sulforaphane tagged posts

In a series of recently published studies using animals and people, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers say they have further characterized a set of chemical imbalances in the brains of people with schizophrenia related to the chemical glutamate. And they figured out how to tweak the level using a compound derived from broccoli sprouts.

They say the results advance the hope that supplementing with broccoli sprout extract, which contains high levels of the chemical sulforaphane, may someday provide a way to lower the doses of traditional antipsychotic medicines needed to manage schizophrenia symptoms, thus reducing unwanted side effects of the medicines.

“It’s possible that future studies could show sulforaphane to ...

Broccoli sprouts. Credit: © dariaren / Fotolia

Concentrated broccoli sprout extract may help type 2 diabetes patients manage their blood sugar, according to a new study. The findings could offer a much needed alternative to address the condition, which has become a worldwide epidemic. Type 2 diabetes afflicts more than 300 million people globally, and as many as 15% of those patients cannot take the first-line therapy metformin because of kidney damage risks. Seeking a more viable path forward, Annika Axelsson and colleagues used a computational approach to identify compounds that might counter the disease-associated gene expression changes associated with type 2 diabetes.

The researchers constructed a signature for type 2 diabetes based on 50 genes, then used publicly available expressio...