Frequent Consumption of Vegetables and The Decreased Risk of Ovarian Cancer

A case-control study was conducted to assess the relationship of dietary habits to ovarian cancer. A uniform questionnaire was filled out by 44 ovarian cancer cases hospitalized at Sapporo Medical University or 2 other hospitals in Sapporo between August and norember, 1990. Two hundred twenty individually locality-matched controls were selected from telephone books and sent the same questionnaire ; 156 (70.9%) responded. The conditional logistic regression anal-ysis was used to compare the data of 44 ovarian cancer cases and the 156 individ-ually age-matched controls. Univariate analysis revealed that single marital sta-tus was significantly associated with the increased risk of ovarian cancer (odds ratio, or OR=3.45, 95% confidence interval, or 95%CI 1.13-10.84). Frequent intake of midnight meals was also significantly related to the increased risk (trend, OR=1.56, 95%CI 1.01-2.41), and frequent intake of vegetables other than yellow or red was significantly related to the decreased risk (trend, OR= 0.58, 95%CI 0.37-0.91). These odds ratios concerning dietary habits were not substantially altered even after adjustment for potentially distorting variables such as marital status, the number of parities, and family history for uterine, ovarian, or breast cancer with the multivariate analysis. No other dietary habits, including frequent consumption of meat, fish, or milk, were associated with the increase or decrease of the risk of ovarian cancer

Diphenhydramine against cisplatin nephrotoxicity

Cisplatin is widely used as an anti-tumor drug for the treatment of solid tumors. Unfortunately, it causes nephrotoxicity as a critical side effect, limiting its use, given that no preventive drug against cisplatin-induced nephrotoxicity is currently available. This study identified that a previously developed drug, diphenhydramine, may provide a novel treatment for cisplatin-induced nephrotoxicity based on the results of the analysis of medical big data. We evaluated the actual efficacy of diphenhydramine via in vitro and in vivo experiments in a mouse model. Diphenhydramine inhibited cisplatin-induced cell death in renal proximal tubular cells. Mice administered cisplatin developed kidney injury with renal dysfunction (plasma creatinine: 0.43 ± 0.04 mg/dl vs 0.15 ± 0.01 mg/dl, p<0.01) and showed augmented oxidative stress, increased apoptosis, elevated inflammatory cytokines, and mitogen-activated protein kinases activation; however, most of these symptoms were suppressed by treatment with diphenhydramine. Further, the renal concentration of cisplatin was attenuated in diphenhydramine-treated mice (platinum content: 70.0 ± 3.3 µg/g dry kidney weight vs 53.4 ± 3.6 µg/g dry kidney weight, p<0.05). Importantly, diphenhydramine did not influence or interfere with the anti-tumor effect of cisplatin in any of the in vitro or in vivo experiments. Moreover, a retrospective clinical study of 1467 cancer patients treated with cisplatin showed that patients who had used diphenhydramine exhibited less acute kidney injury than patients who had not used diphenhydramine (6.1 % vs 22.4 %, p<0.05). Thus, diphenhydramine demonstrated efficacy as a novel preventive medicine against cisplatin-induced nephrotoxicity

〔研究ノート〕 グリーンナッツオイルの摂取は マウスのDHAおよびEPAを増加させるか

In general, it has been recognized that n-3 fatty acids have the effect of suppressing inflammation and deterioration of cognitive ability. In addition, it is reported that a-linolenic acid is partially converted into DHA and EPA in the human body. On the other hand, like linseed oil and perilla oil, green nut oil （GNO） is rich in a-linolenic acid, one of the n-3 fatty acids, but not enough research on green nut oil has been done yet.Therefore, using mice, we investigated the effects of green nut oil intake on fatty acid composition in the liver, erythrocyte membrane, and brain. The result suggested that a-linolenic acid in green nut oil increases DHA and EPA in the bodies of mice. While mice that ingested corn oil （as a contrast） showed a slight decrease in brain DHA in 20-week-old mice as compared with 8-week-old mice, mice that ingested green nut oil showed no significant difference between 8 and 20-week-olds