Publications by authors named "Alba Garcia-Serrano"

Hypothalamic inflammation underlies diet-induced obesity and diabetes in rodent models. While diet normalization largely allows for recovery from metabolic impairment, it remains unknown whether long-term hypothalamic inflammation induced by obesogenic diets is a reversible process. In this study, we aimed at determining sex specificity of hypothalamic neuroinflammation and gliosis in mice fed a fat- and sugar-rich diet, and their reversibility upon diet normalization.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Excess dietary salt reduces resting cerebral blood flow (CBF) and vascular reactivity, which can limit the fueling of neuronal metabolism. It is hitherto unknown whether metabolic derangements induced by high-salt-diet (HSD) exposure during adulthood are reversed by reducing salt intake. In this study, male and female mice were fed an HSD from 9 to 16 months of age, followed by a normal-salt diet (ND) thereafter until 23 months of age.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Obesity constitutes a risk factor for cognitive impairment. In rodent models, long-term exposure to obesogenic diets leads to hippocampal taurine accumulation. Since taurine has putative cyto-protective effects, hippocampal taurine accumulation in obese and diabetic models might constitute a counteracting response to metabolic stress.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Obesity, type 2 diabetes, and their associated comorbidities impact brain metabolism and function and constitute risk factors for cognitive impairment. Alterations to taurine homeostasis can impact a number of biological processes, such as osmolarity control, calcium homeostasis, and inhibitory neurotransmission, and have been reported in both metabolic and neurodegenerative disorders. Models of neurodegenerative disorders show reduced brain taurine concentrations.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Diabetes impacts on brain metabolism, structure, and function. Alterations in brain metabolism have been observed in obesity and diabetes models induced by exposure to diets rich in saturated fat and/or sugar and have been linked to memory impairment. However, it remains to be determined whether brain dysfunction induced by obesogenic diets results from permanent brain alterations.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Holder pasteurization (HoP; 62.5 °C, 30 min) is commonly used to ensure the microbiological safety of donor human milk (DHM) but diminishes its nutritional properties. A high-temperature short-time (HTST) system was designed as an alternative for human milk banks.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The hypothalamus is the central regulator of energy homeostasis. Hypothalamic neuronal circuits are disrupted upon overfeeding, and play a role in the development of metabolic disorders. While mouse models have been extensively employed for understanding the mechanisms of hypothalamic dysfunction, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on hypothalamic nuclei has been challenging.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is a metabolic disease with impact on brain function through mechanisms that include glucose toxicity, vascular damage and blood-brain barrier (BBB) impairments, mitochondrial dysfunction, oxidative stress, brain insulin resistance, synaptic failure, neuroinflammation, and gliosis. Rodent models have been developed for investigating T2D, and have contributed to our understanding of mechanisms involved in T2D-induced brain dysfunction. Namely, mice or rats exposed to diabetogenic diets that are rich in fat and/or sugar have been widely used since they develop memory impairment, especially in tasks that depend on hippocampal processing.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Cognitive decline is one of the hallmarks of aging and can vary from mild cognitive impairment to dementia to Alzheimer's disease. In addition to some lifestyle interventions, there is room for the use of nutraceuticals/functional foods as pharma-nutritional tools to lessen the burden of cognitive decline before it worsens. We previously reported the promising molecular actions of milk fat globule membranes and krill oil concentrates in a rat model of aging.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Diabetes impacts the central nervous system predisposing to cognitive decline. While glucose is the main source of energy fueling the adult brain, brain glycogen is necessary for adequate neuronal function, synaptic plasticity and memory. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that brain glycogen metabolism is impaired in type 2 diabetes (T2D).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Human milk fat is a concentrated source of energy and provides essential and long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids. According to previous experiments, human milk fat is partially lost during continuous enteral nutrition. However, these experiments were done over relatively short infusion times, and a complete profile of the lost fatty acids was never measured.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The increasing incidence of age-induced cognitive decline justifies the search for complementary ways of prevention or delay. We studied the effects of concentrates of phospholipids, sphingolipids, and/or 3-n fatty acids on the expression of genes or miRNAs related to synaptic activity and/or neurodegeneration, in the hippocampus of aged Wistar rats following a 3-month supplementation. The combination of two phospholipidic concentrates of krill oil (KOC) and buttermilk (BMFC) origin modulated the hippocampal expression of 119 miRNAs (11 were common to both BMFC and BMFC + KOC groups).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Impaired glucose metabolism and mitochondrial decay greatly increase with age, when cognitive decline becomes rampant. No pharmacological or dietary intervention has proven effective, but proper diet and lifestyle do postpone the onset of neurodegeneration and some nutrients are being investigated. We studied insulin signaling, mitochondrial activity and biogenesis, and synaptic signaling in the hippocampus and cortex following dietary supplementation with bioactive phospholipid concentrates of krill oil (KOC), buttermilk fat globule membranes (BMFC), and a combination of both in aged rats.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Strain NL19T is a Gram-stain-negative, aerobic bacterium that was isolated from sludge of a deactivated uranium mine in Portugal. 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis revealed that strain NL19T is a member of the genus Pedobacter and closely related to the strains Pedobacter himalayensis MTCC 6384T, Pedobacter cryoconitis DSM 14825T, Pedobacter westerhofensis DSM 19036T and Pedobacterhartonius DSM 19033T. It had a DNA G+C content of 40.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A PHP Error was encountered

Severity: Warning

Message: fopen(/var/lib/php/sessions/ci_sessioncgr6msn77bscfhhbbggjnafcthl0t0uu): Failed to open stream: No space left on device

Filename: drivers/Session_files_driver.php

Line Number: 177

Backtrace:

File: /var/www/html/index.php
Line: 316
Function: require_once

A PHP Error was encountered

Severity: Warning

Message: session_start(): Failed to read session data: user (path: /var/lib/php/sessions)

Filename: Session/Session.php

Line Number: 137

Backtrace:

File: /var/www/html/index.php
Line: 316
Function: require_once