Occurrence of obesity and its associated metabolic disorders continues to escalate. The present study evaluates the anti-obesity effects of ethanolic fruit extract of Terminalia chebula (EETC) on high fat diet induced obese mice. The bioactive compounds present in the EETC is evaluated by Fourier-transform infrared (FT-IR), Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), and Liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) analysis. The effects of EETC on energy intake, glucose tolerance, and various biochemical parameters were analyzed using laboratory mice. Relative gene expression of Fatty acid synthase (FAS), Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors (PPAR ), Carnitine palmitoyltransferase-1 (CPT-1), Tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-) as well as Interleukin 6 (IL-6) were analyzed in liver and adipose tissues. The findings reveal the hypolipidemic and anti-obesity potential of EETC on high fat fed obese mice. EETC exerts its anti-obesity effects by suppressing lipogenesis through reduction in lipogenic enzyme (FAS) expression, increased fatty acid oxidation via PPAR and CPT-1 and by triggering the anti-inflammatory responses. To our knowledge, this is the first report of the effect of EETC on PPAR and CPT-1 in in vivo.

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Pregnancy, carried to term at an early age, is probably the best natural protection against breast cancer development. The relative life-long breast cancer risk for women that give birth to their first child before the age of 20 years is approximately half that of nulliparous women. In contrast, if a woman undergoes her first full-term pregnancy after the age of 35, her risk for breast cancer is increased even more than nulliparous women. In the current generation many women are career oriented and have children later in life. Universally the average age at first birth is on the rise. It is critical to understand the underlying mechanism of this protective effect of pregnancy against breast cancer to develop novel prevention strategies to reduce the risk of breast cancer without women having to undergo pregnancy early in life. Earlier, we and others have demonstrated that post-pregnancy there were persistent changes in circulating levels of hormones. In order to understand the significance of these systemic changes we determined alterations in the hypothalamic-pituitary axis in parous rats. In particular, we examined the static and dynamic alterations in the hypothalamic-pituitary axis in response to pregnancy. Seven weeks old female Lewis rats were injected with the chemical carcinogen N-methyl-N-nitrosourea (MNU) at a dose of 50mg/kg body weight intraperitoneally. Two weeks post-carcinogen treatment these rats were housed with a male rat. On the observation of the vaginal plug the male was removed from the cage. Once the rats gave birth they nursed the pups for three weeks and were weaned after that period. Mammary tumorigenesis was monitored through weekly palpation for a period of nine months. A subset of rats at 6, 12 and 24 weeks post-weaning were used to study static and dynamic changes in the level of hormones. We investigated the static alterations in the hypothalamic-pituitary axis in response to pregnancy by measuring the levels of thyrotropin releasing hormone (TRH), growth hormone releasing hormone (GHRH), somatostatin (SS), dopamine (DA), growth hormone (GH) and prolactin (PRL). Next we investigated if the dynamic alterations in the hypothalamic-pituitary axis in response to pregnancy. Control and parous animals were subjected to secretogogue treatments (Growth Hormone Related Peptide 6 for GH and Perphenazine for PRL) and the levels of GH and PRL were measured. We also isolated the pituitary and treated them with the secretogogues and measured the levels of GH and PRL. Our data demonstrated that pregnancy resulted in persistent static and dynamic alterations in circulating levels of hormones. Parous rats response to the secretogogues was severely blunted compared to the control nulliparous rats. The levels of TRH, GHRH, GH and PRL were significantly lowered in parous rats while DA and SS levels were higher in nulliparous rats. As expected mammary carcinogenesis was significantly inhibited in parous rats. Overall, these preliminary results suggest that pregnancy induces persistent changes in hypothalamic-pituitary axis, which results in a lowered hormonal promotion environment resulting in inhibition of mammary carcinogenesis. Citation Format: Subramani R, Galvez A, Pedroza D, Lakshmanaswamy R. Pregnancy inhibits mammary carcinogenesis by persistently altering the hypothalamic-pituitary axis [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2018 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2018 Dec 4-8; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2019;79(4 Suppl):Abstract nr P5-05-15.

BACKGROUND New corona virus respiratory syndrome is a health emergency due to high infectivity and high case fatality in patients with comorbid conditions like ischemic heart disease. The diagnostic methods of corona virus disease (Covid-19) are still in experimental stage. Hence, a sensitive and specific disease progression marker of Covid-19 is needed. CRP (C-reactive protein) is synthesised by liver. It is elevated in infection and inflammatory conditions as it is an acute phase protein. The purpose of this study was to evaluate CRP as a promising marker for predicting severity of Covid-19 in ischemic heart disease patients and to correlate the impact of CRP with other circulating cardiac biomarkers in different age groups and both sexes. METHODS This is a cross sectional study done among south Indian population mostly from Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. 232 cases were selected and divided into two groups based on age, sex and confirmed Covid-19 positive cases by RT-PCR (Reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction), admitted and treated in Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital, Chennai. RESULTS In this study, CRP levels were elevated in the age group of 50 - 70 years (66.96 ± 70.09 mg/dL) than CRP levels of age group 30 - 50 years (82.31 ± 90.23 mg/dL) and P value was found to be significant in the age group of 50 - 70 years. Lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) levels were elevated in the age group of 30 - 50 years (380.77 ± 252.23 U/L) than the LDH levels of age group 50 - 70 years (393.53 ± 206.83 U/L) and P value was found to be significant in the age group of 30 - 50 years. Aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and creatine kinase (CK) levels are the additional cardiac enzymes found to be elevated in this study. CRP showed a positive correlation with LDH (r = 0.221 P < 0.001) in both males (r = 0.06 and P < 0.001) and females (r = 0.45 and P < 0.001) with a significant P value. Receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curves for CRP Vs age group shows a sensitivity of 91.15 % and specificity of 92.52 % and area under curve of 0.556. CONCLUSIONS CRP can be used as a promising marker for early detection and timely intervention of ischemic heart disease in Covid-19 patients especially in the age group of 50 - 70 years and thereby reduces the mortality. KEYWORDS Biomarkers, Heart Disease, Mortality, Prognosis