Tag Archives: vitamin supplements

Scientists Reveal Quirky Feature of Lyme Disease Bacteria

Unlike most organisms, they don’t need iron, but they crave manganese

Scientists have confirmed that the pathogen that causes Lyme Disease—unlike any other known organism—can exist without iron, a metal that all other life needs to make proteins and enzymes. Instead of iron, the bacteria substitute manganese to make an essential enzyme, thus eluding immune system defenses that protect the body by starving pathogens of iron.

To cause disease, Borrelia burgdorferi requires unusually high levels of manganese, scientists at Johns Hopkins University (JHU), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), and the University of Texas reported. Their study, published March 22, 2013, in The Journal of Biological Chemistry, may explain some mysteries about why Lyme Disease is slow-growing and hard to detect and treat. The findings also open the door to search for new therapies to thwart the bacterium by targeting manganese. (more…)

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For Those Who Don’t Exercise or Watch Their Diets, CU ‘Nutraceutical’ Research Could Help

University of Colorado at Boulder Professor Douglas R. Seals has amassed scientific evidence indicating that exercise, weight loss, good nutrition and salt restriction can cut your chances of getting cardiovascular disease, the United States’ No. 1 killer.

But Seals knows that exhorting people to exercise and lose weight, no matter how well the case is buttressed with data, will only go so far. So Seals’ laboratory has begun researching “nutraceuticals,” food extracts or vitamin supplements that could mimic the effects of a healthful lifestyle. (more…)

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