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Mediterranean diet is a healthy combination of fruits and vegetables, grains, nuts, dairy, red wine, splattered with Olive Oil. The diet has previously been proved to be an excellent choice to lower the risk of a heart disease in addition to being found extremely healthy. A team of researchers from the Departments of Pharmacology and Microbiology at the Center for Translational Medicine, have now identified underlying protective mechanisms of Olive Oil that is responsible of reducing brain inflammation and also capable of triggering autophagy.

Brain inflammation majorly occurs in cases of diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s or strokes. Whereas, Autophagy is the process by which cells break down and clear out intracellular debris and toxins.

Since this monounsaturated vegetable fat is considered supremely healthy and has since times immemorial been associated with truckloads of health benefits, this study was undertaken to measure its affect and help elucidate the relationship between Virgin Olive Oil and dementia.

Senior investigator of the study, Domenico Praticò and his colleagues used a well-established Alzheimer’s disease mouse model- triple transgenic model, to carry the study forward. They are called so as the animals develop three key characteristics of the disease: memory impairment, amyloid plagues, and neurofibrillary

tangles. The animals were then put into two groups- one that received a chow diet enriched with extra-virgin olive oil and the second that received the regular chow diet without it.

When these animals were six months old, the extra-virgin oil was introduced into their diet, before symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease began to emerge. Later, at age 9 months and 12 months, mice with the olive oil diet performed comparatively well on tests designed to evaluate working memory, spatial memory, and learning abilities; and studies of brain tissue from both groups of mice revealed dramatic differences in nerve cell appearance and function.

Additionally another important observation was made, wherein the integrity of the connections between neurons (synapses) were found to be preserved in mice on the extra-virgin olive oil diet compared to those on a regular diet.

“This is an exciting finding for us. Thanks to the autophagy activation, memory and synaptic integrity were preserved, and the pathological effects in animals otherwise destined to develop Alzheimer’s disease were significantly reduced. This is a very important discovery, since we suspect that a reduction in autophagy marks the beginning of Alzheimer’s disease. We next want to know whether olive oil added at a later time point in the diet can stop or reverse the disease” said Dr. Praticò.

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