Washington: Diet low in carbohydrates may help prepubescent girls beat risks associated with obesity including diabetes and heart diseases, a new study has suggested.

According to research from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, a reduction in dietary carbohydrates improved various metabolic indicators in overweight African-American girls even in the absence of weight-loss.

The research team placed 26 obese African-American girls ages 9-14 on one of two diets.

One diet drew 43 percent of its calories from carbohydrates, and the other drew 57 percent of calories from carbohydrates.

Washington: A red coloured dye derived from Lichens, which has been used for centuries to colour fabrics and food, may help to reduce the abundance of small toxic protein aggregates in Alzheimer’s disease, a new study has claimed.

The dye, a compound called orcein, and a related substance, called O4, bind preferentially to small amyloid aggregates that are considered to be toxic and cause neuronal dysfunction and memory impairment in Alzheimer’s disease.

O4 binding to small aggregates promotes their conversion into large, mature plaques which researchers assume to be largely non-toxic for neuronal cells.

Protein misfolding is considered to be the cause of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and also Huntington’s disease. In a multistep process, proteins misfold and accumulate into large extra- or intracellular plaques.

Erich Wanker and his team of researchers from Berlin assume that small misfolded protein aggregates that are precursors of mature plaques are toxic for nerve cells and are the reason why they are eventually destroyed.