UMaine Nutrition Research Featured at Biology Conference
Contact: Mary Ellen Camire (207) 581-1627; David Munson (207) 581-3777
ORONO, Maine – Nine faculty, staff and students from the University of Maine’s Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition presented their research at the Experimental Biology Annual Meeting in San Francisco, April 1-5. Their research addressed major health issues such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity and osteoporosis.
Graduate student Jennifer Roy, along with professor Adrienne White, presented her master’s thesis about factors influencing healthy weight maintenance in college males. Her findings can be used when developing obesity prevention programs to assuage the rising rates of obesity. Roy is among the first to report the use of online focus groups as a research methodology.
Graduate student Monica Nelson presented her work at the conference as well. Working with UMaine’s Susan Sullivan, Eastern Maine Medical Center dietitian Lynn Bolduc and surgeon Michelle Toder of Northeast Surgery in Bangor, Nelson evaluated the vitamin D status of persons who underwent gastric bypass surgery for obesity. The researchers found that 89% of the patients had deficient vitamin D levels prior to surgery and that supplementation with doses greater than the Dietary Reference Intake was needed to improve vitamin D status after surgery.
Graduate student Amy Henderson of Ellsworth and Professor Mary Ellen Camire presented the findings of Henderson’s thesis project, in which persons at-risk for developing Type 2 diabetes were asked to eat two servings of red or purple fruit daily. The anthocyanin pigments in the fruit are antioxidants that may influence several risk factors for diabetes. Another graduate student, Ann Barker, has worked with Camire to study the impact of two servings of wild blueberries daily on the health of persons with high LDL, or bad, cholesterol.
UMaine Professor of Food Science and Human Nutrition Dorothy Klimis-Zacas and her post-doctoral fellow Anastasia Z. Kalea presented their research regarding the effect of the trace element manganese on the function of arteries, with collaborators Dale Schuschke and Patrick D. Harris of the University of Louisville. Their work establishes for the first time that manganese is critical for preventing constriction of the blood vessels when they are exposed to stress and has implications with regard to cardiovascular disease. Also from Klimis-Zacas’ research laboratory, graduate student Kateryna Clark presented her thesis project on the effect of dietary blueberries on regulation of vasomotor tone in spontaneously hypertensive animals with colleagues Kalea, Schuschke and Harris. The researchers used spontaneously hypertensive animals and were the first to observe that wild blueberry diets fed for eight weeks resulted in greater arterial vasorelaxation than spontaneously hypertensive animals fed control diets. These findings suggest that wild blueberries affect cell-signaling pathways in hypertension and their consumption may result in blood pressure regulation.