Note: The study was supported by the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute – Ames Foundation and a grant from the UCSF Clinical and Translational Science Institute Pilot Awards program (formerly Strategic Opportunities Support program) to co-first author Mustafa Bseikri, MD.
A pilot clinical trial by UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute (CHORI) researchers has found that targeted nutrient therapy can improve lung function in obese individuals with asthma, without requiring weight loss. The study, published on July 19 in The FASEB Journal, demonstrated that eating two CHORI-Bars daily for eight weeks improved lung function in obese adolescents with a form of asthma that is resistant to usual treatments.
Bruce Ames, PhD, senior scientist at CHORI and senior author of the FASEB paper, along with his colleague Mark Shigenaga, PhD, a co-author and expert in gut health, originated the idea for the CHORI-Bar, a patent-pending supplement bar designed to fill nutritional gaps in poor diets. The bar was developed over a period of 10 years, guided by some 15 small clinical trials, by a team of scientists in Ames’ group at CHORI, in collaboration with the USDA’s Healthy Processed Foods Research Unit.Bruce Ames, PhD, has developed the CHORI-Bar over 10 years to fill nutritional gaps in poor diets.
“The obese are eating the worst diets,” said Ames. “Our group had previously demonstrated that the CHORI-Bar improved metabolic health in obese, otherwise healthy, adults. We wanted to test whether the bar would also benefit people that had been diagnosed with obesity-linked conditions, such as diabetes and hypertension.”