According to a recent study, eating leafy greens, red vegetable, berry fruits and drinking orange juice may be linked with a lower risk of memory loss in men over time.The study was published in the Journal of Neurology. It looked at 27,842 men with an average age of 51 who were all health professionals. Participants filled out questionnaires about how many servings of fruits, vegetables and other foods they had each day at the beginning of the study and then every four years for 20 years.“One of the most important factors in this study is that we were able to research and track such a large group of men over a 20-year period of time, allowing for very telling results. Our studies provide further evidence dietary choices can be important to maintain your brain health,” said study author Changzheng Yuan, ScD, of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston.Participants also took subjective tests of their thinking and memory skills at least four years before the end of the study, when they were an average age of 73. The test is designed to detect changes that people can notice in how well they are remembering things before those changes would be detected by objective cognitive tests. Changes in memory reported by the participants would be considered precursors to mild cognitive impairment. The questions included: “Do you have more trouble than usual remembering a short list of items, such as a shopping list?” and “Do you have more trouble than usual following a group conversation or a plot in a TV program due to your memory?”A total of 55% of the participants had good thinking and memory skills, 38% had moderate skills, and 7% had poor thinking and memory skills.The participants were divided into five groups based on their fruit and vegetable consumption. For vegetables, the highest group ate about six servings per day, compared to about two servings for the lowest group. For fruits, the top group ate about three servings per day, compared to half a serving for the bottom group.The men who consumed the most vegetables were 34% less likely to develop poor thinking skills than the men who consumed the least amount of vegetables. A total of 6.6% of men in the top group developed poor cognitive function, compared to 7.9% of men in the bottom group.The men who drank orange juice every day were 47% less likely to develop poor thinking skills than the men who drank less than one serving per month. A total of 6.9% of men who drank orange juice every day developed poor cognitive function, compared to 8.4% of men who drank orange juice less than once a month.The men who ate the most fruit each day were less likely to develop poor thinking skills, but that association was weakened after researchers adjusted for other dietary factors that could affect the results, such as consumption of vegetables, fruit juice, refined grains, legumes and dairy products.The researchers also found that people who ate larger amounts of fruits and vegetables 20 years earlier were less likely to develop thinking .

Scientists have developed a spray gel embedded with immune-boosting drugs which they say could help the body fight off cancer after surgery.Many people who are diagnosed with cancer will undergo some type of surgery to treat their disease, said researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in the US.Almost 95 per cent of people with early—diagnosed breast cancer will require surgery and it is often the first line of treatment for people with brain tumours, according to the study published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.However, despite improvements in surgical techniques over the past decade, the cancer often comes back after the procedure.The researchers tested the biodegradable spray gel in mice that had advanced melanoma tumours surgically removed.They found that the gel reduced the growth of the tumour cells that remained after surgery, which helped prevent recurrences of the cancer.After receiving the treatment, 50 per cent of the mice survived for at least 60 days without their tumours regrowing.
The spray not only inhibited the recurrence of tumours from the area on the body where it was removed, but also controlled the development of tumours in other parts of the body, said Zhen Gu, a professor at UCLA.
The substance will have to go through further testing and approvals before it could be used in humans, Gu said.
However, the scientists envision the gel being applied to the tumour resection site by surgeons immediately after the tumour is removed during surgery.
“This sprayable gel shows promise against one of the greatest obstacles in curing cancer,” Gu said.
“One of the trademarks of cancers is that it spreads. In fact, around 90 per cent of people with cancerous tumours end up dying because of tumour recurrence or metastasis,” he sai.
The researchers loaded nanoparticles with an antibody specifically targeted to block CD47, a protein that cancer cells release as a “don’t-eat-me” signal.
By blocking CD47, the antibody enables the immune system to find and ultimately destroy the cancer cells.
The nanoparticles are made of calcium carbonate, a substance that is the main component of egg shells and is often found in rocks.
“We also learned that the gel could activate T cells in the immune system to get them to work together as another line of attack against lingering cancer cells,” said Qian Chen, a postdoctoral researcher in Gu’s lab.
Once the solution is sprayed on the surgical site, it quickly forms a gel embedded with the nanoparticles.
The gel helps stop at the surgical site and promotes would heal; the nanoparticles gradually dissolve and release the anti-CD47 antibodies into the body. The act of performing surgery may be called a “surgical procedure”, “operation”, or simply “surgery”. In this context, the verb “operate” means to perform surgery. The adjective “surgical” means pertaining to surgery; e.g. surgical instruments or surgical nurse. The patient or subject on which the surgery is performed can be a person or an animal. A surgeon is a person who practices surgery and a surgeon’s assistant is a person who practices surgical assistance. A surgical team is made up of surgeon, surgeon’s assistant, anaesthesia provider, circulating nurse and surgical technologist. Surgery usually spans minutes to hours but it is typically not an ongoing or periodic type of treatment. The term “surgery” can also refer to the place where surgery is performed, or, in British English, simply the office of a physician,As a general rule, a procedure is considered surgical when it involves cutting of a patient’s tissues or closure of a previously sustained wound. Other procedures that do not necessarily fall under this rubric, such as angioplasty or endoscopy, may be considered surgery if they involve “common” surgical procedure or settings, such as use of a sterile environment, anesthesia, antiseptic conditions, typical surgical instruments, and suturing or stapling. All forms of surgery are considered invasive procedures; so-called “noninvasive surgery” usually refers to an excision that does not penetrate.