Green tea consumption, abdominal obesity as related factors of lacunar infarction in Korean women.

OBJECTIVES: Our purpose was to evaluate interaction of green tea consumption and abdominal obesity as related factors for lacunar infarction in Korean women. DESIGN: A hospital-based, incident case-control study. SETTINGS: The Prevention and Managements of Stroke in Women study. PARTICIPANTS: Cases (n=233) of first incident lacunar infarction were enrolled and matched by age to stroke-free hospital controls (n=204). MEASUREMENTS: The data were collected through face-to-face interviews by well trained research assistants to assess demographic, medical, lifestyle, marital status, religions status, green tea consumptions, family history of stroke, smoking status, alcohol consumption, meat and vegetable intake frequency, and past history of hypertension. Biochemical analysis, fasting blood specimens for lipid, glucose, and cholesterol level were acquired. RESULTS: Compared with the non green tea consumer and obese women group, only the green tea consumption and non obese women group had a protective effect of lacunar infarction when adjusted for age, and age plus diet factors (OR, 0.23; 95% CI, 0.09, 0.59; OR, 0.21; 95% CI, 0.08, 0.56 respectively), but lost their significance after adjustment for age, diet factors, vascular risk factors and full model included atherogenic index factors (OR, 0.32; 95% CI, 0.09 to 1.01; OR, 0.49; 95% CI, 0.12, 1.89 respectively). CONCLUSIONS: The interaction of green tea consumption and non obesity have reduced risk of lacunar infarction, but not after adjustment for age, diet factors, vascular risk factors and atherogenic index. Also individually green tea consumption and abdominal obesity have failed to find an independent relationship with lacunar infarction after adjustment by all risk factors. Green tea consumption and green tea consumption with non obese group seemed to have a protective effect for lacunar infarction. In the results of our study, these results still remain controversial, and then we need further and larger study to get at the root of real causal effect of both relationships.

Beneficial effects of Undaria pinnatifida ethanol extract on diet-induced-insulin resistance in C57BL/6J mice.

This study was performed to evaluate the beneficial effect of Undaria pinnatifida ethanol extract (UEFx) on insulin resistance in diet-induced obese mice. A high-fat diet was supplemented with the UEFx at 0.69% (wt/wt) dose, which contains an equivalent amount of 0.02% fucoxanthin (wt/wt), or with Fx at 0.02% (wt/wt) dose in diet. After 9 weeks, both UEFx supplement significantly lowered the amount of visceral fat, the size of adipocyte, the fasting blood glucose concentration, the plasma insulin and the insulin resistance index similar to pure as shown by Fx supplement, compared to the high-fat (HF) control group. Blood glucose level was negatively correlated with hepatic glucokinase activity (r = -0.533, p < 0.05), whereas positively correlated with hepatic gluconeogenic enzyme activities (r = 0.463, p < 0.05 for glucose-6-phosphatase; r = 0.457, p < 0.05 for phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase). Ratio of hepatic glucokinase/glucose-6-phosphatase and glycogen content were significantly elevated by the UEFx and Fx supplements. Supplementation of the UEFx as well as Fx seemed to stimulate the ß-oxidation activity and inhibit the phosphatidate phosphohydrolase activity resulting in a decrease in the hepatic lipid droplet accumulation. The results indicate that the UEFx can prevent insulin resistance and hepatic fat accumulation that is partly mediated by modulating the hepatic glucose and lipid homeostasis in the high fat-induced obese mice.