Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Sunday June 28 2020, @05:08PM   Printer-friendly
from the a-spoonful-of-sushi dept.

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)


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Sunday June 28 2020, @06:07PM (6 children)

    by Immerman (3985) on Sunday June 28 2020, @06:07PM (#1013753)

    So, what happens to healthy people and animals who consume dietary levels of rice containing these natural ACE inhibitors?

    Call me crazy, but I think genetic engineering of staple food crops should be done *very* cautiously. And they should NOT be candidate species for generating pharmaceuticals or other substances that shouldn't be consumed in large quantities by the general population. That becomes an ecological bioweapon.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Insightful=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2020, @06:53PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2020, @06:53PM (#1013783)

    i think this is the hidden message: we will/can pollinate your staple crow with genetic modifications, so don't forget to be friendly to our representetifs and support our war machine making industry with pointless orders once in a while ...?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2020, @07:23PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2020, @07:23PM (#1013796)

    The issue here is that the genetic engineering is being done to solve a problem that has more appropriate solutions. We've made it increasingly difficult for people to manage their diets by overly processing foods, putting strange genes where they don't belong and making nutritious food expensive. On top of that, getting preventative medical care is expensive and workers often don't get sick days or vacation days and may not even have time for exercise.

    In top of the risks associated with transgenic organisms, it doesn't address any of the rest of it.

  • (Score: 2) by choose another one on Sunday June 28 2020, @09:28PM (2 children)

    by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Sunday June 28 2020, @09:28PM (#1013835)

    So, what happens to healthy people and animals who consume dietary levels of rice containing these natural ACE inhibitors?

    Yeah, this is the most important question.

    I can tell you what happens short term when you take the wrong dose of BP meds, because your body's changed it's mind about your non-medicated BP again without telling you:

    1. you get dizzy and light headed
    2a. sometimes you notice and sit down put your head down and it sorts out, sort of
    2b. sometimes you don't notice fast enough and fall over, wake up on floor
    2c. sometimes you just wake up on floor and can't even remember falling over
    2d. there probably is a d option, worse than a,b or c, but I ain't found it yet, don't want to either, c is bad enough

    The more interesting question is what happens long term, particularly if consuming from childhood. Generally the body adapts, to a certain extent, to diet and drug intake, I'd say if you ate this rice from childhood your BP would likely normalise as a kid, and then (if it was going to) it'd go up despite the rice in later adulthood. If you then need medication as well, will it work? - maybe not, not ACE inhibitors anyway. Perhaps more importantly, if you stop eating the rice what happens? Hypertension probably. So now you are basically addicted to a type of rice. Better hope you can get it everywhere you want to travel, and that they don't put the price up too much of course, but why would the nice megacorps do that?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2020, @09:49PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2020, @09:49PM (#1013846)

      Thanks for sharing your story, and good luck having no d) events and hopefully no b) or c) events going forward. I wouldn't have expected knockouts from hypertension.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2020, @02:18AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2020, @02:18AM (#1013949)

    Thanks for this and the others posting in response. There is another case, people with naturally low blood pressure--I know a couple of people like this and they have to be pretty careful to not pass out when standing, etc. Something like this rice that lowers BP even more could be pretty dangerous for them.

    Keeping drugs separate from the food supply makes good sense to me.

    For an old example--I don't drink our fluoridated water...but mostly because it doesn't taste as good as the spring water we buy.