Epidemiological and nutrition transition in developing countries: impact on human health and development

Whereas common infectious and parasitic diseases such as malaria and the HIV/AIDS pandemic remain major unresolved health problems in many developing countries, emerging non-communicable diseases relating to diet and lifestyle have been increasing over the last two decades, thus creating a double burden of disease and impacting negatively on already over-stretched health services in these countries. Prevalence rates for type 2 diabetes mellitus and CVD in sub-Saharan Africa have seen a 10-fold increase in the last 20 years. In the Arab Gulf current prevalence rates are between 25 and 35% for the adult population, whilst evidence of the metabolic syndrome is emerging in children and adolescents. The present review focuses on the concept of the epidemiological and nutritional transition. It looks at historical trends in socio-economic status and lifestyle and trends in nutrition-related non-communicable diseases over the last two decades, particularly in developing countries with rising income levels, as well as the other extreme of poverty, chronic hunger and coping strategies and metabolic adaptations in fetal life that predispose to non-communicable disease risk in later life. The role of preventable environmental risk factors for obesity and the metabolic syndrome in developing countries is emphasized and also these challenges are related to meeting the millennium development goals. The possible implications of these changing trends for human and economic development in poorly-resourced healthcare settings and the implications for nutrition training are also discussed.

Components of the peptidome and transcriptome persist in lin wa pi: the dried skin of the Heilongjiang brown frog Rana amurensis as used in Traditional Chinese Medicine

Although the ancient practice of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) utilizes predominantly herbal ingredients, many of which are now the subject of intense scientific scrutiny, significant quantities of animal tissue-derived materials are also employed. Here we have used contemporary molecular techniques to study the material known as lin wa pi, the dried skin of the Heilongjiang brown frog, Rana amurensis, that is used commonly as an ingredient of many medicines, as a general tonic and as a topical antimicrobial/wound dressing. Using a simple technology that has been developed and validated over several years, we have demonstrated that components of both the skin granular gland peptidome and transcriptome persist in this material. Interrogation of the cDNA library constructed from the dried skin by entrapment and amplification of polyadenylated mRNA, using a "shotgun" primer approach and 3'-RACE, resulted in the cloning of cDNAs encoding the precursors of five putative antimicrobial peptides. Two (ranatuerin-2AMa and ranatuerin-2AMb) were obvious homologs of a previously described frog skin peptide family, whereas the remaining three were of sufficient structural novelty to be named amurins 1-3. Mature peptides were each identified in reverse phase HPLC fractions of boiling water extracts of skin and their structures confirmed by MS/MS fragmentation sequencing. Components of traditional Chinese medicines of animal tissue origin may thus contain biologically active peptides that survive the preparation procedures and that may contribute to therapeutic efficacy.