Alexander G. Haslberger

University of Vienna | UniWien

The importance of diet and lifestyle in maintaining overall health has long been recognised. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have emerged as key players in the intricate interplay between health and disease. This study, including 305 participants, examined the role of miRNAs from capillary blood as indicators of individual physiological characteristics, diet, a...

Several studies report the important role of an altered gut microbiota in the development of obesity, highlighting the potential use of probiotics in the treatment of obesity. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of a novel probiotic approach on the expression of specific miRNAs and mRNAs associated with obesity in combination with th...

Background Psychological stress, as an important cofactor in the development of many acute and chronic diseases, is crucial for general health or well-being, and improved markers are needed to distinguish situations of progressive pathological development, such as depression, anxiety, or burnout, to be recognized at an early stage. Epigenetic bioma...

Dietary spermidine is emerging as a substance with promising health-promoting and healthy ageing-promoting properties. Its autophagy-inducing potential has been especially well-documented. This process is suspected to be at the root of the life-prolonging effects of fasting and in-vivo spermidine supplementation. In humans, high dietary spermidine...

Dysregulation of epigenetic mechanisms has been recognized to play a crucial role in cancer development, but these mechanisms vary between sexes. Therefore, we focused on sex-specific differences in the context of cancer-based data from a recent study. A total of 12 cell-free DNA methylation targets in CpG-rich promoter regions and 48 miRNAs were a...

Background Regular, especially sustained exercise plays an important role in the prevention and treatment of multiple chronic diseases. Some of the underlying molecular and cellular mechanisms behind the adaptive response to physical activity are still unclear, but recent findings suggest a possible role of epigenetic mechanisms, especially miRNAs,...

Reviews current trends and developments in precision nutrition Focusses on preventive strategies for metabolic diseases, aging and in neurology Discusses the role of functional food and nutraceuticals

The different views and tensions between foods for growth of the body and foods for health and disease prevention can be seen since philosophers of the antique and middle ages. The efforts to develop foods for the improvement of health for persons at risk, e.g., elderly have resulted in exciting scientific and medical innovations. But developments...

The transition from undernutrition to overnutrition in many parts of the world as well as the integration of the fast developments of molecular biology has strongly impacted nutritional sciences. Especially the increasing understanding of interactions between genetics, epigenetics, microbiota, the immune system, and nervous system and consequences...

Aging is a multifactorial biological process manifested by different characteristic changes at the molecular and cellular level affecting multiple physiological functions and immune competence. While varying enormously between individuals, aging and its underlying mechanisms increase the susceptibility to many diseases. Research focusing on individ...

The main argument for the optimization of nutritional strategies in athletes, besides improved performance, is the preservation of health and the prevention of unwanted training effects. This highlights the importance of personalized nutrition strategies, as well as functional foods and phytonutrients based on individual requirements which can be p...

In unserem Gesundheitssystem werden Krankheiten in der Re-gel erst nach dem Auftreten von Symptomen und da-her oft in späten Stadien behandelt. Die präven-tive und personalisierte Medizin (personalised, precision medicine) ver-sucht, dieses Paradigma zu ändern, indem sie das Risiko des Einzelnen für be-stimmte Krankheiten durch Biomarker überwacht....

Background: Viruses significantly affect global health. The few available viricidal and antiviral therapies are expensive and often associated with unwanted side effects. Functional foods as plant extracts (nutraceuticals) are epigenetically active, and multi-target antiviral compounds that affect several steps of the viral life cycle and host prot...

Healthy mitochondria and their epigenetic control are essential to maintaining health, extending life expectancy, and improving cardiovascular performance. Strategies to maintain functional mitochondria during aging include training; cardiovascular exercise has been suggested as the best method, but strength training has also been identified as ess...

Liquid biopsy-based tests emerge progressively as an important tool for cancer diagnostics and management. Currently, researchers focus on a single biomarker type and one tumor entity. This study aimed to create a multi-analyte liquid biopsy test for the simultaneous detection of several solid cancers. For this purpose, we analyzed cell-free DNA (c...

Background: Viruses significantly affect global health. The few available viricidal and antiviral therapies are expensive

4,4ʹ-Isopropylidenediphenol (bisphenol A, BPA), a chemical substance that is widely used mainly as a monomer in the production of polycarbonates, in epoxy resins, and in thermal papers, is suspected to cause epigenetic modifications with potentially toxic consequences. Due to its negative health effects, BPA is banned in several products and is rep...

Functional food and healthy aging

Fasten und Mikrobiota

Background: Regular, especially sustained exercise training plays an important role in the prevention and treatment of multiple chronic diseases. Some of the underlying molecular and cellular mechanisms behind the adaptive response to physical activity are still unclear, but recent findings suggest a possible role of epigenetic mechanisms, especial...

Please cite this as: Lilja S., Bäck H., Stoll C., Mayer A., Pointner A., Hippe B., Krammer U., Haslberger A. Increased Sirtuin expression, senescence regulating miRNAs, mtDNA, and bifidobacteria correlate with wellbeing and skin appearance after Sirtuin-activating drink. ABSTRACT Background: Sirtuins attract high attention considering

Introduction: Topical investigations have demonstrated that oxidative stress and inflammation play key roles in biological aging and determine incidence and course of age-related diseases. Lifestyle and environmental factors hugely impact epigenetic regulation and DNA stability with telomere attrition and epigenetic instability providing a potentia...

Periodic fasting (PF) is an increasingly popular approach that assists in the management of metabolic and inflammatory diseases as well as in preventing mechanisms involved in aging. However, little is known about the effects of fasting on gut microbiota and its impact on the epige-netic regulation of metabolically relevant enzymes, especially sirt...

Aging and the emergence of age-associated illnesses are one of the major challenges of our present society. Alzheimer's disease (AD) is closely associated with aging and is defined by increasing memory loss and severe dementia. Currently, there are no therapy options available that halt AD progression. This work investigates three hallmarks of the...

Background: Fasting and fasting mimetics - bioactive compounds mimicking fasting effects, are of growing interest as potential means to slow down the aging process and increase health span. Sirtuins are known as enzymes that interfere with mitochondrial energy metabolism and molecular pathways involved in longevity. Although their activation is det...

Aim: We investigated different bioactive compounds including epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), anthocyanidin, resveratrol, phloretin, spermidine, butyrate, and β-hydroxybutyrate with regard to their effect on SIRT3 via NRF2 and modulation of the proinflammatory senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP) in senescence induced 3T3-L1 preadipocy...

Background: The insertion of a transgene into a plant organism can, in addition to the intended effects, lead to unintended effects in the plants. To uncover such effects, we compared maize grains of two genetically modified varieties containing NK603 (AG8025RR2, AG9045RR2) to their non-transgenic counterparts (AG8025conv, AG9045conv) using high-t...

Please cite this article as: Haslberger A.G., Jakob U., Hippe B., Karlic H., Mechanisms of selected functional foods against viral infections with a view on COVID-19; Mini review. ABSTRACT Following research obtained from the previous SARS and MERS outbreaks, we've gained knowledge about the mechanisms of bioactive plant ingredients against the att...

Background: Preterm delivery (PTD) represents an important public health and therapeutic challenge. Despite the reported link between the composition of vaginal microbiome and PTD, previous studies were inconsistent in their conclusions and utilized non-uniform designs. We performed an independent case-control study carried out on the Slovenian pop...

Purpose: Aim of the study was to find out if gallic acid (GA), a common phenolic in plant foods, prevents obesity induced DNA damage which plays a key role in the induction of overweight associated cancer. Methods: Male and female C57BL6/J mice were fed with a low fat or a high fat diet (HFD). The HFD group received different doses GA (0, 2.6-20...

Scope : Obesity causes DNA damage, which is causally related to several disorders including cancer, infertility and cognitive dysfunctions. Aim of this study was to investigate whether weight loss improves the integrity of the genetic material. Methods and Results : Overweight mice were fed ad libitum either with a Western diet (WD), with a 40% ca...

Use of Epigenetics in the personalized prevention and therapy of lifestyle associated diseases

MON810 maize was first commercialized in 1997 and it is one of the most marketed genetically modified crops worldwide. Although MON810 maize has been studied extensively, its genetic stability and epigenetics have not been studied very well. We used next-generation sequencing to investigate the genetics and epigenetics of the cry1Ab coding region a...

Health authorities are alarmed worldwide about the increase of obesity and overweight in the last decades which lead to adverse health effects including inflammation, cancer, accelerated aging and infertility. We evaluated the state of knowledge concerning the impact of elevated body mass on genomic instability. Results of investigations with human...

Clostridia are widespread and some of them are serious human pathogens. Identification of Clostridium spp. is important for managing microbiological risks in the food industry. Samples derived from sheep and cattle carcasses from a slaughterhouse in Iran were analyzed by MALDI-TOF MS using direct transfer and extended direct transfer sample prepara...

The microbiota-gut-brain axis is a bidirectional homeostatic route of communication between both of the organs direct via receptors of the CNS or via epigenetic mechanisms of divers metabolites e.g. SCFA, GABA, β-hydroxybutyrate. Thus, a modulation of gut microbiota via nutrition, lifestyle etc. might be effective for emotional status and depressiv...

Forty-four samples of traditional Doogh and yoghurt were collected from 13 regions of 4 provinces in west of Iran (13 area) and analyzed using molecular methods including PCR, denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) of 16S rDNA, and sequencing. Moreover, collected samples as well as samples from industrially Doogh were analyzed with quantita...

Obesity-or diabetes-induced oxidative stress is discussed as a major risk factor for DNA damage. Vitamin E and many polyphenols exhibit antioxidative activities with consequences on epigenetic regulation of inflammation and DNA repair. The present study investigated the counteraction of oxidative stress by vitamin E in the colorectal cancer cell li...

Background and Objective: Minimizing the exposure to nitrate and nitrite and therefore reducing the level of potentially carcinogenic nitrosamines is desired due to the strong public demand and political controversy around this issue in many countries. The present study was designed to investigate antibacterial activity of five different types of e...

Background and Objective: Minimizing the exposure to nitrate and nitrite and therefore reducing the level of potentially carcinogenic nitrosamines is desired due to the strong public demand and political controversy around this issue in many countries. The present study was designed to investigate antibacterial activity of five different types of e...

Bacteria and bacterial derived metabolites are known to influence the host epigenetic regulation patterns such as DNA methylation and histone modifications, thus altering the expression of critical genes in pathologic processes, for example in metabolic syndrome. Fermentation end products, especially butyrate and LPS (lipopolysaccharides), the latt...

Forty-four samples of traditional Doogh and yoghurt were collected from 13 regions of 4 provinces in west of Iran (13 area) and analyzed using molecular methods including PCR, denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) of 16S rDNA, and sequencing. Moreover, collected samples as well as samples from industrially Doogh were analyzed with quantita...

Obesity is associated with low-grade inflammation, increased ROS production and DNA damage. Supplementation with antioxidants might ameliorate DNA damage and support epigenetic regulation of DNA repair. C57BL/6J male mice were fed a high-fat (HFD) or a control diet (CD) with and without vitamin E supplementation (4.5 mg/kg body weight (b.w.)) for f...

Objective: Equol has been shown to improve skin health and regeneration, due to its antioxidative, phytoestrogenic and epigenetic characteristics. The effects of a topical intervention on skin structure, telomere length and epigenetic markers in skin cells were analysed. Methods: 64 participants were divided in four groups and three of them trea...

The examination of transgenic loci is an integral part of biosafety legislation in the European Union (EU). The EU directive 2001/18/EC requires any genetically modified (GM) event to be stable. Mutations in the nucleotide sequence of GM events must be avoided in the production and use of seeds. In the present work, an F1 and an F2 generation of th...

Obesity as a multifactorial disorder involves low-grade inflammation, increased reactive oxygen species incidence, gut microbiota aberrations, and epigenetic consequences. Thus, prevention and therapies with epigenetic active antioxidants, ( - )-Epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG), are of increasing interest. DNA damage, DNA methylation and gene expr...

Objective: In vitro and in vivo studies in rodents have demonstrated many health promoting properties of individual phytochemicals including antioxidative and chemopreventive effects. Recently combination of substances is claimed to enhance activity. The objective of this study was to investigate health benefits of a daily consumption of a combinat...

Introduction Obesity and its associated comorbidities are major health problems worldwide. Obesity is accompanied by a systemic low-grade inflammation with elevated blood-levels of inflammatory mediators like Interleukin-6. Interleukin-6 was described to be regulated by epigenetic mechanisms such as DNA methylation.

Humans vary in their need and response to diet. Genetic dispositions, such as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are frequently used for clustering consumers in metabolic types (metabotypes), according to individual characteristics of energy extraction from food or risk for metabolic diseases. Results are then used for individualized concepts f...

August 23-24, 2017 | Toronto, Canada allied academies INTERNATIONAL OBESITY, BARIATRIC AND METABOLIC SURGERY SUMMIT AND EXPO O besity and overweight are important risk factors for diseases, including many forms of cancer. It is known that damage of the genetic material plays a key role in malignant transformation, therefore the aim of present study...

Bacterial contamination during slaughtering process is a safety problem and concern for shelf life in meat production. We compare two different slaughter lines, sheep and cattle samples from Iranian slaughterhouse using PCR‐denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) analysis for evaluation the sources of bacterial contaminations. Bacterial dive...

Dietary habits, lifestyle, medication, and food additives affect the composition and functions of the GI microbiota. Metabolic syndrome is already known to be associated with an aberrant gut microbiota affecting systemic low-grade inflammation, which is also outlined by differing epigenetic patterns. Thus, structural changes and compositional evalu...

This work were aimed to (a) determination of minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC) of Carum copticum essential oil (EO) against Escherichia. coli O157:H7 in vitro Trypticase Soy Broth, (TSB) and in ground beef; (b) evaluation of the effect of sub-inhibitory concentrations (sub-MICs) of EO on the growth...

Faecalibacterium prausnitzii is one of the main butyrate producers in the healthy human gut. Information on its genetic diversity is lacking, although two genetic phylotypes have been differentiated. In the present study, F. prausnitzii phylotypes were examined in faeces of obese and type two diabetes with similar eating behaviour compared to a lea...

To ensure quality management during the production processes of probiotics and for efficacy testing in vivo, accurate tools are needed for the identification and quantification of probiotic strains. In this study, a strain-specific qPCR assay based on Suppression Subtractive Hybridisation (SSH) for identifying unique sequences, was developed to qua...

An impaired gut microbiota together with affected host-microbial interactions is known to be an important element in the pathogenesis of digestive problems. Based on this knowledge we suggested a colon hydrotherapy in combination with a probiotic intervention as effective therapy. Individuals suffering from digestive problems, namely I BS, received...

Background: Personalised medicine has gained attention as a result of the advances of genomic research in the last decade. This includes the rise in epigenetic research, which focuses on the environmental influences on the genome and examines biomarkers that might be useful for cancer therapy. This study investigates the epigenetic biomarkers for b...

Background: Personalised medicine has gained attention as a result of the advances of genomic research in the last decade. This includes the rise in epigenetic research, which focuses on the environmental influences on the genome and examines biomarkers that might be useful for cancer therapy. This study investigates the epigenetic biomarkers for b...

Objective: OMICs research has become of great interest over the last years and enabled the research community to acquisition an increasing amount of data. In a prior study by our group, we have employed a novel positional integrative approach. For this second study we utilized the same integration method but weighed each individual data source tryi...

The aim of our study was the characterization and evaluation of isolated lactic acid bacteria(LAB) from traditionally produced Iranian Doogh and detection of the probable probiotic characteristics of the analyzed bacteria. We isolated 13 gram-positive and catalase-negative strains from traditionally produced Doogh and yoghurt. These strains and thr...

Synthetic cannabinoids (SCs) are marketed worldwide as legal surrogates for marihuana. In order to predict potential health effects in consumers and to elucidate the underlying mechanisms of action, we investigated the impact of a representative of the cyclohexylphenols, CP47,497-C8, which binds to both cannabinoid receptors, on protein expression...

Diabetes mellitus type 2 (DMT2) is accompanied by systemic low-grade inflammation with elevated levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6), which is encoded by a gene (IL-6) previously shown to be regulated by DNA methylation. We investigated seven CpG sites in IL-6 in individuals with DMT2, obese individuals and lean controls. Further, the DMT2 group received...

Genetic and environmental factors, especially nutrition and lifestyle, have been discussed in the literature for their relevance to epidemic obesity. Gene-environment interactions may need to be understood for an improved understanding of the causes of obesity, and epigenetic mechanisms are of special importance. Consequences of epigenetic mechanis...

Dietary fiber and prebiotics exert a great impact on health-promoting food for mankind. Under this aspect a general overview is given about the bioavailability of carbohydrates and their influence on dietary fiber intake and about the developing of the prebiotic concept and specific functional foods. Moreover, the occurrence and chemical compositio...

Nutrients or even diets affect the epigenome by lifelong remodeling. Nutritional imbalances are associated with noncommunicable diseases. Thus, nutriepigenomics is a promising field in the treatment of complex human diseases. The epigenome is susceptible to changes and can be shaped by nutritional states, especially in prenatal period through trans...

An impaired gut microbiota has been reported as an important factor in the pathogenesis of obesity. Weight reduction has already been mentioned to improve gut microbial subpopulations involved in inflammatory processes, though other subpopulations still need further investigation. Thus, weight reduction in the context of a fasting program together...

Colonization of the intestine by trillions of bacteria plays important roles in gut cell physiology and in metabolism, and increasingly recognized roles in immune system homeostasis, as well as multiple major organ and rheumatologic diseases driven by innate and adaptive immune responses (1). The human intestinal microbiome vastly differs from indi...