While discovering a protein that causes muscle weakness and loss during ageing, scientists from University of Iowa have also stumbled upon two natural compounds, one found in apples and one in green tomatoes, which reduce the protein's activity in aged muscle.

The protein called ATF4 alters gene expression in skeletal muscle, causing reduction of muscle protein synthesis, strength and mass.

The team identified ursolic acid, which is found in apple peel, and tomatidine, which comes from green tomatoes, as small molecules that can prevent acute muscle wasting caused by starvation and inactivity.

Those studies set the stage for testing whether ursolic acid and tomatidine might be effective in blocking the largest cause of muscle weakness and atrophy: aging."Ursolic acid and tomatidine appear to have a lot of potential as tools for dealing with muscle weakness and atrophy during ageing," said Christopher Adams, professor of internal medicine and senior study author.

We might be able to use ursolic acid and tomatidine as tools to find a root cause of muscle weakness and atrophy during ageing, he added.

The findings could lead to new therapies for age-related muscle weakness and atrophy.

In the latest study, Adams' team found that ursolic acid and tomatidine dramatically reduce age-related muscle weakness and atrophy in mice.

The scientists found that both compounds increased muscle mass by 10 percent, and more importantly, increased muscle quality or strength by 30 percent.

"By reducing the protein's activity, ursolic acid and tomatidine allow skeletal muscle to recover from effects of ageing," Adams pointed out in a paper published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

In a new study, researchers have shown that endurance exercise may help prevent cognitive decline, keeping your brain working fully as you age.

University of Texas researchers attempted to determine the correlation between a person's cardio fitness and cognitive function in middle-aged adults, and tested the participants by engaging them in moderate or strenuous aerobic exercise for at least four days or seven hours a week, while the sedentary subjects exercised less than one hour a week.

The result? People who exercised also displayed better vascular function, or blood flow in the brain, than the sedentary individuals.

Dr. Martha Pyron, a co-author of the study, said that the findings suggest that middle-age runners not only have better cardiovascular function and health, but also enhanced cognitive performance particularly in the domains linked with age related cognitive decline and impairment.

The study concluded, "Habitual aerobic exercise ameliorates vascular health, an effect which may further translate into improved cognitive performance."

The study is published in the journal Medicine, and Science in Sports and Exercise.

People suffering from psoriasis that causes itchy, dry and red skin may soon benefit from a drug that offers greater efficacy than the current standard of care for the chronic skin condition, shows phase II human trial.

Nine-month treatment with the new drug was found to clear skin in more than 80 percent of psoriasis-affected patients.

Besides causing itchy red skin, psoriasis that affects nearly three percent of the world's population also increases a patient's risk for depression, heart disease and diabetes, among other conditions.

"The possibility of getting almost all patients nearly clear and able to live their lives without the burden of this disease impacting them every day is getting close to reality," said first author Kenneth Gordon, professor of dermatology at Northwestern University in the US.

"For patients, the concept that psoriasis is 'just something you live with' is no longer appropriate," he said.

In the study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, examiners compared the new drug guselkumab to adalimumab, the most common medication currently used to treat psoriasis.

In the trial, 293 adult patients with moderate-to-severe psoriasis (defined as covering ten percent or more of the body) were randomly assigned to receive varying doses of one of the two drugs or a placebo over 52 weeks.

At weeks 16 and 40, efficacy of the drugs was measured on a scale of zero to five.

A significantly higher proportion of patients in the guselkumab group had a score of zero (cleared psoriasis) or one (minimal psoriasis) in both the short and long term periods compared to the adalimumab and placebo groups.

At week 40, for example, 81 percent of patients taking a 200-mg dose of guselkumab had a score of zero or one, compared to 49 percent of patients taking adalimumab.

The drug works by blocking a protein specifically implicated in psoriasis, called interluekin 23; older drugs affect the immune process more generally, the study said.

An ongoing phase III trial is continuing to test the safety and efficacy of guselkumab as a psoriasis treatment.

If you love to include chillies in your diet, you have another healthy reason to do so. According to a study, consumption of hot chillies can prevent overeating via an action on nerves in the stomach, thus curbing obesity in chilli lovers.

Researchers from University of Adelaide discovered that a high-fat diet may impair important hot chilli receptors located in the stomach that signal fullness.

The stomach stretches when it is full, which activates nerves in the stomach to tell the body that it has had enough food.

"We found that this activation is regulated through hot chilli pepper or TRPV1 receptors in the stomach," said associate professor Amanda Page from University of Adelaide's school of medicine.

The team also found that TRPV1 receptors can be disrupted in high fat diet-induced obesity.

It is known from previous studies that capsaicin, found in hot chillies, reduces food intake in humans.

"We discover that deletion of TRPV1 receptors dampens the response of gastric nerves to stretch - resulting in a delayed feeling of fullness and the consumption of more food," Page explained.

Therefore, part of the effect of capsaicin on food intake may be mediated via the stomach.

"It is exciting that we now know that the consumption of capsaicin may be able to prevent overeating through an action on nerves in the stomach," added Dr Stephen Kentish, National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) fellow from University of Adelaide.

The next stage of research will involve investigation of the mechanisms behind TRPV1 receptor activation with the aim of developing a more palatable therapy.

"We will also do further work to determine why a high-fat diet de-sensitises TRPV1 receptors and investigate if we can reverse the damage," he concluded.

Researchers have discovered that a compound found commonly in grape skins and red wine affects the immune systems of dogs in different ways.

The researchers believe that the findings could eventually lead to the use of the red wine compound, resveratrol, in treatments of cancer and other diseases in dogs and humans.

"This study makes it clear that resveratrol does cause the immune systems of dogs to change," said Sandra Axiak-Bechtel, assistant professor in oncology at University of Missouri College of Veterinary Medicine in the US.

"We found that resveratrol simultaneously causes dogs' immune systems to increase and decrease in different ways," Axiak-Bechtel noted.

"If we can better understand why resveratrol makes these changes and learn to control them, the chemical may have valuable uses in treatments of cancer and other diseases in dogs and humans," she explained.

For their study, Axiak-Bechtel, and colleagues added resveratrol to canine blood and measured innate immune system function.

They found that resveratrol caused the stimulated white blood cells to release more pro-inflammatory and fewer anti-inflammatory cytokines, which are signals cells use to communicate with each other during infection and inflammation.

These cytokines point to a stimulated immune system. However, the researchers also observed a decrease in the ability of neutrophils, which are immune cells that help fight diseases, to kill bacteria.

This points to decreased immune system strength, Axiak-Bechtel said.

"Seeing a decrease in neutrophil function typically means an immune system is losing the ability to kill invaders like bacteria," Axiak-Bechtel noted.

"It is clear that resveratrol is having a distinct effect on how the immune system reacts, but we still do not fully understand how this reaction can be best used to fight disease," Axiak-Bechtel said.

"Once we have a better understanding of this process, resveratrol could be a valuable supplementary treatment in fighting diseases like cancer," she pointed out.

This study was published in the journal Veterinary Immunology and Immunopathology.