Source: Daily Dose
04/12/2012
– After promising research showing simple rice bran hulls can boost a body’s ability to fight back against salmonella and other gut-attacking pathogens, a CSU research team got another $1 million to extend their work.

The results could have dramatic implications for food safety research, if rice bran continues to prove useful. The common substance is already used in India for other medicinal purposes.

Elizabeth Ryan is the lead researcher, as an assistant professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at CSU. The so-called “Phase II” funding comes from a series of grants funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with its work on world innovations.

(Researchers at CSU rival CU-Boulder are part of another “gut” study, trying to map the many microbes in the average stomach.)

Salmonella and another pathogen that rice bran appears to affect, rotovirus, cause debilitating and sometimes deadly bouts of severe diarrhea in many underdeveloped parts of the world. Rice bran is the brown hull on white rice, usually thrown away. It has “untapped health properties,” Ryan said in an interview. The next phase of the study will include testing different varieties of rice to compare properties and effectiveness.

They will also extend testing into humans, by offering variations of rice bran to kids in vulnerable parts of Asia and Africa, Ryan said. Designing those studies is tricky, though, since researchers must be able to sort out the effects of rice bran vs. the effects of other non-targeted pathogens, general unhealthy conditions, and dietary differences in populations.

Rice “is a staple food for half of humanity,” Ryan noted, so isolating the best varieties with the most healthful properties will be another trick. She said she’s excited about the chance to help agricultural crop research move from basic questions of the most efficient crops to other questions about quality of crops and the as-yet-unknown life-giving properties they might offer.

Steve Dow and Jan Leach of CSU are co-researchers on the grant.