Washington, September 6 (ANI): Studying 30 students at the University of Granada who follow Ramadan, nutritionists have come to the conclusion that the body's nutritional requirements during the ritual can be fulfilled by consuming diets low in fat and rich in proteins and carbohydrates.

Carried out in the departments of Nutrition and Bromatology and Chemistry-Physics of the university, the study revealed that macronutrient consumption levels in this period are not appropriate when compared with the reference recommendations.

The researchers say that the number of daily ingestions drops to two or three, with regard to the four or five ingestions of the rest of the population in this period.

They have found that because of the diet, corporal fat increases and muscular mass falls.

The students involved in the study were all aged between 19 and 27, and the studied population included 36 per cent women and 64 per cent men.

Findings from this population were compared with those from a control population group, made up by thirty university volunteers who did not follow the Ramadan.

The feeding of those who followed Ramadan suffered an increase of lipid ingestion, which involved 48 per cent of total energy, against the recommended 30 per cent, by decreasing proteins, which represented nine per cent of the total energy, against the recommended 15 per cent, and a decrease of carbohydrates to 43 per cent, against the 50-60 per cent recommended.

The researchers insist that their work shows that it is possible to prevent an unbalanced diet during the Ramadan period.

Based on their observations, they have proposed a diet in which fat has been reduced and proteins and carbohydrates increased, according to the daily needs of this young population group.

The study has been published in the journals 'European journal of lipid science and technology', 'Nutrition', 'Analytical Chimica Acta' and 'Journal of nutrition'. (ANI)

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Washington, Sept 6 (ANI): Scientists suggest that the best way to treat malaria is to avoid using same drug for everyone, and opt for multiple first-line therapies.

With the help of a computer model, a research team from Princeton University and Resources for the Future has found that many governments worldwide are recommending the wrong kind of malaria treatment.

Despite the availability of many drugs many countries have been recommend using what is known as a single first-line therapy- that is, using one drug repeatedly with many patients.

Lead researcher Maciej Boni said that countries could cut the death rate and forestall the development of drug resistance if a variety of different drugs were distributed to patients.

This approach, known as multiple first-line therapies or MFT, can be usey making sure different drugs cost about the same, so that patients would not be forced into buying the cheapest available drug.

"What we found is that using multiple first-line therapies is the best way to avoid treatment failures and to delay the development of resistance for as long as possible," said Boni, who recently has joined the staff of the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Boni, a mathematician and an evolutionary biologist, along with co-authors, Ramanan Laxminarayan and David Smith, designed a computer model with inputs based on more than 100 years of malaria field research.

They simulated dozens of treatment paths for a malaria outbreak among patients contrasting many variations of the status quo strategy of using a single first-line therapy with one employing MFT.

They found that there were major benefits to employing an MFT strategy, namely, fewer cases of malaria, fewer unsuccessful drug treatments, and a very significant delay in the onset of drug resistance in the parasites.

However, the researchers suggested that multiple effective therapies may not always be available. In some African countries where drug-resistance is already widespread, the only effective therapies are a class of drugs known as artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs).

"MFT does not necessarily solve all our problems," said Boni. "Antimalarial drug development needs to continue with the hope of producing novel and highly effective antimalarials that can be deployed alongside ACTs."

The study appears in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (ANI)

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