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Coffee with milk may have an anti-inflammatory effect in humans, a new study shows.

Researchers found that a combination of proteins and antioxidants doubles the anti-inflammatory properties in immune cells. They hope to be able to study the health effects on humans.

Whenever bacteria, viruses, and other foreign substances enter the body, our immune systems react by deploying white blood cells and chemical substances to protect us.

This reaction, commonly known as inflammation, also occurs whenever we overload tendons and muscles and is characteristic of diseases like rheumatoid arthritis.

Antioxidants known as polyphenols are found in humans, plants, fruits, and vegetables. This group of antioxidants is also used by the food industry to slow the oxidation and deterioration of food quality and thereby avoid off flavors and rancidity. Polyphenols are also known to be healthy for humans, as they help reduce oxidative stress in the body that gives rise to inflammation.

But much remains unknown about polyphenols. Relatively few studies have investigated what happens when polyphenols react with other molecules, such as proteins mixed into foods that we then consume.

In a new study, researchers investigated how polyphenols behave when combined with amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. The results have been promising.

“In the study, we show that as a polyphenol reacts with an amino acid, its inhibitory effect on inflammation in immune cells is enhanced,” says Marianne Nissen Lund, a professor in the food science department at the University of Copenhagen, who headed the study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

“As such, it is clearly imaginable that this cocktail could also have a beneficial effect on inflammation in humans. We will now investigate further, initially in animals. After that, we hope to receive research funding which will allow us to study the effect in humans.”

Twice the inflammation-fighting power

To investigate the anti-inflammatory effect of combining polyphenols with proteins, the researchers applied artificial inflammation to immune cells. Some of the cells received various doses of polyphenols that had reacted with an amino acid, while others only received polyphenols in the same doses. A control group received nothing.

The researchers observed that immune cells treated with the combination of polyphenols and amino acids were twice as effective at fighting inflammation as the cells to which only polyphenols were added.

“It is interesting to have now observed the anti-inflammatory effect in cell experiments. And obviously, this has only made us more interested in understanding these health effects in greater detail. So, the next step will be to study the effects in animals,” says senior author Andrew Williams of the veterinary and animal sciences department.

Anti-inflammatory coffee and milk

In previous studies, the researchers demonstrated that polyphenols bind to proteins in meat products, milk, and beer. In another new study, they tested whether the molecules also bind to each other in a coffee drink with milk. Indeed, coffee beans are filled with polyphenols, while milk is rich in proteins.

“Our result demonstrates that the reaction between polyphenols and proteins also happens in some of the coffee drinks with milk that we studied. In fact, the reaction happens so quickly that it has been difficult to avoid in any of the foods that we’ve studied so far,” says Nissen Lund.

Therefore, the researcher does not find it difficult to imagine that the reaction and potentially beneficial anti-inflammatory effect also occur when other foods consisting of proteins and fruits or vegetables are combined.

“I can imagine that something similar happens in, for example, a meat dish with vegetables or a smoothie, if you make sure to add some protein like milk or yogurt,” says Nissen Lund.

Industry and the research community have both taken note of the major advantages of polyphenols. As such, they are working on how to add the right quantities of polyphenols in foods to achieve the best quality. The new research results are promising in this context as well.

“Because humans do not absorb that much polyphenol, many researchers are studying how to encapsulate polyphenols in protein structures which improve their absorption in the body,” says Nissen Lund. “This strategy has the added advantage of enhancing the anti-inflammatory effects of polyphenols.”

Additional coauthors are from the Technical University of Dresden in Germany. Independent Research Fund Denmark funded the work.

Source: University of Copenhagen

Male alcohol use has a significant negative influence on in vitro fertilization success rates, increasing patient financial burden and emotional stress, new research indicates.

The new study in Molecular Human Production is part of a research program focused on understanding how male drinking prior to conception contributes to the development of alcohol-induced birth defects and disease.

The researchers say this particular study highlights the importance of expanding fertility and pre-pregnancy messaging to emphasize the reproductive danger of alcohol use by both parents, not just the mother.

Couples struggling with fertility are increasingly using assisted reproductive technologies (ART) like in vitro fertilization (IVF) to have children. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that about 2% of all babies born in the United States are conceived using ART, which would mean one in 50 babies were conceived using ART in 2021, according to the CDC’s provisional births data.

These statistics highlight the growing importance of looking at both parents’ contributions to fertility and pregnancy outcomes, says Michael Golding, an associate professor in the School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences’ veterinary physiology and pharmacology department at Texas A&M University.

“We say to the woman, ‘You need to be careful of what you eat. You need to stop smoking. You need to be doing all these different things to improve fertility,’” Golding says. “We don’t say anything to the man, and that’s a mistake, because what we’re seeing here is that the couple’s odds of success with their IVF procedure are increasing simply by addressing both parents’ health habits.”

Golding’s research used a mouse model to determine the effects of a potential father’s drinking on IVF pregnancy outcomes. The model included a control group that represented males who do not drink, a group that represented males who participate in chronic drinking at the legal limit, and a group that represented males who participate in chronic drinking at one-and-a-half times the legal limit.

The results reveal that the more a male drinks before providing sperm for an IVF pregnancy, the less likely the pregnancy will be successful.

“Seeing the negative effects in both the legal limit group and the group drinking at one-and-a half times the legal limit revealed that as alcohol dose increases, things get worse,” Golding says. “That really surprised me. I didn’t think that it would be that cut and dry. That really emphasized that even very modest levels of exposure were breaking through and having an impact on conception, implantation, and overall IVF pregnancy success rates.”

Alexis Roach, a PhD candidate helping conduct research in Goldings’ lab and the study’s first author, says their findings and other research conducted in Golding’s lab challenge the primarily maternal-focused narrative of previous IVF research. She also says it’s important to make the findings of this research accessible to the public.

“The most important aspect of this research is that it makes it clear that everybody plays a role in achieving successful pregnancy outcomes, even though the general assumption is that it’s just women,” Roach says. “The most important thing to take away from this is that if you’re a male considering having a family, abstain from alcohol until your wife gets pregnant.”

The research concludes that male alcohol use hinders an embryo’s ability to successfully implant in the uterus and reduces IVF embryo survival rates. The research also reveals more questions about fetal development and paternal drinking.

Golding’s lab is continuing to research these questions and the paternal aspects of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, a group of conditions that can occur when a person is exposed to alcohol before birth. His work aims to provide a holistic look at understanding fetal development and pregnancy by examining the father’s role.

For now, he says the next step in improving IVF pregnancy outcomes is getting the discoveries from this research into the hands, eyes, and ears of the people considering ART to help start their own families.

“It is important to remember that couples struggling with fertility who have chosen to pursue IVF are under intense emotional and financial pressure, which is associated with a feeling of helplessness,” Golding says.

“Our study demonstrates that drinking alcohol is an unrecognized factor that negatively impacts IVF pregnancy success rates. Therefore, as alcohol use is easily changed, our study identifies a shared action item that can empower the couple to work together toward their goal of becoming pregnant.”

Source: Rachel Knight for Texas A&M University

Non-native plants are spreading rapidly to higher altitudes along transport routes worldwide, a monitoring study shows.

Many mountain ranges contain semi-natural habitats experiencing little human interference. They are home to many animal and plant species, some of them endemic and highly specialized. Mountains have also been largely spared by invasions of these alien plant species or neophytes.

The new study shows that the pressure of neophytes on mountain ecosystems and their unique vegetation is intensifying worldwide: Invasions of alien plants into higher elevations increased in many of the world’s mountains between 2007 and 2017. The study appears in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Researchers observed that the number of alien plant species surveyed in each region has increased by a global average of 16% within the past ten years. In addition, in ten out of the eleven mountain regions studied, the scientists found neophytes at significantly higher elevations than ten or even five years ago.

However, first author Evelin Iseli from the Institute of Integrative Biology at ETH Zurich was not surprised that the neophytes are occurring higher up. “We were surprised, however, that their spread is proceeding so rapidly and that the number of alien species has increased so much within a decade,” she says. “Normally, it takes several decades for species to become established and widespread in an area.”

“This trend cannot be attributed to climate change,” she says. Alien plants are usually introduced in the lowlands. From there, they spread to higher elevations until it becomes too cold for them to reproduce. So, the neophytes simply colonize the niches that match their climatic preferences. “The plants manage to do this even without global warming,” Iseli emphasizes.

Climate has indeed warmed in some of the regions during the period of the study, but this was not related to the magnitude of neophyte expansion. “Warming temperatures set the stage for neophytes to spread to even higher elevations in the future because their ecological niche is also shifting upward,” says Iseli.

Humans, whether deliberately or unintentionally, often introduce alien plants in lowlands, then plants spread from their starting point to higher elevations, particularly along roads, which is why the researchers focused on traffic routes. Along roads, neophytes have a particularly easy time because propagules are readily dispersed by people and because the natural vegetation is disturbed; competition with native species that have adapted to the prevailing climate is, therefore, weakened.

In intact mountain habitats further from roads, on the other hand, biological invaders have a tougher time, as Iseli points out. “If the original vegetation is intact, it takes much longer for neophytes to establish themselves and spread.”

The study is based on almost 15,000 observations of 616 non-native plant species from 651 study plots and are collected worldwide using the same procedure. The researchers record the alien species in T-shaped study plots, i.e., a 50-meter-long strip (164 feet) along mountain roads and a perpendicular strip of 100 meters (324 feet). The study areas are distributed at regular intervals along multiple mountain roads in each region.

The vegetation surveys took place in southern and central Chile, two regions of Australia, Tenerife, Switzerland, two regions of the western United States, Hawaii, Kashmir, and Norway.

The first time such data were collected was in 2007 in six of the regions, and 2012 in the rest of the regions. Vegetation surveys are repeated every five to ten years. The researchers participate in this project voluntarily, funding the research from their own resources.

The Mountain Invasion Research Network (MIREN), which was founded in 2005, conducts the study. Its goal is to scientifically study “redistributions” of both alien and native species in mountain areas and to provide a basis for neophyte management. Jake Alexander, senior scientist in the Plant Ecology group at ETH Zurich, was co-chair of MIREN from 2015 to 2019.

“The current study makes it clear that we need to expand biodiversity monitoring programs worldwide and take action to avert any negative consequences for mountain ecosystems and their flora and fauna,” Alexander emphasizes. “The time to act is now because we can literally see our mountain environments changing.”

Source: ETH Zurich