The team for the first time assembled the current best evidence from worldwide research conducted since World War II on the essential personal needs of older people in diet and exercise, safe and warm homes in good repair, human relations and belonging, medical care and personal hygiene, and getting about. These basic needs were translated into practicable everyday ways of living, and their minimum personal costs were established for the over 65s in England today.

The analysis demonstrated that minimum income needs as assessed in this study were close to 50% greater than the UK state pension. The minimum income requirement was also appreciably more than the Government's official safety net for basic necessities after means testing, the Pension Credit Guarantee. In addition, the Pension Credit Guarantee also has to meet extra costs of disability which were not included in the present study.

This study, which was initially funded by Age Concern England, sought to translate half a century of international research effort on people's health and well-being into practical everyday guidance on healthy ways of living and their minimum cost for older people. By focusing on minimum income requirements, the results provide a common-sense and concrete input into the current debate on attainable health as a universal human right, and a focus for the health community striving to reach all of the population.

Adoption by Governments of the minimum income approach would be a definitive step against persistent inequalities in health among older people.

lshtm.ac/

This finding reveals for the first time a limit to how the body naturally regulates levels of prostanoids produced by fish and vegetable oil. If both oil types are present in the body, levels of prostanoids from fish oil will, in general, be higher than those coming from vegetable oil, but mechanisms such as the one involving COX-2 can counter this trend.

The researchers are now investigating why COX-1 and COX-2 act differently. One possibility is that since COX-2 has two binding sites, it can bind to both fish and vegetable oils. When fish oil binds to one of the two sites, it may prepare the other site to bind more easily to vegetable oil, a process called allostery.

Smith and his colleagues hope that by further investigating how prostanoids are regulated in the body, they can design potential drugs that bind to COX-2 and decrease levels of the vegetable oil prostanoids.

"The drugs that are currently used to inhibit COX-1 and COX-2 provide relief from the symptoms of inflammation and pain, but they still have many side effects," Smith says. "By better understanding how prostanoids work at the cellular level, we hope to find new ways to regulate inflammation and create better anti-inflammatory drugs."

asbmb