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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2020, @05:23PM
When they eat the rats, they get another dose of ACE inhibitors.
(Score: 3, Touché) by hubie on Sunday June 28 2020, @05:24PM (3 children)
n/t
(Score: 2) by hubie on Sunday June 28 2020, @05:26PM
(Sorry, after couldn't help making a little joke there; I just got through all the comments of one of our more politically charged stories)
:)
(Score: 3, Informative) by Bot on Sunday June 28 2020, @08:23PM (1 child)
If normal food were just as able to reduce pressure, nobody would talk about it.
Oh wait, BTW my mother were prescribed the pill to treat (not cure) hypertension, drastically changed diet and did without the pill. Try eating less sugar, less salt, no MSG, no preservatives, more veggies, fish proteins twice a week, meat twice a month, some fat, sleep more, live in a less noisy place, and see how the pressure goes.
Also, transgenic : food = proprietary : software.
If you mandate that transgenic must not be sterile and must be reproducible by anyone without patents, then I will consider it.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2020, @09:46PM
Only, literally only, in your reaction to and treatment of it.
Oh. My. Goodness. Please never make policy. Horizontal gene transfer is MUCH less common than lineage and hybridization. Genes also, less commonly, move around WITHIN an organism's genome - though "when" varies and the most important time is meiosis. Transgenics that are not sterile are dangerous in the same way that cane toads in AU were dangerous; we cannot predict the future, so we cannot know the risk to novel introductions.
So please make note - what you want is NOT "not sterile"! What you want is propagateable. This is already how humans spread apples, grapes, roses, etc. Graft the "clone" (from the plant you want) onto a hardy rootstock that's wild-type.
Now, having said that, personally I want transgenic apples etc. to fuck right off, whether or not I can graft them and get produce from my orchard. Mucking with these is like the Curies working with Curium. We might get interesting scientific data, but it's also likely to be dangerous at times, until we have the knowledge and tools to deal with it properly.
(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...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Sunday June 28 2020, @06:07PM (6 children)
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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2020, @06:53PM
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
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)
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)
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: 2) by RS3 on Monday June 29 2020, @12:13AM
When working normally our vascular systems do an amazing job of regulating BP in various parts of our bodies. Go from lying down, or bending way down, to standing up, and despite gravity pulling our blood into our legs, we don't faint. Hypertension and other maladies can mess with that system, as do ACE, ARB, beta-blockers, etc. For medical test/diagnosis they have a tilt-table test.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/tilt-table-test/about/pac-20395124#:~:text=In%20a%20tilt%20table%20test,the%20cause%20of%20unexplained%20fainting. [mayoclinic.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2020, @02:18AM
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.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday June 28 2020, @07:15PM (1 child)
Are there a lot of labrats with high blood pressure? I guess they live fairly short and high stress lives.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2020, @12:34AM
There is a lab-bred strain that have hypertension.
They don't age well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2020, @07:25PM (1 child)
Lowers hypertension... and makes you gay.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2020, @04:37AM
1983 called. They don't want you back. More's the pity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2020, @10:54PM (7 children)
There have been studies showing that Red Yeast Rice, with more than trace amounts of naturally occurring Lovastatin, is safer and more effective than many drugs out there at reducing bad cholesterol and increasing good cholesterol.
Then the FDA arbitrarily banned RYR with more than trace amounts of naturally occurring Lovastatin for no good reason. The real reason is probably because it competes with pharmaceuticals. Of course their excuse had to do with the alleged safety but the evidence has shown that it's safe (it may have side effects if you give a mouse an insanely high amount of RYR with very unrealistically high Lovastatin levels all at once but one would be very hard pressed to create a study showing that. You can show that way too much water is bad for you).
The FDA shouldn't be allowed to micromanage our health. When they do they end up managing our health in corporate interests. I should be allowed to decide what I think is best for me, not the government.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2020, @11:01PM (6 children)
(Same Poster)
Also, just because a pharmaceutical company makes a drug out of a naturally occurring substance doesn't give the FDA any right to suddenly ban a naturally occurring source of said substance (just because said source competes with pharmaceutical corporations).
Otherwise if vitamin C is declared a drug suddenly the FDA can say Apples can't contain vitamin C. Ridiculous.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2020, @11:17PM (5 children)
(Same Poster)
I read the Wikipedia article on RYR and the truth is a little bit more nuanced but I still think the FDA shouldn't micromanage my health.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_yeast_rice [wikipedia.org]
But perhaps some regulations requiring manufacturers to label the lovastatin and citrinin levels or perhaps to limit citrinin.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday June 29 2020, @12:19AM (4 children)
I was reading that before you posted. I'm glad to see that you are walking that back a little.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_supplement#Adulteration [wikipedia.org]
You probably aren't going to get accurate labeling of contents without some micromanagement, or otherwise a completely different (and expensive) approach toward supplements.
Lovastatin is just another drug treating the symptom, not the real problem (aging). Compounds related to anti-aging are the ones to watch. It would be wild if FDA blocked something that could add decades to life/healthspan. Although if it was very clear cut, there would be a black market for it instantly.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2020, @11:19AM (3 children)
I don't mind the FDA micromanaging the labeling to ensure it's complete and accurate but I don't want them micromanaging the content.
I also don't really believe the FDA has the public interest in mind. They are a very corrupt organization with a lot of conflicts of interest. But I know I have my own interests in mind so I want to be able to manage my own health without them enforcing their will on what they think is best for me with the primary intent of making sure I pay a lot more for everything.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2020, @02:02PM (2 children)
The FDA was created because it turns out that companies need to be micromanaged. Before the FDA there were outright poisons being put into patent medicine and there was no telling what sort of toxins were making their way into the food supply due to a lack of care or as an intentional additive.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2020, @04:42PM (1 child)
Trying to micromanage me (especially with the intend of making me pay more for something that occurs naturally or for banning naturally occurring substances with the intend of making me pay more for pharmaceutical alternatives) is the problem.
I have every right to decide if I want RYR with more than trace amounts of lovastatin and the FDA has absolutely zero right to tell me that I can't have it because it competes with a pharmaceutical alternative.
"The FDA was created because it turns out that companies need to be micromanaged."
I don't need to be micromanaged. I don't want to be micromanaged. If you want the FDA to micromanage your life that's your choice. But you have absolutely zero right to use government to impose your will on ME. You can make your own health decisions. Don't use government to make mine for me. What the FDA is doing here is micromanaging my decisions in the interests of pharmaceutical corporations with the intent of making me pay more for a pharmaceutical alternative.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2020, @04:55PM
(BTW, I'm not on any statins or anything, I have no health problems AFAIK thank God, and I do think the FDA is important, I just don't think the FDA has a right to force its will on anyone the way it does. There are so many things wrong with the FDA and the FDA would be far more restrictive if the law allows it to, which is why the Dietary Health and Education Act of 1994 was passed, and they would not even allow terminal patients to try experimental drugs without approval and by the time approval happens, if it ever happens, it's too late. Trump finally passed a bill saying that it's OK finally putting some sanity back in the legal system with regards to that though I do disagree with Trump on other issues. The FDA really hinders innovation and really does not have the public interest in mind much like the rest of the government).
(Score: 2) by NickM on Monday June 29 2020, @12:48AM
I can imagine how I would test for the other side effects listed but I cannot figure how to test for headaches in nonhuman ?
I a master of typographic, grammatical and miscellaneous errors !