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Researchers have developed a transgenic rice strain which lowers blood pressure in laboratory rats. Genes from unrelated organisms were artificially introduced into the rice to cause production of ten different blood pressure affecting peptides.
In the future, taking your blood pressure medication could be as simple as eating a spoonful of rice. This "treatment" could also have fewer side effects than current blood pressure medicines. As a first step, researchers reporting in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry have made transgenic rice that contains several anti-hypertensive peptides. When given to hypertensive rats, the rice lowered their blood pressure.
The rice contains natural ACE inhibitors which help to regulate blood pressure and don't have the side effects often associated with pharmaceutical ACE inhibitors such as "dry cough, headache, skin rashes and kidney impairment."
Two hours after treatment, hypertensive rats showed a reduction in blood pressure, while rats treated with wild-type rice proteins did not. Treatment of rats over a 5-week period with flour from the transgenic rice also reduced blood pressure, and this effect remained 1 week later. The treated rats had no obvious side effects in terms of growth, development or blood biochemistry.
In the United States, Hypertension affects almost half of the adult population and is a primary or contributing cause of death for about half a million people per year.
Journal Reference:
Hypotensive Activity of Transgenic Rice Seed Accumulating Multiple Antihypertensive Peptides, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (DOI: 10.1021/acs.jafc.0c01958)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday June 28 2020, @06:06PM (10 children)
I mean, do rats even cough? I could see them testing the rats' liver/kidney enzymes, but how does a rat signal that it has a headache?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 4, Funny) by RandomFactor on Sunday June 28 2020, @06:27PM
Well, for female rats, check if the male rats are sleeping on the couch.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2020, @06:28PM
>> but how does a rat signal that it has a headache?
Same way as humans... when a rat couple gets into bed, one says "not tonight dear I have a headache" and then goes to sleep.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2020, @07:27PM (5 children)
As somebody with a genetic liver condition, it makes me nervous when they do things like this. With normal foods, I have little to worry about, but as they tinker, the likelihood of liver damage increases and my liver doesn't have as much margin for damage as a normal one would thanks to Gilbert's syndrome. Normally, it doesn't require treatment or any particular restrictions, but as they mess with food, that may cease to be the case at some point.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday June 29 2020, @12:07AM (4 children)
I had never heard of this before. You probably already know this info, but I found it interesting: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/321257 [medicalnewstoday.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2020, @12:36AM
Most cases aren't diagnosed as it's mostly harmless. The only reason I know is that I had a blood panel done for some other reason. It's not normally something that causes problems, but it does mean that if the liver gets damaged, there's less reserve ability as the liver itself is less efficient than it should be. The result being that as there's damage, a liver transplant is needed with less liver damaged than it would normally be.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2020, @02:21AM (2 children)
Well there's toxic natural stuff out there too that can affect susceptible people[1].
And there are also people who are allergic to stuff that the majority aren't - like peanuts.
Which is why stuff for mass consumption (including mass vaccines) should be held to a higher standard of safety than normal medical treatment - they're for "everyone", not only those who are sick.
[1] https://scienceofparkinsons.com/2017/12/16/paq/#more-48745 [scienceofparkinsons.com]
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/299275313_Is_atypical_parkinsonism_in_the_Caribbean_caused_by_the_consumption_of_Annonacae [researchgate.net]
https://www.kidney.org/atoz/content/why-you-should-avoid-eating-starfruit [kidney.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2020, @02:00PM (1 child)
This is also why there are typically lists that come with vaccines of whom it shouldn't be given to. If I were a few years older, I wouldn't have been able to receive the small pox vaccination due to skin problems and my brother had a reaction to the MMR vaccine and was only able to get two of the doses.
Turning food into medicine is one of those things that sounds like a good idea, until you realize that not everybody needs the medicine and that the effects may be bad for some segments of the population. And good luck ensuring that GMO traits don't transfer into neighboring crops, which would mean that there'd be no way of knowing, shy of genetic testing, what's actually in that food.
Really, there ought to be significant limitations on genetic engineering. Nothing beyond what could be done naturally via hybridization ought to be allowed. It's one thing if you're using genetic engineering to speed up a natural process and quite another if you're using it to take genes from an organism that can't even reproduce with the one you're targeting. Even just using it to speed up the process can be risky, food scientists have shown very little care or due diligence up to this point, so why would we expect them to start worrying about it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2020, @07:09PM
"had a reaction to the MMR vaccine "
oh no he didn't! that was just a coincidence, blasphemer!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2020, @07:44AM (1 child)
Yes, rats can cough and the sound is quite distinctive. You can probably find a video on your search engine of choice.
Headaches can be determined through behaviors, such as light avoidance, head scratching and food avoidance, measures of neurotransmitters, measures of certain hormones and metabolites, measures of head/neck muscles, and EEG patterns.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday June 30 2020, @01:59AM
Neat! I didn't know anyone had thought of a way of mornitoring these things in nonhuman animals.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...