NIH Grant To Study Gene Mutation Associated with Rare Disease
March 22, 2019 – Sergey A. Krupenko, PhD, professor of nutrition at the UNC Nutrition Research Institute (NRI), has been awarded a $2.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health for his research project, “Regulation of Mitochondrial Function by Folate...
Breast Cancer Subtype Important in Deciding Impact of Folate
February 1, 2017 • It is generally known that folate (vitamin B9) is important in early pregnancy to prevent neural tube defects in babies, because folate is needed by rapidly dividing cells (e.g., those of a developing embryo) for DNA synthesis and cellular energy production. As a consequence, many processed foods in the United States are fortified with […]
The Folic Acid Dilemma
April 1, 2015 • In 1996, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made it mandatory to add folic acid (FA) to grain products used to make cereal, bread, pasta and other foods. The ruling, which was intended to prevent neural tube defects (NTDs) – see Sidebar – has been very successful: The incidence of NTDs fell 36% over the following decade.
The FDA’s ruling was unique because the target population (women of child-bearing age) is much smaller than the population affected (anyone eating fortified foods), especially now that so many countries around the world add FA to wheat, corn, and rice. Luckily, studies around the globe prove that FA benefits the general population by lowering the incidence of heart disease, stroke, and even mood disorders…which is why FA is also present in multivitamin supplements.
Diet and Extension of Lifespan
Life expectancy keeps growing in developed countries, approaching 90 years on average in some. There is a forecast that more than 50 percent of girls born in the U.S. after 2010 will live to become 100 years or even older, and that the first person to live up to 150 years has already been born.