Inflation surge whips up market froth

 Enthusiasm for riskier corners of the market has sent stock indexes and cryptocurrencies to record highs. A powerful driver, investors say, is surging inflation and the effect it has suppressing returns on safe government bonds, a main alternative to stocks.

Last week so-called real yields, which take into account the corrosive effects of inflation, hit some of their lowest levels on record. One measure of real yields, 10-year Treasury inflation-protected securities, fell to minus 1.2%, according to Tradeweb. That is the lowest on record, according to data going back to February 2003.

In essence, with real yields negative, the purchasing power of money invested will decline over the lifetime of those bonds.

Real yields have fallen because of colliding factors. These include the highest inflation rate in over three decades combined with nominal bond yields that have risen only modestly as central banks hold back from raising rates.

The prospect of negative returns on super safe inflation-protected bonds has pushed investors to buy riskier assets.

"With real yields, the lower they are, the more it encourages speculation," said Lorenzo Di Mattia, chief investment officer of hedge fund Sibilla Capital. As cash loses value from inflation, investors are increasingly motivated to put their money to work, he said.

In one sign of froth, shares of electric-vehicle startup Rivian Automotive rose 29% when they started trading on Wednesday. They rose again Thursday and Friday, giving the firm a market value larger than that of a key shareholder, Ford Motor Co. , despite Rivian having only started to deliver vehicles in September.

Cryptocurrencies have surged. Bitcoin hit a record last Tuesday, trading at $68,525 on Tuesday, according to CoinDesk. While major stock indexes edged lower last week, they remain less than 2% off all-time highs.

Inflation has been a primary concern in markets in recent months, as investors and analysts seek to understand whether pandemic-induced supply chain snarls and labor shortages will prove short lived or not. 

Developed-market central banks continue to assert that the surge will be transitory. Federal Reserve and European Central Bank officials pushed back against market expectations of interest rate increases in recent weeks. ECB President Christine Lagarde also said earlier this month that her institution is very unlikely to raise rates next year.

In Europe, the German real yield equivalent slid to minus 2.2%, close to its lowest level on record.

Shaniel Ramjee, a multiasset fund manager at Pictet Asset Management, has snapped up growth stocks such as green technology companies and taken more risk by adding shares of smaller-cap companies. 

"The real yield being more negative incentivizes more risk taking," Mr. Ramjee said. As inflation is increasingly expected to eat into portfolios, investors pile into riskier investments with potentially higher returns to try to offset this, he said. "I do think it has been a driver of the recent move up in equities."

As real yields have fallen, technology stocks whose growth prospects are far in the future have benefited the most. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index has risen about 10% in the past month, roughly doubling the rise in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which holds a greater weighting of old-line financial and industrial companies.

For cryptocurrencies, their performance in an environment with rising consumer prices is more unclear. Investors and analysts are split on whether their values are driven by how much risk investors are comfortable taking or if they also hedge against inflation. Their track record isn’t great: Bitcoin sold off earlier in the year amid an upswing in concerns about price increases.  

"The lower-yield, risk-on environment has been favorable to crypto," said Joel Kruger, a currency strategist at LMAX Group, a currency and cryptocurrency exchange. But if inflation rises to the point where the Fed might need to increase rates, cutting credit off from the economy, this could hit risk-taking in general including crypto, he said.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/inflation-surge-whips-up-market-froth

Seizure forecasting with wrist-worn devices possible for people with epilepsy

 Despite medications, surgery and neurostimulation devices, many people with epilepsy continue to have seizures. The unpredictable nature of seizures is severely limiting. If seizures could be reliably forecast, people with epilepsy could alter their activities, take a fast-acting medication or turn up their neurostimulator to prevent a seizure or minimize its effects.

A new study in Scientific Reports by Mayo Clinic researchers and international collaborators found patterns could be identified in patients who wear a special wristwatch monitoring device for six to 12 months, allowing about 30 minutes of warning before a seizure occurred. This worked well most of the time for five of six patients studied.

"Just as a reliable weather forecast helps people plan their activities, so, too, could seizure forecasting help patients living with epilepsy adjust their plans if they knew a seizure was imminent," says Benjamin Brinkmann, Ph.D., an epilepsy scientist at Mayo Clinic and the senior author. "This study using a wrist-worn device shows that providing reliable seizure forecasts for people living with epilepsy is possible without directly measuring brain activity."

In the study, patients with drug-resistant epilepsy and an implanted neurostimulation device that monitors electrical brain activity were given two wrist-worn recording devices and a tablet computer to upload data daily to cloud storage. Patients were instructed to wear one wristband while the other charged. They switched devices at a set time each day. They used the devices while participating in their normal activities, providing unique long-term data for the study.

Information collected from the wearable device included electrical characteristics of the skin, body temperature, blood flow, heart rate and accelerometry data that tracks movement. Data were analyzed with a deep learning neural network approach to artificial intelligence, using an algorithm for time series and frequency analysis. Because the research participants already had an implanted deep brain stimulation device to treat their epilepsy, those neurostimulation devices were used to confirm seizures, allowing the team to measure the accuracy of forecasting by the wrist-worn devices.

While the ability to forecast seizures previously has been shown using implanted brain devices, many patients don't want an invasive implant, Dr. Brinkmann notes.

"We hope this research with wearable devices paves the way toward integrating seizure forecasting into clinical practice in the future," says Dr. Brinkmann, noting that this was a preliminary study and additional patients are recording data to expand this test.

The other authors are Mona Nasseri, Ph.D., Mayo Clinic and University of North Florida; Tal Pal Attia, Mayo Clinic; Boney Joseph, M.B.B.S., Mayo Clinic; Nicholas Gregg, M.D., Mayo Clinic; Ewan Nurse, Ph.D., Seer Medical; Pedro Viana, King's College London; Gregory Worrell, M.D., Ph.D., Mayo Clinic; Matthias Dumpelmann, Ph.D., University of Freiberg; Mark Richardson, Ph.D., King's College; and Dean Freestone, Ph.D., Seer Medical.

This study is part of the Epilepsy Foundation of America's Epilepsy Innovation Institute, and the My Seizure Gauge project, which is an international collaboration aimed at using wearable devices for seizure detection and forecasting in epilepsy. Additional support was provided by the Mayo Clinic Neurology Artificial Intelligence Program.

Dr. Brinkmann has received nonfinancial research support from Medtronic and has licensed intellectual property to Cadence Neuroscience Inc.

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Story Source:

Materials provided by Mayo Clinic. Original written by Susan Barber Lindquist. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. Mona Nasseri, Tal Pal Attia, Boney Joseph, Nicholas M. Gregg, Ewan S. Nurse, Pedro F. Viana, Gregory Worrell, Matthias Dümpelmann, Mark P. Richardson, Dean R. Freestone, Benjamin H. Brinkmann. Ambulatory seizure forecasting with a wrist-worn device using long-short term memory deep learning. Scientific Reports, 2021; 11 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-01449-2

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/11/211109193307.htm

Helping 'picky eaters' deal with food aversions

 In a large national survey, adults who struggled with picky eating habits as children overwhelmingly said they benefitted more from positive and encouraging strategies their parents used than forceful or coercive approaches.

The research, led by a team at Duke Health, was conducted among a generation of people who struggled with food avoidance before it was identified in 2013 as a psychiatric condition called Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID).

The researchers said their findings, appearing online Nov. 11 in the International Journal of Eating Disorders, provide guidance for both families and behavioral health professionals for developing best practices to deal with extreme food aversions.

When picky eating is severe, it is diagnosed as ARFID. The condition is characterized by health problems such as weight loss and nutritional deficiencies and it can also lead to social and emotional problems when mealtimes become a source of shame, friction and/or conflict.

"It's not surprising that positive approaches were favored, but it is surprising how overwhelming that position was among this group of adults," said Nancy Zucker, Ph.D., professor in the Duke's Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences. Zucker was co-senior author on the study with Guillermo Sapiro, Ph.D., professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering.

Zucker, director of the Duke Center for Eating Disorders, said the broad consensus is validation for the current treatment approach that emphasizes positive interactions: "It is robust confirmation for what had been out there in the literature and reinforces the concept that children feeling forced or pressured to eat is not helpful."

The study was launched more than a decade ago as severe food avoidance was gaining attention and research into the disorder was limited. The online survey was aimed at adults who self-identified as current picky eaters to help understand their perceptions and experiences.

More than 19,200 people were included in the survey; 75% were female and 25% were male, and 89% were white. Respondents were asked to describe food presentation strategies used by their parents or caregivers that they found to be helpful or not helpful in increasing food variety.

Survey participants were subsequently classified as either likely having an ARFID diagnosis or not, based on their degree of impairment from food avoidance. Those who reported that eating problems led to significant weight loss, nutritional deficiency, interference with job functioning and/or interference with social relationships were categorized as likely having ARFID.

Interpreting the narrative responses from the huge cohort of participants created a logistical challenge, which was solved with the application of sophisticated artificial intelligence tools.

Using a computational tool to characterize the perceived helpfulness of parent feeding strategies, the researchers applied an algorithm to interpret the meaning and/or sentiment of survey responses to characterize them as helpful or not helpful.

"From a technical perspective, this study used an AI application that understands language, not just words and sentences, but concepts of paragraphs, which was imperative here," said J. Matías Di Martino, Ph.D., co-lead author with doctoral student Young Kyung Kim. Both are in Duke's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. "By getting the positive and negative emotions, it enables us to analyze the comprehensive memories of nearly 20,000 people."

The researchers found that 39% of the themes regarding helpful strategies mention a positive emotional context, such as using food to teach cultural or nutritional lessons, being flexible about the approach to food, providing plenty of safe foods, helping with food preparation, or presenting foods from specific food groups.

Forty percent of the helpful comments noted the importance of structure around eating. Clearly defined expectations around eating were deemed to be helpful in the context of distinguishing between feeling "forced" vs. being asked to do something.

While positive and encouraging strategies were perceived as helpful in improving attitudes towards food and minimizing social discomfort around eating, many adults still struggled with a degree of avoidance/restriction. The researchers noted that parents are perceived as having a positive impact despite their children's food avoidance persisting into adulthood.

The researchers said survey participants clearly found some foods aversive, not merely unpleasant. This likely intensified their feeling of being trapped and made to do something disgusting if they were asked to eat that food.

"To our knowledge, there is no published research that identifies effective feeding strategies for those with ARFID," Zucker said. "Figuring out the best way to feed a child with severe food avoidance can be exhausting and stressful for parents, so providing guidance is essential to improve the social and emotional eating environment for their children and reduce the distress that both parents and children have at mealtimes."

In addition to Zucker, Sapiro, Di Martino and Kim, study authors include Julia Nicholas, Alannah Rivera-Cancel, Jennifer E. Wildes and Marsha D. Marcus.

The study received support from the National Institutes of Health (R01MH122370).

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Story Source:

Materials provided by Duke University Medical Center. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. Young Kyung Kim, J. Matías Di Martino, Julia Nicholas, Alannah Rivera‐Cancel, Jennifer E. Wildes, Marsha D. Marcus, Guillermo Sapiro, Nancy Zucker. Parent strategies for expanding food variety: Reflections of 19,239 adults with symptoms of Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 2021; DOI: 10.1002/eat.23639

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/11/211111130246.htm

More than one mutant copy of PIK3CA gene needed to make breast cancer more aggressive

 Breast cancers that have an overactive PI3K enzyme, involved in cell growth and division, tend to be more aggressive and to spread and divide more like stem cells. But a new study by Ralitsa Madsen of University College London and colleagues publishing Nov. 11 in the journal PLOS Genetics uncovers a surprising relationship between PI3K activity and mutations in the PIK3CA gene that codes for the enzyme. Breast cancer tumors with one mutant copy of the PIK3CA gene tend to have lower PI3K activity. In comparison, patients with two or more copies often had higher PI3K? activity, resulting in more aggressive tumors and a poorer prognosis for patients with certain types of breast cancer.

Experiments in the lab previously showed that two but not one mutant PIK3CA gene can promote a persistent stem cell state -- a quality called "stemness." But until now, there was no evidence from human patients to support this idea. In the new study, researchers investigate the relationship among PI3K mutations, PI3K activity and stemness in breast cancer. They used publicly available data from nearly 3,000 breast cancer tumors and applied computational methods to infer PI3K activity and stemness. They discovered that aggressive tumors had more PI3K activity and a higher degree of stemness. However, they were surprised to find that cancer cells with only one mutant copy of PIK3CA had lower levels of stemness and are potentially less aggressive.

The new study supports the idea that overactive PI3K enzymes are linked to more aggressive breast cancers. Additionally, the researchers warn that the number of copies of mutant PIK3CA mutations in a tumor may affect how it responds to cancer therapies. They conclude that this information, along with data on PI3K activity, should be considered when choosing patients to participate in clinical trials of new drugs.

Madsen adds, "Breast cancer stratification by PIK3CA mutant dose reveals a counterintuitive relationship with functional indices of PI3K pathway activity and tumor dedifferentiation."

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Story Source:

Materials provided by PLOS. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. Ralitsa R. Madsen, Emily C. Erickson, Oscar M. Rueda, Xavier Robin, Carlos Caldas, Alex Toker, Robert K. Semple, Bart Vanhaesebroeck. Positive correlation between transcriptomic stemness and PI3K/AKT/mTOR signaling scores in breast cancer, and a counterintuitive relationship with PIK3CA genotype. PLOS Genetics, 2021; 17 (11): e1009876 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1009876

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/11/211111154249.htm

How salt affects blood flow in the brain

 A first-of-its-kind study led by researchers at Georgia State reveals surprising new information about the relationship between neuron activity and blood flow deep in the brain, as well as how the brain is affected by salt consumption.

When neurons are activated, it typically produces a rapid increase of blood flow to the area. This relationship is known as neurovascular coupling, or functional hyperemia, and it occurs via dilation of blood vessels in the brain called arterioles. Functional magnetic resource imaging (fMRI) is based on the concept of neurovascular coupling: experts look for areas of weak blood flow to diagnose brain disorders.

However, previous studies of neurovascular coupling have been limited to superficial areas of the brain (such as the cerebral cortex) and scientists have mostly examined how blood flow changes in response to sensory stimuli coming from the environment (such as visual or auditory stimuli). Little is known about whether the same principles apply to deeper brain regions attuned to stimuli produced by the body itself, known as interoceptive signals.

To study this relationship in deep brain regions, an interdisciplinary team of scientists led by Dr. Javier Stern, professor of neuroscience at Georgia State and director of the university's Center for Neuroinflammation and Cardiometabolic Diseases, developed a novel approach that combines surgical techniques and state-of-the-art neuroimaging. The team focused on the hypothalamus, a deep brain region involved in critical body functions including drinking, eating, body temperature regulation and reproduction. The study, published in the journal Cell Reports, examined how blood flow to the hypothalamus changed in response to salt intake.

"We chose salt because the body needs to control sodium levels very precisely. We even have specific cells that detect how much salt is in your blood," said Stern. "When you ingest salty food, the brain senses it and activates a series of compensatory mechanisms to bring sodium levels back down."

The body does this in part by activating neurons that trigger the release of vasopressin, an antidiuretic hormone that plays a key role in maintaining the proper concentration of salt. In contrast to previous studies that have observed a positive link between neuron activity and increased blood flow, the researchers found a decrease in blood flow as the neurons became activated in the hypothalamus.

"The findings took us by surprise because we saw vasoconstriction, which is the opposite of what most people described in the cortex in response to a sensory stimulus," said Stern. "Reduced blood flow is normally observed in the cortex in the case of diseases like Alzheimer's or after a stroke or ischemia."

The team dubbed the phenomenon "inverse neurovascular coupling," or a decrease in blood flow that produces hypoxia. They also observed other differences: In the cortex, vascular responses to stimuli are very localized and the dilation occurs rapidly. In the hypothalamus, the response was diffuse and took place slowly, over a long period of time.

"When we eat a lot of salt, our sodium levels stay elevated for a long time," said Stern. "We believe the hypoxia is a mechanism that strengthens the neurons' ability to respond to the sustained salt stimulation, allowing them to remain active for a prolonged period."

The findings raise interesting questions about how hypertension may affect the brain. Between 50 and 60 percent of hypertension is believed to be salt-dependent -- triggered by excess salt consumption. The research team plans to study this inverse neurovascular coupling mechanism in animal models to determine whether it contributes to the pathology of salt-dependent hypertension. In addition, they hope to use their approach to study other brain regions and diseases, including depression, obesity and neurodegenerative conditions.

"If you chronically ingest a lot of salt, you'll have hyperactivation of vasopressin neurons. This mechanism can then induce excessive hypoxia, which could lead to tissue damage in the brain," said Stern. "If we can better understand this process, we can devise novel targets to stop this hypoxia-dependent activation and perhaps improve the outcomes of people with salt-dependent high blood pressure."

The study authors include Ranjan Roy and Ferdinand Althammer, postdoctoral researchers in the Center for Neuroinflammation and Cardiometabolic Diseases, Jordan Hamm, assistant professor of neuroscience at Georgia State, and colleagues at the University of Otago in New Zealand, Augusta University and Auburn University. The research was supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

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Story Source:

Materials provided by Georgia State University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. Ranjan K. Roy, Ferdinand Althammer, Alexander J. Seymour, Wenting Du, Vinicia C. Biancardi, Jordan P. Hamm, Jessica A. Filosa, Colin H. Brown, Javier E. Stern. Inverse neurovascular coupling contributes to positive feedback excitation of vasopressin neurons during a systemic homeostatic challenge. Cell Reports, 2021; 37 (5): 109925 DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2021.109925

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/11/211111154256.htm

Conflicting health information compromises attention and emotional responses

 The 24-hour news cycle and social media bombardment often resulting in conflicting messages about health issues might be making it harder than ever for people to make critical decisions, according to a Rutgers-led study.

The study, published in Journal of Behavioral Medicine, examined how contradictory health information impacts responses to new information and feelings toward the recommendations and experts providing them.

"People are regularly expected to interpret complex health recommendations, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic," said lead author Patrick Barnwell, a graduate student at Rutgers-New Brunswick. "Conflicting health-related recommendations are increasingly common due to the speed at which 24-hour news cycles and social media can spread information."

According to the study, conflicting information can be two or more statements about a health-related issue inconsistent with one another, from several sources like an expert or non-expert and shared in various ways like in-person or on the internet.

The researchersconducted an online study where one group read a conflicting article about the benefits of eating whole-grain foods while the other group read an article with consistent information on the same topic. The participants then performed a computerized task to measure their attention and reported the effort it took to complete.

Those who read the article with conflicting information were more confused, made more errors and responded slower on the attention task, and had more negative feelings about research and scientists. They also said it took them more effort to complete the attention task than those who read the article with no conflicting messaging, even though they did not perform as well on the task.

Researchers say these reactions may undermine the effectiveness of and satisfaction with public health and disease management. Ultimately, patients may have difficulty making and implementing appropriate health-related decisions, and those decisions may be uninformed or misinformed.

Researchers suggest health professionals make sure messaging is consistent so that patients focus on the information and their specific decisions, rather than exerting attention to decipher the ambiguity in information.

"Consistent messaging is particularly important now given the amount of information public health officials are disseminating on vaccination," said Richard Contrada, a professor of psychology and director of the Rutgers Social, Health and Interdisciplinary Psychophysiology Lab. "Since we regularly read an abundance of conflicting information, it may be valuable for educational programs or webinars to integrate strategies people can utilize to help understand and potentially resolve discrepancies contained in health-related messaging."

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Materials provided by Rutgers University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. Patrick V. Barnwell, Erick J. Fedorenko, Richard J. Contrada. Healthy or not? The impact of conflicting health-related information on attentional resources. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 2021; DOI: 10.1007/s10865-021-00256-4

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/11/211111154258.htm

PFAS exposure, high-fat diet drive prostate cells’ metabolism into pro-cancer state

 Exposure to PFAS -- a class of synthetic chemicals utilized in food wrappers, nonstick cookware and other products -- reprograms the metabolism of benign and malignant human prostate cells to a more energy efficient state that enables the cells to proliferate at three times the rate of nonexposed cells, a new study in mice found.

However, consuming a high-fat diet significantly accelerated development of tumors in the PFAS-exposed mice, said the scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the U. of I. Chicago who conducted the research. PFAS is an abbreviation for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, often described as "forever chemicals" because they don't degrade naturally and persist as environmental pollutants. Studies have associated PFAS with harmful effects in laboratory animals.

"Our data suggest that exposure to PFAS synergizes with dietary fat to activate the protein-coding gene PPARa, altering cells' metabolism in ways that escalate the carcinogenic risk in normal prostate cells while driving tumor progression in malignant cells," said food science and human nutrition professor Zeynep Madak-Erdogan, the principal investigator on the project.

"These alterations in cell metabolism that occur downstream of PPARa activation may underpin the increased prostate cancer risk observed in men who are exposed to PFAS," said Madak-Erdogan, who also holds an appointment as a health innovation professor with the Carle Illinois College of Medicine.

In their analyses of gene transcription activity, the scientists found that PPARa was expressed at significantly greater levels in the tumor cells of the PFAS-exposed mice that ate the high-fat diet. PPARa controls cell proliferation and differentiation, aids in immune and inflammatory responses and has been found to play a key role in the development of liver and kidney cancers, according to the study.

Previous studies, including some conducted in humans, linked PFAS with a range of serious health problems such as prostate cancer, the most common male cancer in the U.S.

Published in the journal Nutrients, the current study's findings are believed to be the first to shed light on the synergistic interactions of PFAS and dietary fat and the metabolic changes that shift benign prostate cells to a malignant state, triggering rapidly growing tumors.

The scientists injected an aggressive form of malignant human prostate cells into the flanks of male mice that were fed either a high-fat diet intended to mimic the typical Western diet or a control diet. Some of the mice also received oral doses of perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), one of the most common forms of PFAS that has been associated with various cancers.

"We observed an increase in the tumors' volume when exposed to either the high-fat diet or the PFOS," said co-author Michael J. Spinella, a scientist in the Cancer Center at Illinois and professor of comparative biosciences. "However, at 40 days post-injection, we observed that the fastest tumor growth occurred in the group of mice that both ate the high-fat diet and received PFOS exposure, which suggested a synergistic interaction between the two."

In cell culture, the scientists exposed benign prostate cells and a derivative line of aggressive malignant cells to PFOS and found that the malignant cells replicated at triple the rate of the cells in the control group.

When the researchers exposed the benign and malignant cells to another form of PFAS, perfluorobutane sulfonic acid, the malignant cells' viability was five times greater than the cells in the control group.

Studies have associated PFBS exposure -- which can occur through polluted air or polluted drinking water -- with diseases of the thyroid and other organs.

The scientists hypothesized that metabolic energy pathways within the cells were undergoing changes to facilitate the rapid growth observed.

"We analyzed the metabolites that changed in response to PFOS treatment, and we found that the metabolic phenotype of the prostate cancer cells was altered, upregulating the proliferative energy pathways," said co-author Joseph Irudayaraj, the associate director for shared resources at the Cancer Center at Illinois and a founder professor of bioengineering at the U. of I.

"Exposure to PFOS significantly upregulated genes associated with metabolism, particularly the molecule pyruvate, which is involved in glucose metabolism, and the precursor molecule acetyl-coenzyme A that facilitates the metabolism of fatty acids and steroids," he said.

Prior research, including a 2019 study led by Madak-Erdogan, found that changes in the metabolism of pyruvate and fatty acids were associated with various forms of cancer and other diseases. In that study, published in the journal Cancer Research, Madak-Erdogan's team found that free fatty acids caused estrogen-receptor positive breast cancer cells to increase cell proliferation and tumor growth.

Structurally, chemicals in the PFAS family resemble free fatty acids and bind to the same sites on serum proteins, Madak-Erdogan said.

Co-authors of the new study include former nutritional sciences graduate student and first author Ozan Berk Imir; University of Illinois Chicago urology professor Wen-Yang Hu; UIC andrology lab director and urology professor Gail S. Prins; U. of I. Urbana-Champaign comparative biosciences research scientist Ratnakar Singh; graduate student Qianying Zuo; research assistant Yu-Jeh Liu; and undergraduate student Alanna Zoe Kaminsky.

The research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Food and Agriculture in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U. of I. Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, and an Arnold O. Beckman Award from the Campus Research Board.

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Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, News Bureau. Original written by Sharita Forrest. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. Ozan Berk Imir, Alanna Zoe Kaminsky, Qian-Ying Zuo, Yu-Jeh Liu, Ratnakar Singh, Michael J. Spinella, Joseph Irudayaraj, Wen-Yang Hu, Gail S. Prins, Zeynep Madak Erdogan. Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substance Exposure Combined with High-Fat Diet Supports Prostate Cancer Progression. Nutrients, 2021; 13 (11): 3902 DOI: 10.3390/nu13113902

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/11/211111154311.htm