Dietary patterns, smoking, and subclinical heart disease in women: opportunities for primary prevention from the Framingham Nutrition Studies.

Objectives: To investigate the relationship between a heart-healthy dietary pattern and subclinical heart disease in women, and to identify potential opportunities for primary prevention.

Design: Prospective analysis in which dietary patterns and cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors were assessed at baseline. Presence of subclinical heart disease was assessed using carotid atherosclerosis (stenosis >or=25%) measured by ultrasound at 12-year follow-up.

Inducible repair of oxidative DNA lesions in the rat brain after transient focal ischemia and reperfusion.

To determine the role of oxidative DNA damage and repair in brain injury after focal ischemia and reperfusion, the authors investigated DNA base damage and DNA base excision repair (BER) capacity, the predominant repair mechanism for oxidative DNA lesions, in the rat model of temporary middle cerebral artery occlusion. Contents of 8-hydroxyl-2'-deoxyguanosine (8-oxodG) and apurinic/apyrimidinic abasic site (AP site), hallmarks of oxidative DNA damage, were quantitatively measured in nuclear DNA extracts from brains 0.25 to 72 hours after 1 hour of middle cerebral artery occlusion.

Dietary patterns and the odds of carotid atherosclerosis in women: the Framingham Nutrition Studies.

Background: We prospectively examined the relationship between dietary patterns, assessed using cluster analysis and a food frequency questionnaire, and the presence of carotid artery stenosis, a subclinical marker of atherosclerotic disease.

Methods: Analyses were conducted among 1,423 Framingham Study women without cardiovascular disease (CVD) at baseline (1984-1988). Carotid atherosclerosis (stenosis > or =25%) was measured by ultrasound 12 years later.

Age-dependent decline of DNA repair activity for oxidative lesions in rat brain mitochondria.

Endogenous oxidative damage to brain mitochondrial DNA and mitochondrial dysfunction are contributing factors in aging and in the pathogenesis of a number of neurodegenerative diseases. In this study, we characterized the regulation of base-excision-repair (BER) activity, the predominant repair mechanism for oxidative DNA lesions, in brain mitochondria as the function of age. Mitochondrial protein extracts were prepared from rat cerebral cortices at the ages of embryonic day 17 (E17) or postnatal 1-, 2-, and 3-weeks, or 5- and 30-months.

The internal validity of a dietary pattern analysis. The Framingham Nutrition Studies.

Study Objectives: To examine the internal validity of a dietary pattern analysis and its ability to discriminate clusters of people with similar dietary patterns using independently assessed nutrient intakes and heart disease risk factors.

Design And Participants: Population based study characterising dietary patterns using cluster analysis applied to data from the semiquantitative Framingham food frequency questionnaire collected from 1942 women ages 18-76 years, between 1984-88.

Setting: Framingham, Massachusetts.