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Medical Scribblings - 07 January 2007

It must be 30 years ago that I sent an article to Lyn Segar on the use of folic acid to prevent neural tube damage (spina bifida etc). Since then I must say there has been a greater awareness among ladies planning to have a baby to take extra folic acid before conception. Of course not all pregnancies are planned so the only other alternative is to add it to our food. Many breakfast cereals already have it in and there are a great many natural foods that contain it especially vegetables and peas and beans but we still do not add it to flour. In the USA where this is done there is said to have been a 25% reduction in foetal abnormalities, though the Americans do eat some funny diets.

The latest research in people over 50 suggests that a supplement of this vitamin reduced memory loss which from a personal perspective would be a big plus. It may well be that there may be other benefits that have as yet not been worked out. It works in the cells by helping with the replication of DNA so potentially it could have far reaching effects and whats more it is very cheap.

Great things used to be claimed for vitamin C in mega doses but proper trials have shown this not to be so and infact super doses appear to be dangerous. As with most of these things a moderate amount is good for you but just upping the dose does not help any more.

Its interesting in medicine how treatments that we have had for years can turn out to have hidden benefits. I suppose the classic one is Aspirin which was synthesised more than 100 years ago but still finds new uses. It has turned out to be very useful in improving the circulation in tiny doses.

There has been some excitement recently about a drug called DCA which again has been around for quite a while. It was found in the 1930s that cancer cells turn off their mitochondrial pathways (mitochondria are the power source inside cells). This allows the cancer cells to survive without much blood supply to bring in oxygen. They hope that this drug should be able to start up the mitochondria and so disrupt the metabolism of the cells.

Sorry all a bit techno this month. The message is to eat you vegetables as your mother used to say.

John Schofield