Cancer drug can mitigate effects of most toxic protein produced by Covid-19 virus

Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) found the most toxic protein produced by SARS-CoV-2 and then used an FDA-approved cancer drug to mitigate the lethal effects.

In their experiments in fruit flies and human cell lines, the team found the cell process that the virus hijacks. They discovered new potential candidate drugs that could be tested for treating severe Covid-19 disease patients.

Their findings were published in the journals Cell & Bioscience, a Springer Nature journal.

“Our work suggests there is a way to prevent SARS-COV-2 from injuring the body’s tissues and doing extensive damage,” says senior author of the study Zhe “Zion” Han, PhD, Associate Professor of Medicine and Director of the Center for Precision Disease Modeling at UMSOM.

He noted that the most effective drug against Covid-19, remdesivir, only prevents the virus from making more copies of itself. However, it does not protect already infected cells from damage caused by the viral proteins.

The authors of the study discovered that a viral protein, known as Orf6, was the most toxic killing about half of the human cells. Two other proteins (Nsp6 and Orf7a) also proved toxic, killing about 30-40 per cent of the human cells.

Dr. Han’s team found that the virus’s toxic Orf6 protein sticks to multiple human proteins that have the job of moving materials out of the cell’s nucleus--the place in the cell that holds the genome, or the instructions for life.

They then discovered that one of these human moving proteins, targeted by the virus, gets blocked by the cancer drug selinexor.

The researchers then tested selinexor on human cells and fruit flies making the toxic viral protein to see if the drug could help reverse the damage. Selinexor, like many cancer drugs, is itself toxic.

However, the drug improved human cell survival by about 12 per cent. Selinexor prevented early death in about 15 per cent of the flies making the toxic viral protein. Selinexor is FDA-approved to treat certain blood cancers.

“More than 1,000 FDA-approved drugs are in clinical trials to test as treatments for Covid-19, and luckily a trial testing selinexor, the drug used in our study, is being performed already,” said Dr. Han.

“If this trial proves to be successful, our data will have demonstrated the underlying mechanism for why the drug works,” he added.

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Vitamin D can mitigate chemotherapy induced gastrointestinal mucositis

Vitamin D can mitigate chemotherapy induced gastrointestinal mucositis, finds a new study that has appeared in the journal Supportive and Palliative Care.

Chemotherapy prescribed to kill the cancer cells is often more debilitating than the cancer itself.

Gastrointestinal mucositis is a painful inflammation and ulceration of the digestive tract that is a troublesome adverse outcome of chemotherapy for which no effective treatment currently exists.

But this bleak outlook may be about to change, according to University of South Australia researchers who say Vitamin D could potentially mitigate inflamed intestinal tracts and provide relief to cancer patients.

A new study undertaken by Dr Andrea Stringer, Associate Professor Paul Anderson and PhD student Cyan Sylvester highlights the limited options for easing the gastrointestinal side effects of chemotherapy, singling out Vitamin D and probiotics as the most promising.

"We already know that Vitamin D helps in the absorption of calcium, but new findings suggest it may also play an important role in chemotherapy-induced intestinal mucositis," says Sylvester, the lead author of a recent paper reviewing new therapeutic strategies for combatting gastrointestinal toxicity.

"The severity and progression of various gastrointestinal diseases, such as irritable bowel syndrome and colorectal cancer, is associated with Vitamin D deficiency," she says. "It appears that Vitamin D helps suppress inflammation and enhances the function of T-cells which boosts immunity."

Vitamin D is also thought to improve the efficacy of certain anti-cancer drugs.

The researchers are now working on ways to enhance the activity of vitamin D in the intestine as a more viable option for treating gastrointestinal mucositis.

"We know that Vitamin D definitely does more than help absorb calcium, but we need to better understand and optimise its action in the gut before we can be 100 per cent confident that it could be a treatment option for gastrointestinal mucositis," says Dr Stringer.

"We are investigating the effects of enhanced vitamin D activity in the intestine on both reducing damage and minimising compositional change to the gut microbiome caused by chemotherapy agents.

" Probiotics (live bacteria and yeast) have also been widely promoted for digestive health and there is evidence they reduce the severity of diarrhoea and abdominal pain, but researchers have not been able to establish the direct effect of probiotics on intestinal function that reduces these side effects during and following cancer treatment. 

"Vitamin D shows the most promise and could prove the key hormone to alleviate suffering for cancer patients," Dr Stringer says.

This is only for your information, kindly take the advice of your doctor for medicines, exercises and so on.     

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Vitamin D can mitigate chemotherapy induced gastrointestinal mucositis, finds a new study that has appeared in the journal Supportive and Palliative Care. Chemotherapy prescribed to kill the cancer cells is often more debilitating than the cancer itself. Gastrointestinal mucositis is a painful inflammation and ulceration of the digestive tract that is a troublesome adverse outcome of chemotherapy for which no effective treatment currently exists.

https://medicaldialogues.in/oncology/news/vitamin-d-can-mitigate-chemotherapy-induced-gastrointestinal-mucositis-66830?infinitescroll=1

School-based nutritional programs reduce student obesity

There is some evidence that school-based nutrition education programs increase healthy eating habits for children and adolescents. A recent study  suggests that school nutrition policies and programs promote healthier eating habits among middle school students limit increases in body mass index (BMI).

For the study, scientists followed almost 600 students from 12 schools in New Haven. In schools with improved nutrition strategies and projects, understudies had healthier body mass index trajectories (a measure of obesity) after some time, and before the finish of the examination, they detailed more beneficial practices than their companions in schools without the nutrition policies and projects.

Understudies in schools with improved help to implement nutrition strategies had an expansion in BMI percentile of under 1%, contrasted and understudies in schools without upgraded bolster for these arrangements and projects who showed increments of 3% to 4%.

Lead author said, “These findings can guide future school and community interventions. Childhood obesity is a serious health threat, and schools are a vital way to reach children and their families to reduce risks and promote health. These findings strongly support previous administration policies that provided healthier food for all children in public schools.”

This is the first study that intervals first school-based policy intervention. The researchers analyzed both behavioral and biological indicators. Results are among the most compelling to date, perhaps because of the strong community-university partnership, and the recognition that health and academic achievement often go hand-in-hand.

A researcher said, “This is some of the strongest evidence we have to date that nutrition education and promoting healthy eating behaviors in the classroom and cafeteria can have a meaningful impact on children’s health. These findings can inform how we approach federal wellness policy requirements and implementation in schools to help mitigate childhood obesity.”

The nourishing mediations in the schools considered included guaranteeing that all school-based suppers met government wholesome criteria; giving nutritional newsletters to understudies and their families; school-wide campaigns to confine sugary beverages and energize the utilization of water, and constraining the utilization of sustenance or refreshments as remunerations for scholastic execution or great conduct.

Scientists additionally tried whether a progression of approaches to advance physical movement would affect immature weight file. They verified that the physical action arrangements alone had practically no effect on body mass index.

Scientists noted, “More than one in five American teenagers are currently obese, and as many as one in two are overweight or obese. Being overweight or obese early in life affects health across the lifespan, contributing to a range of chronic diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, and depression that reduce productivity and shorten life expectancy.”

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