NCCAM Adds Four New Research Centers
The National Institutes of Health's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) has added four new Centers of Excellence for Research on Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CERCs) to its research centers program.
The new centers and their projects are as follows:
Wisconsin Center for the Neuroscience and Psychophysiology of Meditation; Principal Investigator: Richard J. Davidson, PhD; University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Davidson's team will examine the impact of two forms of meditationloving-kindness/compassion meditation and mindfulness meditationon the brain and body, focusing on the regulation of emotion and on emotional reactivity. Potential applications in health include biological and behavioral processes linked with emotions and/or stress, such as recurrent depression.
Metabolic and Immunologic Effects of Meditation; Principal Investigator: Frederick M. Hecht, MD; University of California, San Francisco.
Hecht and his colleagues will study a program combining mindfulness meditation, mindful eating, and a diet and exercise program for use in obesity and metabolic syndrome. They will test whether this program helps alter participants' hormonal responses to stress and helps enhance and maintain weight loss.
CAM as Countermeasures Against Infectious and Inflammatory Disease; Principal Investigator: Mark A. Jutila, PhD; Montana State University, Bozeman.
This center will study biologically based CAM therapies and their effects on immune system function in infectious and inflammatory diseases. One project focuses on effects of botanical extractsfrom apple polyphenols, which are concentrated in apple skins, and from yamoa, which comes from the bark of an African gum treeon white blood cells, using models of infection and inflammation of the intestinal mucosa. A second project examines two compounds in licorice rootglycyrrhizin and 18-glyrrhetinic acidfor their potential antiviral effects in models of influenza and stomach virus. A third project will focus on bacterial products to see how they treat autoimmune diseases, like arthritis, which may also help build understanding of probiotics' action.
Center for Herbal Research on Colorectal Cancer; Principal Investigator: Chun-Su Yuan, MD, PhD; University of Chicago, Illinois.
Yuan and his colleagues will examine the antitumor effects of different preparations of the herbs American ginseng (Panax quinquefolius) and notoginseng (Panax notoginseng). They will seek to learn more, through laboratory and animal studies, about how these herbs act upon cellular and molecular pathways of the mechanisms of cancer inhibition.
The grants provide five years of support and bring the total number of CERCs to 11. To learn more about NCCAM's research centers, go to www.nccam.nih.gov/training/centers/.
The National Institutes of Health's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) has added four new Centers of Excellence for Research on Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CERCs) to its research centers program.You have reached your article limit for the month. Subscribe now to access this article plus other member-only content.
- Award-winning Medical Content
- Latest Advances & Development in Medicine
- Unbiased Content