ORGANIC FOOD – food quality and potential health effects. A review of current knowledge, and a discussion of uncertainties

In this report, we try to approach the question “Is organic food healthier than conventional food?” from a scientific perspective. We can conclude that science does not provide a clear answer to this question. A small number of animal studies and epidemiological studies on health effects from the consumption of organic vs. conventional feed/food have been performed. These studies indicate that the production system of the food has some influence on the immune system of the consuming animal or human. However, such effects are not easily interpreted as positive or negative for health. The chemical composition of plants is affected by the production system; however, the relevance for human health is unclear, and when one focuses on single compounds such as vitamins, the picture is diffuse with small differences between production systems but large variations between studies. The composition of dairy products is definitely influenced by the organic vs. conventional husbandry systems due to different feeding regimes in these systems. From today’s knowledge of the functions of fatty acids, the composition of organic milk is more favorable for humans than the composition of conventional milk, due to a higher content of omega-3 fatty acids. However, less is known about other animal products, and dairy fats contribute little to the population’s intake of polyunsaturated fatty acids, so the importance for human health is small. For pesticides, organic food consumption substantially lowers pesticide exposure. According to European governmental bodies, pesticide residues in food are unlikely to have long-term effects on the health of consumers. There are however some important epidemiological studies, and uncertainties in pesticide regulation that may justify a precautionary approach for vulnerable population groups. All the small pieces of evidence collected in this report justify more attention being paid to conducting epidemiological studies on the preference for organic vs. conventional food. From animal studies (namely on chicken health), from functional knowledge of fatty acids, and from epidemiological studies of pesticide effects, it would be possible to formulate interesting research hypotheses that could be tested in long-term studies of humans, dedicated to investigating potential health effects of conventional vs. organic food

Non-disclosure of developmental neurotoxicity studies obstructs the safety assessment of pesticides in the European Union

BackgroundIn the European Union (EU), the safety assessment of plant protection products relies to a large extent on toxicity studies commissioned by the companies producing them. By law, all performed studies must be included in the dossier submitted to authorities when applying for approval or renewal of the active substance.MethodsFor one type of toxicity, i.e. developmental neurotoxicity (DNT), we evaluated if studies submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had also been disclosed to EU authorities.ResultsWe identified 35 DNT studies submitted to the U.S. EPA and with the corresponding EU dossiers available. Of these, 9 DNT studies (26%) were not disclosed by the pesticide company to EU authorities. For 7 of these studies, we have identified an actual or potential regulatory impact.ConclusionsWe conclude that (1) non-disclosure of DNT studies to EU authorities, in spite of clear legal requirements, seems to be a recurring phenomenon, (2) the non-disclosure may introduce a bias in the regulatory risk assessment, and (3) without full access to all performed toxicity studies, there can be no reliable safety evaluation of pesticides by EU authorities. We suggest that EU authorities should cross-check their data sets with their counterparts in other jurisdictions. In addition, applications for pesticide approval should be cross-checked against lists of studies performed at test facilities operating under Good Laboratory Practice (GLP), to ensure that all studies have been submitted to authorities. Furthermore, rules should be amended so that future studies should be commissioned by authorities rather than companies. This ensures the authorities' knowledge of existing studies and prevents the economic interest of the company from influencing the design, performance, reporting and dissemination of studies. The rules or practices should also be revised to ensure that non-disclosure of toxicity studies carries a significant legal risk for pesticide companies

Organic food - food quality and potential health effects

In this report, we try to approach the question “Is organic food healthier than conventional food?” from a scientific perspective. We can conclude that science does not provide a clear answer to this question. A small number of animal studies and epidemiological studies on health effects from the consumption of organic vs. conventional feed/food have been performed. These studies indicate that the production system of the food has some influence on the immune system of the consuming animal or human. However, such effects are not easily interpreted as positive or negative for health. The chemical composition of plants is affected by the production system; however, the relevance for human health is unclear, and when one focuses on single compounds such as vitamins, the picture is diffuse with small differences between production systems but large variations between studies. The composition of dairy products is definitely influenced by the organic vs. conventional husbandry systems due to different feeding regimes in these systems. From today’s knowledge of the functions of fatty acids, the composition of organic milk is more favorable for humans than the composition of conventional milk, due to a higher content of omega-3 fatty acids. However, less is known about other animal products, and dairy fats contribute little to the population’s intake of polyunsaturated fatty acids, so the importance for human health is small. For pesticides, organic food consumption substantially lowers pesticide exposure. According to European governmental bodies, pesticide residues in food are unlikely to have long-term effects on the health of consumers. There are however some important epidemiological studies, and uncertainties in pesticide regulation that may justify a precautionary approach for vulnerable population groups. All the small pieces of evidence collected in this report justify more attention being paid to conducting epidemiological studies on the preference for organic vs. conventional food. From animal studies (namely on chicken health), from functional knowledge of fatty acids, and from epidemiological studies of pesticide effects, it would be possible to formulate interesting research hypotheses that could be tested in long-term studies of humans, dedicated to investigating potential health effects of conventional vs. organic food

Är ekologisk mat mer hälsosam?

I en bred kunskapsöversikt har vi närmat oss frågan om ekologisk mat är mer hälsosam än konventionell. Forskningen ger dessvärre inga säkra svar på den frågan. Vi har här sammanställt de viktigaste slutsatserna från kunskapsöversikten

Exometabolome characterization of high cell density culture perfusion and optimization of the cell specific perfusion rate

High cell density perfusion has the potential to generate intensified processes. A target for such perfusion process can be to maintain a steady state culture around 100 x 106 cells/mL. A challenge for the development of these processes is to minimize the medium consumption, to reduce the costs associated with this raw material and with the harvest processing. This is particularly true for processes at densities such as 100 x 106 cells/mL for which several reactor volumes per day are typically necessary. We have shown that cell specific perfusion rate (CSPR) is an approach, which has proven to enable densities of CHO cells above 200 x 106 cells/mL. To appreciate the impact of the cell density on the metabolic landscape in an antibody producing CHO cell perfusion culture using CSPR, multivariate data analysis of extracellular metabolomic data generated by high-resolution liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC–MS) was carried on. We observed that the extracellular metabolic profile was by far more stable in perfusion mode than in fed-batch mode, despite a significantly larger range of cell densities in the former case. There was a strong correlation between the composition of the exometabolome and the viable cell density between 8 and 207 x 106 cells/mL. The cell specific glutamine consumption rate as well as, to some extent, the cell specific glucose consumption rate were only correlated with the composition of the exometabolome when the viable cell density was above 127 x 106 cells/mL. No correlations between the exometabolome and the cell specific productions of lactate, ammonia or antibody were observed. These results show that the metabolism of the cells was very stable at densities lower than 127 x 106 cells/mL. Above this density, the metabolic footprint analysis revealed variations of the cellular metabolism: in particular modifications associated with the glutathione metabolism were observed. We addressed the CSPR minimization by sequentially varying the cell density and/or the perfusion rate in a culture stabilized around 30 x 106 cells/mL by cell bleeds. In our system, we observed that the cell specific antibody production rate was independent of the CSPR below 52 pL/cell/day and positively correlated with this parameter above this value. Furthermore, the cell specific glucose consumption and lactate production rates increased with the CSPR. Interestingly, during the CSPR optimization, we showed that increasing the cell density was not systematically equivalent to reducing the perfusion rate despite the fact that the CSPR is equal to the ratio of the perfusion rate by the cell density. This was due to a substrate threshold determining the occurrence of different glucose consumption kinetics

Corrigendum:Multidisciplinary Tinnitus Research: Challenges and Future Directions From the Perspective of Early Stage Researchers (Front. Aging Neurosci., (2021), 13, (647285), 10.3389/fnagi.2021.647285)

In the original article, there was an error. For the sentence “NMDA receptor antagonists (AM-101) have been discontinued in phase III for not meeting endpoints (van de Heyning et al., 2014)” there was a typographical error (phase III should have been phase II). In addition, it was brought to our attention that clinical trials for AM-101 are ongoing. A correction has been made to section 6. Treatment Development, Subsection 6.4. Pharmacology-Based Interventions, paragraph 1. The corrected paragraph is below. A wide variety of therapeutic drugs have been used to relieve tinnitus (Elgoyhen and Langguth, 2010). For acute tinnitus, a dose-dependent reduction in tinnitus intensity was observed with intravenous lidocaine (Trellakis et al., 2006). However, its use is controversial due to its short-lasting response, its potentially life threatening arrhythmogenic side effects, and the low bioavailability of its oral form (Israel et al., 1982; Trellakis et al., 2007; Gil-Gouveia and Goadsby, 2009). A potential goal of pharmacologic tinnitus research could be to identify the mechanism by which lidocaine interferes with tinnitus and mimic this effect using a drug with better tolerance that can be orally administered. For chronic tinnitus, the off-label use of medicines like betahistine (Hall et al., 2018d), anticonvulsants (Hoekstra et al., 2011), and glutamate receptor antagonists have shown little or no effect in clinical trials. Prescription of antidepressants and benzodiazepines is limited to tinnitusassociated comorbidities such as depression, insomnia and anxiety (Langguth et al., 2019). Moreover, three clinical research programs, in the last few years, were discontinued in phase II and III. AMPA antagonist selurampanel (BGG492) has not resulted in a new compound (Cederroth et al., 2018). NMDA receptor antagonists (AM-101) did not meet the primary endpoint of improving minimum masking level in acute tinnitus in a phase II clinical trial but showed improvement for tinnitus loudness, annoyance, sleep difficulties, and tinnitus impact in patients with tinnitus after noise trauma or otitis media (van de Heyning et al., 2014). Many other treatments decreasing tinnitus percept or targeting central auditory processing pathways are at a preclinical phase (Schilder et al., 2019). The modulator of voltage-gated potassium channels (Kv3.1) (AUT00063) was not effective in alleviating tinnitus symptoms (Hall et al., 2019b). The authors apologize for this error and state that this does not change the scientific conclusions of the article in any way. The original article has been updated

Discrimination of conventional and organic white cabbage from a long-term field trial study using untargeted LC-MS-based metabolomics

The influence of organic and conventional farming practices on the content of single nutrients in plants is disputed in the scientific literature. Here, large-scale untargeted LC-MS-based metabolomics was used to compare the composition of white cabbage from organic and conventional agriculture, measuring 1,600 compounds. Cabbage was sampled in 2 years from one conventional and two organic farming systems in a rigidly controlled long-term field trial in Denmark. Using Orthogonal Projection to Latent Structures-Discriminant Analysis (OPLS-DA), we found that the production system leaves a significant (p = 0.013) imprint in the white cabbage metabolome that is retained between production years. We externally validated this finding by predicting the production system of samples from one year using a classification model built on samples from the other year, with a correct classification in 83% of cases. Thus, it was concluded that the investigated conventional and organic management practices have a systematic impact on the metabolome of white cabbage. This emphasizes the potential of untargeted metabolomics for authenticity testing of organic plant products

Multidisciplinary Tinnitus Research: Challenges and Future Directions from the Perspective of Early Stage Researchers

Tinnitus can be a burdensome condition on both individual and societal levels. Many aspects of this condition remain elusive, including its underlying mechanisms, ultimately hindering the development of a cure. Interdisciplinary approaches are required to overcome long-established research challenges. This review summarizes current knowledge in various tinnitus-relevant research fields including tinnitus generating mechanisms, heterogeneity, epidemiology, assessment, and treatment development, in an effort to highlight the main challenges and provide suggestions for future research to overcome them. Four common themes across different areas were identified as future research direction: (1) Further establishment of multicenter and multidisciplinary collaborations; (2) Systematic reviews and syntheses of existing knowledge; (3) Standardization of research methods including tinnitus assessment, data acquisition, and data analysis protocols; (4) The design of studies with large sample sizes and the creation of large tinnitus-specific databases that would allow in-depth exploration of tinnitus heterogeneity

Multidisciplinary Tinnitus Research: Challenges and Future Directions from the Perspective of Early Stage Researchers

Tinnitus can be a burdensome condition on both individual and societal levels. Many aspects of this condition remain elusive, including its underlying mechanisms, ultimately hindering the development of a cure. Interdisciplinary approaches are required to overcome long-established research challenges. This review summarizes current knowledge in various tinnitus-relevant research fields including tinnitus generating mechanisms, heterogeneity, epidemiology, assessment, and treatment development, in an effort to highlight the main challenges and provide suggestions for future research to overcome them. Four common themes across different areas were identified as future research direction: (1) Further establishment of multicenter and multidisciplinary collaborations; (2) Systematic reviews and syntheses of existing knowledge; (3) Standardization of research methods including tinnitus assessment, data acquisition, and data analysis protocols; (4) The design of studies with large sample sizes and the creation of large tinnitus-specific databases that would allow in-depth exploration of tinnitus heterogeneity