical and radiation carcinogenesis in mice, rats and hamsters. Furthermore metformin seems to decrease cancer risk in diabetic patients.

Effects of Phentermine and Phenformin on Biomarkers of Aging in Rats

BACKGROUND

Caloric restriction (CR) is the only treatment known to substantially prolong both average and maximal life span in experimental animals. Interventions that mimic certain effects of CR could be potential anti-aging treatments in humans. Drugs which reduce appetite (anorexiants) represent one class of candidate treatments. Agents that reduce the glucose utilization by the organism could also represent another class of candidate CR mimetics.

OBJECTIVE

In our study, we addressed the following questions: (1) Does treatment with an anorexiant reduce caloric intake and body weight of experimental animals comparable to that caused by CR? (2) Does treatment with an antidiabetic agent influence caloric intake and body weight? (3) Does treatment with any of these drugs affect metabolic parameters of an organism in the way similar to that observed with CR?

METHODS

One hundred and twenty 6-month-old female Wistar-derived LIO rats were randomly subdivided into four groups and exposed to: (1) ad libitum feeding with placebo (controls); (2) the antidiabetic drug phenformin (2 mg/kg); (3) the anorectic drug phentermine (1 mg/kg), and (4) the same amount of food as the group with the least food intake during the previous week (pair-fed controls). Food and water intake, body weight, and rectal temperature were measured weekly during 16 weeks. At the end of the 16th week of the experiment, serum levels of glucose, total beta-lipoprotein and pre-beta-lipoprotein fractions, cholesterol, triglycerides, insulin, total triiodothyronine, and free thyroxine were estimated. The contents of diene conjugates and Schiff's bases, total antioxidant activity, the activities of Cu/Zn superoxide dismutase, glutathione S-transferase, and glutathione peroxidase, and the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) were studied in brain and liver homogenates and in the serum.

RESULTS

The controls exposed to pair feeding had a significantly reduced food consumption (about 20%) as compared with the ad libitum fed controls and thus exhibited a moderate CR. Treatment with phentermine reduced the caloric intake by about 12% as compared with the ad libitum fed controls. Body weight and water intake in this group were only slightly decreased (by about 2 and 5%, respectively) as compared with the controls. The mean rectal temperature in the phentermine group (38 degrees C) was significantly higher than in the ad libitum fed (37.8 degrees C) and pair-fed (37.6 degrees C) controls. Treatment with phentermine also resulted in significantly reduced ROS levels in all tissues studied, while the highest ROS production was found in ad libitum (blood serum) and pair-fed (brain) controls. Treatment with phenformin did not significantly influence food and water consumption, body weight, and temperature when compared with the ad libitum fed controls. Rats treated with this antidiabetic drug showed intermediate values of ROS generation. Differences among the groups in total antioxidant activity were not obvious.

CONCLUSIONS

Treatment with phentermine reduces caloric intake slightly less than is commonly observed in CR studies. CR due to forcibly reduced feeding and CR due to substance-suppressed appetite appear to act through different metabolic mechanisms and thus may affect aging and longevity in different ways.

Aging is a deprivation syndrome driven by a germ-soma conflict

Evolution through natural selection can be described as driven by a perpetual conflict of individuals competing for limited resources. Recently, I postulated that the shortage of resources godfathered the evolutionary achievements of the differentiation-apoptosis programming [Rev. Neurosci. 12 (2001) 217]. Unicellular deprivation-induced differentiation into germ cell-like spores can be regarded as the archaic reproduction events which were fueled by the remains of the fratricided cells of the apoptotic fruiting body. Evidence has been accumulated suggesting that conserved through the ages as the evolutionary legacy of the germ-soma conflict, the somatic loss of immortality during the ontogenetic segregation of primordial germ cells recapitulates the archaic fate of the fruiting body. In this heritage, somatic death is a germ cell-triggered event and has been established as evolutionary-fixed default state following asymmetric reproduction in a world of finite resources. Aging, on the other hand, is the stress resistance-dependent phenotype of the somatic resilience that counteracts the germ cell-inflicted death pathway. Thus, aging is a survival response and, in contrast to current beliefs, is antagonistically linked to death that is not imposed by group selection but enforced upon the soma by the selfish genes of the "enemy within". Environmental conditions shape the trade-off solutions as compromise between the conflicting germ-soma interests. Mechanistically, the neuroendocrine system, particularly those components that control energy balance, reproduction and stress responses, orchestrate these events. The reproductive phase is a self-limited process that moulds onset and progress of senescence with germ cell-dependent factors, e.g. gonadal hormones. These degenerate the regulatory pacemakers of the pineal-hypothalamic-pituitary network and its peripheral, e.g. thymic, gonadal and adrenal targets thereby eroding the trophic milieu. The ensuing cellular metabolic stress engenders adaptive adjustments of the glucose-fatty acid cycle, responses that are adequate and thus fitness-boosting under fuel shortage (e.g. during caloric restriction) but become detrimental under fuel abundance. In a Janus-faced capacity, the cellular stress response apparatus expresses both tolerogenic and mutagenic features of the social and asocial deprivation responses [Rev. Neurosci. 12 (2001) 217]. Mediated by the derangement of the energy-Ca(2+)-redox homeostatic triangle, a mosaic of dedifferentiation/apoptosis and mutagenic responses actuates the gradual exhaustion of functional reserves and eventually results in a multitude of aging-related diseases. This scenario reconciles programmed and stochastic features of aging and resolves the major inconsistencies of current theories by linking ultimate and proximate causes of aging. Reproduction, differentiation, apoptosis, stress response and metabolism are merged into a coherent regulatory network that stages aging as a naturally selected, germ cell-triggered and reproductive phase-modulated deprivation response.

Life span extension and cancer risk: myths and reality

A significant increase in the number of old people in the populations of developed countries was followed by an increase in morbidity and mortality resulting from main age-related diseases -- cardiovascular, cancer, neurodegenerative, diabetes mellitus, decrease in resistance to infections. Obviously, the development of the means of prevention of the premature aging of humans is crucial for the realization of this program. However, data available on such kind of means are rather scarce, contradictory and are often not reliable from the points of view of the adequacy of the experiments to current scientific requirements as well as the interpretation of the results and safety. Data available on the increase in life span and the adverse effects of the following geroprotectors were critically analyzed: antioxidants, chelate agents and lathyrogens, succinate, adaptogens and herbs, neurotropic drugs, inhibitors of monoamine oxidase, glucocorticoids, dehydroepiandrosterone, sex and growth hormones, melatonin, pineal peptide preparations, protein inhibitors, antidiabetic biguanides, thymic hormones and peptides, immunomodulators, enteroadsorbents, lypofuscin inhibitors, as well as calorie intake restriction and special diets. Most of the available results were insufficient and could not provide convincing evidence for the life span extension and the safety of the suggested geroprotectors. Drugs and means prolonging the life span could be subdivided into three groups: (a) geroprotectors prolonging the life span equally in all the members of the population: these postponed the beginning of the population's aging; (b) geroprotectors decreasing the mortality rate in a long-lived subpopulation, which raised their maximal life span: these slowed down the population's aging rate; (c) geroprotectors increasing the survival rate in a short-lived subpopulation without changes in the maximal life span: in this case, the aging rate increased. There was a high positive correlation between the type of geroprotector-induced aging delay and the pattern of tumour development in the same population of animals. The first type of geroprotectors did not influence the incidence of tumour but increased tumour latency. The second type of geroprotectors was effective both in the inhibition of spontaneous carcinogenesis and the increase in tumour latency. Certain drugs of the third type raised tumour incidence in the exposed populations. According to the multistage model, geroprotectors either inhibit or accelerate the passage of carcinogen-exposed cells form one stage to another. Thus, the efficacy of geroprotectors as preventive means of cancer development will decrease with respect to the age of exposure onset. Recommendations of the available drugs and means of life span increase should be carefully reconsidered under the international scientific control.

Effects of supplemental chromium on production of cytokines by mitogen-stimulated bovine peripheral blood mononuclear cells

This study determined whether supplementing the diets of dairy cows during the peripartum period with organic trivalent Cr influenced the capacity of their peripheral blood mononuclear cells to produce activation cytokines in response to stimulation with mitogens in vitro. Nine cows were fed 0.5 ppm of Cr/d per cow from 6 wk prepartum to 16 wk postpartum; 10 other periparturient cows served as unsupplemented controls. Mononuclear leukocytes, enriched from peripheral blood during wk 0, 2, 4, and 6 of lactation, were cultured with or without the T-lymphocyte mitogen, concanavalin A. Culture supernatants, harvested at 24, 48, or 72 h, were assayed for interleukin-2, interferon-gamma, and tumor necrosis factor-alpha. The cytokines were barely detectable in the supernatants from the unstimulated cultures, but supernatants from mitogen-stimulated cultures contained higher concentrations of each cytokine. For cows fed Cr, concentrations of all three cytokines in the culture supernatants of the mitogen-stimulated mononuclear cells decreased significantly relative to values for unsupplemented cows, particularly around peak lactation for the 24- and 48-h cultures. Theses results extended our previous observations and supported the hypothesis that organic Cr is immunomodulatory in high producing cows.

Anabolic effects of insulin on bone suggest a role for chromium picolinate in preservation of bone density

Activation of osteoclasts by parathyroid hormone (PTH) is mediated by PTH stimulation of osteoblasts, and is dependent on a PTH-induced rise in protein kinase C activity. Physiological levels of insulin reduce the ability of PTH to activate protein kinase C in osteoblasts, suggesting that insulin may be a physiological antagonist of bone resorption. In addition, insulin is known to promote collagen production by osteoblasts. These findings imply that efficient insulin activity may exert an anabolic effect on bone, and rationalize the many clinical studies demonstrating reduced bone density in Type I diabetes. Recently, the insulin-sensitizing nutrient chromium picolinate has been found to reduce urinary excretion of hydroxyproline and calcium in postmenopausal women, presumably indicative of a reduced rate of bone resorption. This nutrient also raised serum levels of dehydroepiandrosterone-sulfate, which may play a physiological role in the preservation of postmenopausal bone density. The impact of chromium picolinate (alone or in conjunction with calcium and other micronutrients) on bone metabolism and bone density, merits further evaluation in controlled studies.