Beneficial Effects of Pomegranate Fruit Consumption in Cardiovascular Diseases Prevention

Oxidative stress, dyslipidemia, hypercoagulability, endothelial dysfunction and inflammation are key elements in the development of atherosclerosis. Oxidative stress has been implicated as well in most of the key steps in the pathophysiology of atherosclerosis and the consequential clinical manifestations of cardiovascular diseases. In addition to the formation of atherosclerosis, oxidative stress acute thrombotic events, including dyslipidemia, the oxidation of low-density lipoproteins (LDLs) and plaque rupture leading to atherothrombosis and myocardial infarction. In the last decades, multiple experimental studies and clinical trials have demonstrated that diet plays a central role in the prevention of atherosclerosis. Pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) is one of nature's most concentrated sources of antioxidants. It contains some very potent antioxidants (i.e. tannins, anthocyanins and flavonoids), which provide a wide spectrum of action against free radicals and are considered to be potent anti-atherogenic products. These properties make pomegranate a healthy fruit with a high potential in preventing cardiovascular diseases. In this review, we give an overview on the newest insights in the role of pomegranate in therapy of vascular diseases

BREXIT: Psychometric Profiling the Political Salubrious Through Machine Learning: Predicting personality traits of Boris Johnson through Twitter political text

Whilst the CIA have been using psychometric profiling for decades, Cambridge Analytica showed that people\u27s psychological characteristics can be accurately predicted from their digital footprints, such as their Facebook or Twitter accounts. To exploit this form of psychological assessment from digital footprints, we propose machine learning methods for assessing political personality from Twitter. We have extracted the tweet content of Prime Minster Boris Johnson’s Twitter account and built three predictive personality models based on his Twitter political content. We use a Multi-Layer Perceptron Neural network, a Naive Bayes multinomial model and a Support Machine Vector model to predict the OCEAN model which consists of the Big Five personality factors from a sample of 3355 political tweets. The approach vectorizes political tweets, then it learns word vector representations as embeddings from spaCy that are then used to feed a supervised learner classifier. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach by measuring the quality of the predictions for each trait per model from a classification algorithm. Our findings show that all three models compute the personality trait “Openness” with the Support Machine Vector model achieving the highest accuracy. “Extraversion” achieved the second highest accuracy personality score by the Multi-Layer Perceptron neural network and Support Machine Vector model

Litsea Deccanensis Ameliorates Myocardial Infarction in Wistar Rats: Evidence from Biochemical and Histological Studies

The present study was designed to evaluate the cardioprotective effects of methanolic extract of Litsea deccanensis (MELD) against isoproterenol-induced myocardial infarction in rats by studying cardiac markers, lipid peroxidation, lipid profile, and histological changes. Male Wistar rats were treated orally with MELD (100 and 200 mg/kg) daily for a period of 21 days. After 21 days of pretreatment, isoproterenol (100 mg/kg) was injected subcutaneously to rats at an interval of 24 h for 2 days to induce myocardial infarction. Isoproterenol-induced rats showed significant (P < 0.05) increase in the levels of serum creatine kinase, lactate dehydrogenase, thiobarbituric acid reactive substances, and lipid hydro peroxides. The serum lipid levels were altered in the isoproterenol-induced myocardial infarcted rats. The histopathological findings of the myocardial tissue evidenced myocardial damage in isoproterenol-induced rats. The oral pretreatment with MELD restored the pathological alterations in the isoproterenol-induced myocardial infarcted rats. The MELD pretreatment significantly reduced the levels of biochemical markers, lipid peroxidation and regulated the lipid profile of the antioxidant system in the isoproterenol-induced rats. An inhibited myocardial necrosis was evidenced by the histopathological findings in MELD pretreated isoproterenol-induced rats. Our study shows that oral pretreatment with MELD prevents isoproterenol-induced oxidative stress in myocardial infarction. The presence of phenolic acid and flavonoid contents were confirmed by preliminary phytochemical tests. The reducing power and free radical scavenging activities of the MELD may be the possible reason for it pharmacological actions

Study of the agro-morphological and technological genetic variability of the Mediterranean populations of durum wheat

Durum wheat (Triticum turgidum var. Durum) is the third mostly grown crop in the world and second in Morocco. This work aims to study the influence the genetic and the environmental effect on the adaptation, the yield and its components and on the grain quality of two durum wheat populations (76 durum accessions and 120 Recombinant Inbred Lines (RILs)). Two trials were installed in two INRA experimental stations, namely Sidi El Aidi (Settat) and Merchouch (Rabat). Several measurements on growth and phenological stages were carried out and analyzed and quality traits were measured in laboratory after harvest. The Principal Components Analysis (ACP) was performed to relate phenological traits and grain quality traits among RILs and accessions. Analysis of certain aspects of quality (Dodecyl Sodium Sulphates (SDS), Vitreousness Rate (TV), Yellow Index (IJ) and Ash content (TC) also allowed to detect an important and similar variability for the two populations. The electrophoresis analysis showed that 58% from the accessions and 62% of RILs present a good gluten force. Moreover, there were correlations between these characters on the one hand, and these characters and the agromorphologic characters on the other hand. A great multi-axis variability was observed which can serve as a base for new variation. This variation is controlled by many useful genes which can be used in durum wheat programs to release new varieties adapted to Moroccan environment and presenting good quality genes for durum wheat

Phenolic acid-rich extract of sweet basil restores cholesterol and triglycerides metabolism in high fat diet-fed mice: A comparison with fenofibrate

Many spices are often added to foods as additives to enhance organoleptic qualities, such as flavor, aroma and color. Sweet basil (Ocimum basilicum L.) family of Lamiaceae is widely used in cooking for its culinary attributes. In this study, we aimed at the investigation of the hypocholesterolemic and hypotriglyceridemic activities of the basil phenolic acid-rich extract in high fat diet-induced hyperlipemic mice. Hyperlipemia was developed by a high fat diet containing cholesterol, lard and cholic acid. At the beginning of the experiment, animals were divided into three groups, one of them served as normolipidemic control group (NCG), the second hyperlipidemic control group (HCG) and the third basil-treated group (BTG). After 5 weeks of treatment, basil phenolic acid-rich extract significantly decreased plasma total cholesterol, triglycerides and LDL-cholesterol (-42%,-42% and -86%, respectively, P < 0.001). However, HDL-cholesterol was increased (+79%, P < 0.001). The extract reduced the atherogenic index and LDL/HDL-C ratio (-88% and -94%, respectively, P < 0.001). The reductions of liver total cholesterol and triglycerides were of -50% (P < 0.01) and -58% (P < 0.01), respectively. The hypolipemic effect of the phenolic acid-rich extract is comparable to that exerted by fenofibrate. This drug significantly reduced plasma total cholesterol, triglycerides and LDL-cholesterol (-25.5%, -51%, and -83.5%, respectively, P < 0.001) and increased plasma HDL-cholesterol (+136%, P < 0.001). On the other hand, fenofibrate significantly decreased atherogenic index and LDL/HDL-cholesterol ratio (-91% and -93%, respectively, P < 0.001). The fenofibrate decreased hepatic total cholesterol by 59.5% and triglycerides by 72%, respectively (P < 0.01). HPLC analysis led to identify four major compounds: caftaric acid, cafeic acid, chicoric acid and rosmarinic acid. In conclusion, the Sweet basil contains phenolic products that are able to lower hyperlipidemia and prevent atherosclerosis. © 2013 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved