NEWS - A dash of onion halts bone loss in rats

[Guest guest]

A dash of onion halts bone loss in rats

4/8/2005

By: Reuters Health

NEW YORK (Reuters Health), Apr 8 - Onions can spice up your meals -- and

maybe strengthen your bones, preliminary study findings suggest.

Investigators from the University of Bern in Switzerland found that after

eating a small fraction of an ounce of onion with their food, rats became

significantly less likely to lose bone.

These findings suggest that adding onion to food may help people fight off

the bone-thinning disease osteoporosis, study author Dr. Rudolf Brenneisen

told Reuters Health.

He added that people would need to eat at least 400 grams - or 14 ounces -

of onions each day to equal the amount rats ate during the study.

Brenneisen noted that this is not the first study to show that what you add

to your food can add to the health of your bones. For instance, he and his

colleagues have shown that other vegetables and fruits may also inhibit bone

loss in rats.

The researcher added that people using diet to strengthen their bones should

make sure to include dairy products, since those foods can also strengthen

bones.

To look further into whether onion helps keep bones strong and healthy,

Brenneisen and his colleagues fed rats 1 gram of onion, then tested them to

see how their bones were faring.

The findings, which appear in the Journal of Agricultural and Food

Chemistry, show that after eating onions, the rats underwent significantly

less bone resorption, the loss of minerals from the bones that characterizes

osteoporosis. " Onion added to the food of rats inhibited significantly bone

resorption, " according to Brenneisen.

To investigate what in onions was helping bones, the researchers mixed

different components of an onion extract with bone cells.

One onion ingredient --called gamma glutamyl peptide -- appeared to be most

effective at inhibiting bone resorption, suggesting it is responsible for

onion's bone-boosting effects, the authors note.

By Alison McCook

SOURCE: Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, May 4, 2005.

Last Updated: 2005-04-07 13:23:24 -0400 (Reuters Health)

Not an MD

I'll tell you where to go!

Mayo Clinic in Rochester

http://www.mayoclinic.org/rochester

s Hopkins Medicine

http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org