| Budget Amount *help |
¥17,160,000 (Direct Cost: ¥13,200,000、Indirect Cost: ¥3,960,000)
Fiscal Year 2017: ¥3,380,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,600,000、Indirect Cost: ¥780,000)
Fiscal Year 2016: ¥4,550,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,500,000、Indirect Cost: ¥1,050,000)
Fiscal Year 2015: ¥9,230,000 (Direct Cost: ¥7,100,000、Indirect Cost: ¥2,130,000)
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| Outline of Final Research Achievements |
Adequate zinc intake is indispensable to maintain health, because zinc plays critical roles in a variety of physiological processes. In the small intestine, zinc transporters ZIP4 and ZNT1 play essential roles for zinc absorption, and thus food components with the activity of increasing ZIP4 or ZNT1 expression would be a potential enhancer of zinc absorption. We here found extracts prepared form several spices have the activity to increase the abundance of both human and mouse ZIP4. Unfortunately, we found no extracts to increase ZNT1 expression. We found it difficult to evaluate whether or not food extracts have positive effects on zinc absorption in rats, because of low sensitivity to measure zinc absorption rates through ZIP4 and ZNT1. We found several enzymes activities nicely correlated with zinc levels in the diets, even in the case of low zinc diets. The activities would be useful as a marker for evaluation of zinc absorption rates.
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