 |
| Air-pop your corn. (Photo: Flickr/The Rocketeer) |
The press release:
A new study raises concern about chronic exposure of workers in
industry to a food flavoring ingredient used to produce the distinctive
buttery flavor and aroma of microwave popcorn, margarines, snack foods,
candy, baked goods, pet foods and other products. It found evidence that
the ingredient, diacetyl (DA), intensifies the damaging effects of an
abnormal brain protein linked to Alzheimer’s disease. The study appears
in ACS’ journal Chemical Research in Toxicology.
Robert Vince and colleagues Swati More and Ashish Vartak explain that
DA has been the focus of much research recently because it is linked to
respiratory and other problems in workers at microwave popcorn and
food-flavoring factories. DA gives microwave popcorn its distinctive
buttery taste and aroma. DA also forms naturally in fermented beverages
such as beer, and gives some chardonnay wines a buttery taste. Vince’s
team realized that DA has an architecture similar to a substance that
makes beta-amyloid proteins clump together in the brain — clumping being
a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease. So they tested whether DA also could
clump those proteins.
DA did increase the level of beta-amyloid clumping. At real-world
occupational exposure levels, DA also enhanced beta-amyloid’s toxic
effects on nerve cells growing in the laboratory. Other lab experiments
showed that DA easily penetrated the so-called “blood-brain barrier,”
which keeps many harmful substances from entering the brain. DA also
stopped a protective protein called glyoxalase I from safeguarding nerve
cells. “In light of the chronic exposure of industry workers to DA,
this study raises the troubling possibility of long-term neurological
toxicity mediated by DA,” say the researchers.
The authors acknowledge funding from the Center for Drug Design (CDD) research endowment funds at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
No comments:
Post a Comment