­by UC Davis Health System News

UC Davis researchers find adipose cells that cause diseases in patients with metabolic syndrome.

UC Davis Health System researchers have discovered biological indicators that explain why some obese people develop chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart diseases, and others don’t. Researchers adopted a fresh focus to specifically see the body fat of individuals with metabolic syndrome, which is a disease characterized by high levels of blood pressure, high levels of glucose on an empty stomach, excessive abdominal fat and abnormal levels of cholesterol.

They found out that adipose cells release biological markers associated to a resistance to insulin and chronic inflammation, conditions that generally cause diabetes or heart diseases.

“Our study shows that obesity is not always the same and that certain fat can actually be toxic”, said Ishwarlal Jialal, endocrinology, diabetes and metabolism professor and main author of an article entitled “Deregulation of Adipose Tissue in Patients with Metabolic Syndrome”, published today on Internet in the Clinic Endocrinology and Metabolism Magazine.

“We have proven that the fat in individuals with metabolic syndrome is more than what can be explained regarding obesity. It indicates us that the metabolic syndrome is a high risk condition for obese individuals”. Although previous studies using circulating blood discovered some of these biological indicators in individuals with metabolic syndrome, the current study is the first in identifying fat as a contributor for these markers.

“This clearly shows that the metabolic syndrome is of high risk for obesity and needs to be treated seriously”, said Jialal, who runs the Laboratory of UC Davis for Metabolic Research and Arteriosclerosis. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 35 per cent of adult Americans have metabolic syndrome, and its preponderance is increasing even in children and young adults globally.

The metabolic syndrome doubles the risk of a person’s likelihood of developing heart diseases -which can lead to heart attacks and strokes — and represents five times higher risk to develop diabetes. “It is a pest of these times”, said Jialal, who is also chief editor of the Metabolic Syndrome and Related Diseases magazine.

In the present study biopsies have been conducted to extract the subcutaneous adipose tissue, which makes up about 80 per cent of the body fat, from 65 patients’ buttocks: 39 recently diagnosed with metabolic syndrome and 26 obese. Researchers also carried out standard measurements such as blood pressure and level of glucose in an empty stomach, waist circumference and body mass index (BMI). Glucose measurements were used to estimate insulin resistance, and the waist measures such as the BMI, were used in the statistical analysis to compare the subjects of the study with their peers in the control group.

Then Jialal and his assistants measured 11 biological markers for diabetes and heart disease, and confronted the number of macrophage in the adipose tissue. These macrophages create a crown-shaped structure around the adipose cells that have surpassed their blood provision and have died. The presence of macrophages -cells of the immunologic system that swallow and destroy the cell residue –indicates the type of inflammatory response involved in the heart diseases.

Last year, Jialal published a study with the same 65 patients, indicating that they had dysfunctional endothelial parent cells (CPEs) and less endothelial parent cells than the subjects in the control group.

Eventually these cells make up the coating of the blood vessels and are used to measure heart health. Like in the current study, this abnormality can’t be explained simply by obesity.

The metabolic syndrome can be reversed with diet and physical activity to lose weight, although according to Jialal, other types of treatment might also be necessary. “I have been doing this for 34 years. It is difficult to achieve that people maintain therapeutic changes in their lifestyles”, said Jialal.

“Once people have diabetes or heart diseases, it is too late and much more expensive due to the complications that arise. Metabolic syndrome is the precedent. It is there where we should intervene”, said Jialal.

For more information, visit healthsystem.ucdavis.edu.

by the El Reportero’s news services

Hugo Chávez

The biggest news event in Latin America over the last week, at least in the judgement of the world’s media, was an announcement by Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez that he plans to repatriate the country’s gold reserves forthwith.

The biggest news event in the world over the last week is the imminent fall of Libya’s leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Is the juxtaposition of the two developments apposite?

Cuban assets abroad to be targeted

On Aug. 24 Miami-Dade Circuit court judge Beatrice Butchko, awarded $2.8bn in compensation to Gustavo Villoldo in relation to the damages caused by the Cuban state for his father’s “forced suicide” as a result of the 1959 Revolution. The award beat the world record in compensation.

In his remarks before judge Butchko, Villoldo said he was tortured for five days and that he had been the target of murder attempts several times after he left Cuba.

Villoldo added that his father committed suicide as a consequence of the many threats his family received –by the way, he was a shareholder in society with dictator Fulgencio Batista of a vehicle manufacturing company.

According the Cuban News Agency, the “candid” judge forgot that the plaintiff, 72, joined the American army in the 1960s, used to be a CIA employee, and brags about having helped in capturing Argentinean-born guerrilla fighter Ernesto Che Guevara in Bolivia, in 1968.

Russia says no to Iran-Venezuela missile deal

On Aug. 24 the Russian news agency Interfax cited a source closely involved in the proposed S-300 surface-to-air missile purchase by Iran, through Venezuela, as saying that Russia would not agree to the deal under any circumstance.

Iran expects international courts to authorize the supply of Russia’s S-300 air defense systems to Iran. The Russian authorities have refused to sell the surface-to-air missile to the Asian Islamic republic following international sanctions imposed by the United Nations.

“From a legal standpoint, we consider that the supply of S-300 does not fall under the UN resolution,” Sajjadi said Wednesday at a press conference in Moscow, as reported by Russian agencies.

­Counter-cyclical policies

The region’s two big economies, Brazil and Mexico, are bracing themselves for another bout of international economic turbulence. Mexico argues that its healthy reserves, its industrial competitiveness and low foreign debt make it armor-plated against any crisis. We’re not so sure and prefer Brazil’s more dynamic and broader defensive economic strategy.

FROM THE EDITOR: Dear readers of El Reportero, the bilingual newspaper.

As you might have been witnessing lately, our paper has gone beyond from previously covering stories that start with Latinos do this, Latino do that, Latinos go on strike… etc., to running stories that cover issues with important national and international tilt, events that are significantly shaping the economic, social and political life of our country and most countries in the world.

We have started engaging in the denunciation of government corruption, which in alliance with the international banking elite and the mainstream media – as we know it –is on the works of creating a New World Government, with great implication to our God-given liberties.

With this in mind, I am happy to introduce the following story of a tiny country, that even though is so small, their revolution was able to shake up the whole European Union, and has made an ongoing impact in the new Spanish Revolution 2011, which by design, has made little impact in the mainstream media.

by Deena Stryker

Five years of a pure neo-liberal regime had made Iceland, (population 320 thousand, no army), one of the richest countries in the world. In 2003 all the country’s banks were privatized, and in an effort to attract foreign investors, they offered on-line banking whose minimal costs allowed them to offer relatively high rates of return. The accounts, called IceSave, attracted many UK and Dutch small investors. But as investments grew, so did the banks’ foreign debt. In 2003 Iceland’s debt was equal to 200 times its GNP, but in 2007, it was 900 percent. The 2008 world financial crisis was the coup de grace. The three main Icelandic banks, Landbanki, Kapthing and Glitnir, went belly up and were nationalised, while the Kroner lost 85 percent of its value with respect to the Euro. At the end of the year Iceland declared bankruptcy.

Contrary to what could be expected, the crisis resulted in Icelanders recovering their sovereign rights, through a process of direct participatory democracy that eventually led to a new Constitution. But only after much pain.

Geir Haarde, the Prime Minister of a Social Democratic coalition government, negotiated a two million one hundred thousand dollar loan, to which the Nordic countries added another two and a half million. But the foreign financial community pressured Iceland to impose drastic measures. The FMI and the European Union wanted to take over its debt, claiming this was the only way for the country to pay back Holland and Great Britain, who had promised to reimburse their citizens.

What happened next was extraordinary. The belief that citizens had to pay for the mistakes of a financial monopoly, that an entire nation must be taxed to pay off private debts was shattered, transforming the relationship between citizens and their political institutions and eventually driving Iceland’s leaders to the side of their constituents.

The Head of State, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, refused to ratify the law that would have made Iceland’s citizens responsible for its bankers’ debts, and accepted calls for a referendum.

Of course the international community only increased the pressure on Iceland. Great Britain and Holland threatened dire reprisals that would isolate the country. As Icelanders went to vote, foreign bankers threatened to block any aid from the IMF. The British government threatened to freeze Icelander savings and checking accounts. As Grimsson said: “We were told that if we refused the international community’s conditions, we would become the Cuba of the North.

But if we had accepted, we would have becomethe Haiti of the North.”

In the March 2010 referendum, 93 percent voted against repayment of the debt. The IMF immediately froze its loan. But the revolution (though not televised in the United States), would not be intimidated. With the support of a furious citizenry, the government launched civil and penal investigations into those responsible for the financial crisis. Interpol put out an international arrest warrant for the ex-president of Kaupthing, Sigurdur Einarsson, as the other bankers implicated in the crash fled the country.

But Icelanders didn’t stop there: they decided to draft a new  ­constitution that would free the country from the exaggerated power of international finance and virtual money.

To write the new constitution, the people of Iceland elected twenty-five citizens from among 522 adults not belonging 3711to any political party but recommended by at least thirty citizens. This document was not the work of a handful of politicians, but was written on the internet. The constituent’s meetings are streamed on-line, and citizens can send their comments and suggestions, witnessing the document as it takes shape. The constitution that eventually emerges from this participatory democratic process will be submitted to parliament for approval after the next elections.

The people of Greece have been told that the privatization of their public sector is the only solution. And those of Italy, Spain and Portugal are facing the same threat.

They should look to Iceland. Refusing to bow to foreign interests, that small country stated loud and clear that the people are sovereign.

That’s why it is not in the news anymore.

­por David Bacon

New America Media

Angel Hernández, Isabel Solorio and Jesús Medina, residents of Lanare, have discovered dangerous concentrations of Arsenic in their water supply. (PHOTO BY DAVID BACON)

Note from the editor: Here we present the first of a two-part series about contaminated water in the community of Lanare.

When Mary Broad moved to Lanare in 1955, there were only four other families still living in this tiny, unincorporated community in the middle of the San Joaquin Valley, halfway between old Highway 99 and Interstate 5 on the cracked blacktop of Mt. McKinley Avenue.

It wasn’t always this way. Lanare used to be a company town, taking its name from rancher and speculator LA Nares, one of the last of a string of speculators from the east who became owners of the old Spanish land grants – in his case, the Rancho Laguna de Tache. From ­1912 to 1925 the town had a post office and a station on the Laton and Western Railway.

Lanare and its neighbors drew their water and life from the Kings River. The next town up the road even changed its name from Liberty Settlement to Riverdale to advertise its proximity. But through the first half of the 1900s, farmers tapped the Kings in the Sierras to the east, to irrigate the San Joaquin Valley’s vineyards, orchards and cotton fields. Instead of flowing into the valley past Lanare and Riverdale, in most years the stretch below the mountains became a dry riverbed. Eventually Tulare Lake, the river’s terminus, itself was drained for farmland and disappeared.

So, almost, did Lanare. Its people left, and only a few families remained. But in California’s housing crunch of the last few decades, Lanare began to grow again. For farm laborers, truck drivers and poor rural working families, living in Lanare was cheaper than urban Fresno fifty miles away.

But for these new residents, the dry riverbed and a century of using its water for irrigation have spelled bad news. Today Lanare’s water comes from a well. And in this low-lying area of the San Joaquin Valley, chemicals have become concentrated in the water table. It was no surprise, therefore, that residents discovered their water had high levels of arsenic, a poison. Since then, their effort to find water they can drink has been a search for the life of their town itself.

By 2000 Lanare had 540 residents. A decade later, 589. People mostly moved into trailers. Because most are farm workers in the surrounding fields, a third live under the poverty line, with half the men making less than $22,000 per year, and half the women less than $16,000.

Today Lanare is one of the many unincorporated communities in rural California that lack the most basic services, like drinking water, sewers, and even sidewalks and streetlights. According to Policy Link, a foundation promoting economic and social equity, “Throughout the United States, millions of people live outside of central cities on pockets of unincorporated land. Predominantly African-American and Latino, and frequently low-income, these communities … have been excluded from city borders.”

Three years ago, Policy Link partnered with California Rural Legal Assistance to create the Community Equity Initiative, to find answers to the critical situation of Lanare residents and others like them. The San Joaquin Valley alone is home to more than 220 unincorporated communities, with an estimated population of almost half a million.

http://newamericamedia.org/2011/08/dying-for-a-glass-of-clean-water-in-cas-san-joaquin-valley.php.