Diabetes wellness care: a successful employer-endorsed program for employees.

Objective: A 12-month wellness program was provided for employees of a major employer in the Orlando area.

Methods: The program involved screening and measurement of baseline indices, educational sessions, telephonic support, quarterly laboratory monitoring, and provision of glucometers and test strips.

Results: For the 73 enrolled employees with prediabetes, serum hemoglobin A1c levels-mean (standard deviation)-decreased from 6.

A green tea-derived polyphenol, epigallocatechin-3-gallate, inhibits IkappaB kinase activation and IL-8 gene expression in respiratory epithelium.

Interleukin-8 (IL-8) is a principle neutrophil chemoattractant and activator in humans. There is interest in developing novel pharmacological inhibitors of IL-8 gene expression as a means for modulating inflammation in disease states such as acute lung injury. Herein we determined the effects of epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG), a green tea-derived polyphenol, on tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha)-mediated expression of the IL-8 gene in A549 cells.

Mice heterozygous for mutation in Atm, the gene involved in ataxia-telangiectasia, have heightened susceptibility to cancer.

Ataxia-telangiectasia is characterized by radiosensitivity, genome instability and predisposition to cancer. Heterozygous carriers of ATM, the gene defective in ataxia-telangiectasia, have a higher than normal risk of developing breast and other cancers. We demonstrate here that Atm 'knock-in' (Atm-Delta SRI) heterozygous mice harboring an in-frame deletion corresponding to the human 7636del9 mutation show an increased susceptibility to developing tumors.