Gazpacho consumption associated with lower blood pressure, study finds

Dec. 14, 2012 — A regular consumption of gazpacho can contribute to reduce hypertension, according to a scientific study published in the journal Nutrition, Metabolism & Cardiovascular Diseases, by the researcher Alexander Medina-Remón, from the Department of Nutrition and Bromatology of the Faculty of Pharmacy and the Food and Nutrition Torribera Campus of the UB, as its main author.

Hypertension is a major public health problem; it affects about 25 % of the adult population. It is also the main risk factor of myocardial or cerebral infarction, which is a leading cause of death in western population. This new publication has analysed the effect of gazpacho consumption in 3,995 individuals of the study PREDIMED, which analyses the effects of Mediterranean diet on the population at high cardiovascular risk to prevent cardiovascular diseases.

To improve diet, to improve health

"Previous clinical and epidemiological studies associate the consumption of gazpacho's main ingredients (tomato, cucumber, garlic, olive oil, etc.) with an arterial pressure reduction," explains Alexander Medina-Remón. "This new scientific study," he continues, "states for the first time that a regular consumption of gazpacho is as beneficial as the consumption of its ingredients individually; so gazpacho can reduce hypertension."

According to the professor Rosa M. Lamuela, in charge of the Research Group on Natural Antioxidant of the UB and coordinator of the study, the protecting effect of gazpacho on arterial pressure has been a finding "an unexpected one, as it contains salt, one of the restricted ingredients to maintain arterial pressure levels. Despite this, the results of the study describe that arterial pressure of gazpacho consumers is lower than the one of non-consumers. The reason may be that bioactive elements of gazpacho counteract the effect of salt ingestion."

Carotenes, vitamin C and polyphenols

How can these results about gazpacho consumption be explained? According to the researcher Alexander Medina-Remón, "Gazpacho highly contains carotenes, vitamin C and polyphenols. The final balance of the bioactive elements of gazpacho and its salt content makes it to be cardio-healthy; in other words, at the end, the positive effect of all the ingredients that contribute to the reduction of arterial pressure prevails over salt's effect." Experts have also used statistical techniques of logistic regression to know to what extent the consumption of gazpacho can reduce the risk of suffering hypertension. As Medina-Remón remarks, "the risk could be reduced up to 27 % in some profiles of consumers."

Researching on the mechanism of action

The research groups of the following institutions have also participated in this multi-focus and interdisciplinary study: the Hospital Clínic of Barcelona, the IDIBAPS, the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM), the University of Navarra, the University of Valencia, the Rovira i Virgili University, the University of Malaga, the Instituto de la Grasa-CSIC, the San Pablo Healthcare Center, the University Research Institute on Health Sciences and the University Hospital of Álava. In the future, the research group will promote some study lines on the mechanisms of action that associate the consumption of food rich in polyphenols with an arterial pressure reduction, a process that probably is related to an increase of nitric oxide, a molecule with vasodilation properties on cardiovascular system.

The Research Group on Natural Antioxidant of the UB, which has carried out several remarkable international studies on nutrition and cardiovascular disease prevention, is part of the Department of Nutrition and Bromatology of the UB, the Food Technology Reference Net of the Government of Catalonia (XARTA) and the Nutrition and Food Safety Research Institute (INSA-UB). The research group is also member of the networks CIBER of Physiopathology of Obesity and Nutrition (CIBERobn) and RETICS, from the Carlos III Health Institute.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Universidad de Barcelona, via AlphaGalileo.

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Journal Reference:

A. Medina-Remón, A. Vallverdú-Queralt, S. Arranz, E. Ros, M.A. Martínez-González, E. Sacanella, M.I. Covas, D. Corella, J. Salas-Salvadó, E. Gómez-Gracia, V. Ruiz-Gutiérrez, J. Lapetra, M. García-Valdueza, F. Arós, G.T. Saez, L. Serra-Majem, X. Pinto, E. Vinyoles, R. Estruch, R.M. Lamuela-Raventos. Gazpacho consumption is associated with lower blood pressure and reduced hypertension in a high cardiovascular risk cohort. Cross-sectional study of the PREDIMED trial. Nutrition, Metabolism and Cardiovascular Diseases, 2012; DOI: 10.1016/j.numecd.2012.07.008

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Mussel goo inspires blood vessel glue

Dec. 11, 2012 — A University of British Columbia researcher has helped create a gel -- based on the mussel's knack for clinging to rocks, piers and boat hulls -- that can be painted onto the walls of blood vessels and stay put, forming a protective barrier with potentially life-saving implications.

Co-invented by Assistant Professor Christian Kastrup while a postdoctoral student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the gel is similar to the amino acid that enables mussels to resist the power of churning water. The variant that Kastrup and his collaborators created, described in the current issue of the online journal PNAS Early Edition, can withstand the flow of blood through arteries and veins.

The gel's "sheer strength" could shore up weakened vessel walls at risk of rupturing -- much like the way putty can fill in dents in a wall, says Kastrup, a member of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the Michael Smith Laboratories.

By forming a stable barrier between blood and the vessel walls, the gel could also prevent the inflammation that typically occurs when a stent is inserted to widen a narrowed artery or vein; that inflammation often counteracts the opening of the vessel that the stent was intended to achieve.

The widest potential application would be preventing the rupture of blood vessel plaque. When a plaque ruptures, the resulting clot can block blood flow to the heart (triggering a heart attack) or the brain (triggering a stroke). Mice treated with a combination of the gel and an anti-inflammatory steroid had more stable plaque than a control group of untreated mice.

"By mimicking the mussel's ability to cling to objects, we created a substance that stays in place in a very dynamic environment with high flow velocities," says Kastrup, a member of UBC's Centre for Blood Research.

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Christian J. Kastrup, Matthias Nahrendorf, Jose Luiz Figueiredo, Haeshin Lee, Swetha Kambhampati, Timothy Lee, Seung-Woo Cho, Rostic Gorbatov, Yoshiko Iwamoto, Tram T. Dang, Partha Dutta, Ju Hun Yeon, Hao Cheng, Christopher D. Pritchard, Arturo J. Vegas, Cory D. Siegel, Samantha MacDougall, Michael Okonkwo, Anh Thai, James R. Stone, Arthur J. Coury, Ralph Weissleder, Robert Langer, and Daniel G. Anderson. Painting blood vessels and atherosclerotic plaques with an adhesive drug depot. PNAS, December 11, 2012 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1217972110

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