To investigate the association between organic food consumption and cancer risk in a large prospective study
This was a prospective cohort study of 68,946 French adults who reported their frequency of organic food consumption. Volunteers were asked to provide information on their consumption frequency of 16 organic products (fruits; vegetables; soy-based products; dairy products; meat and fish; eggs; grains and legumes; bread and cereals; flour; vegetable oils and condiments; ready-to-eat meals; coffee, tea, and herbal tea; wine; biscuits, chocolate, sugar, and marmalade; other foods; and dietary supplements). Dietary intake was assessed using three 24-hour records randomly allocated over a 2-week period, including 2 weekdays and 1 weekend day. Participants were followed for a mean of 4.5 years.
The data were adjusted for confounding factors such as sociodemographics, lifestyle, and dietary patterns. Baseline age, sex, occupation, educational level, marital status, monthly income per household, number of children, and smoking status were collected.
Participants self-declared health events through a yearly health status questionnaire or an interface on the study website. Medical records were obtained for more than 90% of self-reported cancer cases. The French national health insurance system database and the French mortality epidemiology database were used to collect and verify reported health records and mortality data.
There were 68,946 participants, 78% of whom were female. Mean age at beginning of the study was 44.2 years.
The authors assessed both the frequency of organic food consumption and the quality of the food consumed; quality of the diet was based on nutrient density.
An organic food score was computed based on the participant reports, ranging from 0 to 32 points. Consumption frequencies were reported with the following options: (1) most of the time; (2) occasionally; (3) never “too expensive”; (4) never “product not available”; (5) never “I’m not interested in organic products”; (6) never “I avoid such products”; (7) never “for no specific reason”; and (8) I don’t know.
Nutrient intake was derived from the self-reported diet diaries and was calculated using the NutriNet-Santé food composition table. To assess dietary quality, these intake values were compared to the official French nutritional guidelines.
The primary outcome measure was the number of incident cancer cases in the follow-up period.
A total of 1,340 first incident cancer cases were identified during follow-up; the most prevalent were breast cancer (459; 34.3%), prostate cancer (180; 13.4%), skin cancer (135; 10.1%), colorectal cancer (99; 7.4%), non-Hodgkin lymphoma (47; 3.5%), and other lymphomas (15; 1.1%). High organic food scores were inversely associated with the overall risk of cancer (hazard ratio for the fourth quartile compared to the first quartile, 0.75; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.63-0.88; P for trend=0.001; absolute risk reduction, 0.6%; hazard ratio for a 5-point increase, 0.92; 95% CI: 0.88-0.96).
Higher organic food scores were linearly and inversely associated with the overall risk of cancer. Significant risk reduction was seen for non-Hodgkin lymphoma (hazard ratio for a 5-point increase, 0.75; CI: 0.6-0.93; P=0.009) and for other lymphomas (hazard ratio for a 5-point increase, 0.75; CI: 0.6-0.93; P=0.03). There were trends of risk reduction for post-menopausal breast cancer (hazard ratio for a 5-point increase, 0.91; CI: 0.83-1.01; P=0.07), and skin cancer (hazard ratio for a 5-point increase, 0.89: CI: 0.78-1.01; P=0.06).
Accounting for other additional dietary factors did not modify the factors.
Higher organic food scores were positively associated with female sex, monthly income, education level, physical activity, and former smoking status. Higher organic food scores were also associated with a healthier diet rich in fiber, vegetable proteins, and micronutrients (ie, a higher intake of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and legumes), and with a lower intake of processed meat, other meat, poultry, and milk.
University of Exeter, February 6, 2019
Taking time to think kind thoughts about yourself and loved ones has psychological and physical benefits, new research suggests.
A study by the Universities of Exeter and Oxford has found that taking part in self-compassion exercises calms the heart rate, switching off the body's threat response. Previous studies have shown that this threat response damages the immune system. Researchers believe the ability to switch off this response may lower the risk of disease.
In the study, published in the journal Clinical Psychological Science, 135 healthy University of Exeter students were divided into five groups, and members of each group heard a different set of audio instructions. The team took physical measurements of heart rate and sweat response, and asked participants to report how they were feeling. Questions included how safe they felt, how likely they were to be kind to themselves and how connected they felt to others.
The two groups whose instructions encouraged them to be kind to themselves not only reported feeling more self-compassion and connection with others, but also showed a bodily response consistent with feelings of relaxation and safety. Their heart rates dropped and the variation in length of time between heartbeats - a healthy sign of a heart that can respond flexibly to situations. They also showed lower sweat response.
Meanwhile, instructions that induced a critical inner voice led to an increased heart rate and a higher sweat response - consistent with feelings of threat and distress.
First author Dr Hans Kirschner, who conducted the research at Exeter, said: "These findings suggest that being kind to oneself switches off the threat response and puts the body in a state of safety and relaxation that is important for regeneration and healing."
Lead researcher Dr Anke Karl, of the University of Exeter, said: "Previous research has found that self-compassion was related to higher levels of wellbeing and better mental health, but we didn't know why.
"Our study is helping us understand the mechanism of how being kind to yourself when things go wrong could be beneficial in psychological treatments. By switching off our threat response, we boost our immune systems and give ourselves the best chance of healing. We hope future research can use our method to investigate this in people with mental health problems such as recurrent depression."
The recordings that encouraged self-compassion were a "compassionate body scan" in which people were guided to attend to bodily sensations with an attitude of interest and calmness; and a "self-focused loving kindness exercise" in which they directed kindness and soothing thoughts to a loved one and themselves.
The three other groups listened to recordings designed to induce a critical inner voice, put them into a "positive but competitive and self-enhancing mode", or an emotionally neutral shopping scenario.
All the audio recordings were 11 minutes long.
While people in both the self-compassion and positive but competitive groups reported greater self-compassion and decreased self-criticism, only the self-compassion groups showed the positive bodily response.
The signs of this were reduced sweat response and heart rate slowed by two to three beats per minute on average, compared to the groups listening to critical voice recordings. The self-kindness groups also showed increased hear rate variability - a sign of a healthy heart that is able to adapt to a range of situations.
Co-author Willem Kuyken, Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Oxford, said: "These findings help us to further understand some of our clinical trials research findings, where we show that individuals with recurrent depression benefit particularly from mindfulness-based cognitive therapy when they learn to become more self-compassionate.
"My sense is that for people prone to depression, meeting their negative thoughts and feelings with compassion is a radically different way - that these thoughts are not facts.
"It introduces a different way of being and knowing that is quite transformative for many people."
The researchers now plan to extend their research by studying the physiological responses in individuals with recurrent depression.
The researchers stress that the study was conducted in healthy people, so their findings do not mean that people with depression would experience the same improvements from one-off exercises. They did not investigate another important feature of self-compassion, the ability to directly repair mood or distress. Further research is necessary to address these two open points.
Vitamin D helps treat lethal drug-resistant TB
Queen Mary University at London, February 6, 2019
Vitamin D has been found to speed up the clearance of tuberculosis (TB) bacteria from the lungs of people with multi-drug resistant TB, according to a study of 1,850 patients receiving antibiotic treatment, led by Queen Mary University of London.
Lead researcher Professor Adrian Martineau from Queen Mary University of London said: "Multi-drug resistant TB is on the rise globally. It's notoriously difficult to treat, and it carries a much worse prognosis than standard TB.
"Our study raises the possibility that vitamin D - which is very safe and inexpensive - could benefit this hard-to-treat group of patients by taking a novel approach to their treatment. By adding vitamin D to antibiotic treatment, we can boost the immune system to help the body to clear TB bugs, rather than relying on antibiotics on their own to kill the bacteria directly.
"This is a novel approach, as it contrasts with the conventional tactic of developing new antibiotics in an attempt to 'keep up' with the emergence of drug-resistant bacteria - an arms race that is proving hard for us to win."
The World Health Organisation estimates that 10.0 million people developed active tuberculosis in 2017, and that 1.6 million people died of this disease. Multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB is caused by bacteria that are resistant to treatment with at least two of the most powerful first-line anti-TB drugs, causing around 500,000 cases and 150,000 deaths per year worldwide. Existing antibiotic treatments for MDR TB are lengthy, costly and often toxic due to their serious side effects.
Vitamin D has shown potential in boosting the immune system, but randomised controlled trials of vitamin D in TB treatment have yielded conflicting results.
In the new study, published in European Respiratory Journal, the research team pooled data from 1,850 TB patients who took part in clinical trials of vitamin D in eight countries (the UK, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Mongolia, Republic of Georgia and Guinea Bissau). They then ran an analysis to see whether there were particular groups of patients who responded better to vitamin D than others.
When added to antibiotic treatment, vitamin D was found to accelerate TB clearance specifically in patients with MDR TB, even though no acceleration of TB clearance was seen when looking at the entire study population as a whole.
The vitamin D supplementation was also found to be safe at the doses administered, with no links to serious adverse events.
The researchers say these results illustrate the potential for so-called 'host-directed therapies' - treatments that boost the immune system - to improve outcomes in patients with drug-resistant bacterial infections.
The researchers caution that the analysis is not sufficient on its own to justify a clinical recommendation of the use of vitamin D in the treatment of MDR TB, as it is based on a relatively small number of participants. However, they say these results now provide a rationale to carry out new clinical trials to see if vitamin D really can benefit patients who are taking standard antibiotics for MDR TB.
The findings add to a growing list of health benefits for the 'sunshine vitamin'. While vitamin D is best known for its effects on bone health, previous studies by Queen Mary researchers have revealed its role in protecting against colds, flu, asthma attacks, and last month, that it can protect COPD patients from deadly lung attacks.