The study of [...]]]> One of life’s simple pleasures just got a little sweeter. After years of waffling research on coffee and health, even some fear that java might raise the risk of heart disease, a big study finds the opposite: Coffee drinkers are a little more likely to live longer. Regular or decaf doesn’t matter.

The study of 400,000 people is the largest ever done on the issue, and the results should reassure any coffee lovers who think it’s a guilty pleasure that may do harm.

“Our study suggests that’s really not the case,” said lead researcher Neal Freedman of the National Cancer Institute. “There may actually be a modest benefit of coffee drinking.”

No one knows why. Coffee contains a thousand things that can affect health, from helpful antioxidants to tiny amounts of substances linked to cancer. The most widely studied ingredient — caffeine — didn’t play a role in the new study’s results.

It’s not that earlier studies were wrong. There is evidence that coffee can raise LDL, or bad cholesterol, and blood pressure at least short-term, and those in turn can raise the risk of heart disease.

Even in the new study, it first seemed that coffee drinkers were more likely to die at any given time. But they also tended to smoke, drink more alcohol, eat more red meat and exercise less than non-coffee-drinkers. Once researchers took those things into account, a clear pattern emerged: Each cup of coffee per day nudged up the chances of living longer.

The study was done by the National Institutes of Health and AARP. The results are published in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine.

Careful, though — this doesn’t prove that coffee makes people live longer, only that the two seem related. Like most studies on diet and health, this one was based strictly on observing people’s habits and resulting health. So it can’t prove cause and effect.

But with so many people, more than a decade of follow-up and enough deaths to compare, “this is probably the best evidence we have” and are likely to get, said Dr. Frank Hu of the Harvard School of Public Health. He had no role in this study but helped lead a previous one that also found coffee beneficial.

The new one began in 1995 and involved AARP members ages 50 to 71 in California, Florida, Louisiana, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Atlanta and Detroit. People who already had heart disease, a stroke or cancer weren’t included. Neither were folks at diet extremes — too many or too few calories per day.

The rest gave information on coffee drinking once, at the start of the study. “People are fairly consistent in their coffee drinking over their lifetime,” so the single measure shouldn’t be a big limitation, Freedman said.

Of the 402,260 participants, about 42,000 drank no coffee. About 15,000 drank six cups or more a day. Most people had two or three.

By 2008, about 52,000 of them had died. Compared to those who drank no coffee, men who had two or three cups a day were 10 percent less likely to die at any age. For women, it was 13 percent.

Even a single cup a day seemed to lower risk a little: 6 percent in men and 5 percent in women. The strongest effect was in women who had four or five cups a day — a 16 percent lower risk of death.

None of these are big numbers, though, and Freedman can’t say how much extra life coffee might buy.

“I really can’t calculate that,” especially because smoking is a key factor that affects longevity at every age, he said.

Coffee drinkers were less likely to die from heart or respiratory disease, stroke, diabetes, injuries, accidents or infections. No effect was seen on cancer death risk, though.

Other research ties coffee drinking to lower levels of markers for inflammation and insulin resistance. Researchers also considered that people in poor health might refrain from drinking coffee and whether their abstention could bias the results. But the study excluded people with cancer and heart disease — the most common health problems — to minimize this chance. Also, the strongest benefits of coffee drinking were seen in people who were healthiest when the study began.

About two-thirds of study participants drank regular coffee, and the rest, decaf. The type of coffee made no difference in the results.

Hu had this advice for coffee lovers:

— Watch the sugar and cream. Extra calories and fat could negate any benefits from coffee.

— Drink filtered coffee rather than boiled — filtering removes compounds that raise LDL, the bad cholesterol.

Researchers did not look at tea, soda or other beverages but plan to in future analyses.

Lou and Mariann Maris have already compared them. Sipping a local brew at a lakefront coffee shop, the suburban Milwaukee couple told of how they missed coffee after briefly giving it up in the 1970s as part of a health kick that included transcendental meditation and eating vegetarian.

Mariann Maris switched to tea after being treated for breast cancer in 2008, but again missed the taste of coffee. It’s one of life’s great pleasures, especially because her husband makes it, she said.

“Nothing is as satisfying to me as a cup of coffee in the morning,” she said.

___

Online:

New England Journal: http://www.nejm.org

“It’s not that these nutrients are toxic [...]]]> Beta-carotene, selenium and folic acid – taken up to three times their recommended daily allowance, these supplements are probably harmless. But taken at much higher levels as some supplement manufacturers suggest, these three supplements have now been proven to increase the risk of developing a host of cancers.

“It’s not that these nutrients are toxic – they’re essential and we need them, but we need them in a certain balance,” says Tim Byers, MD, MPH, professor of epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health and associate director for prevention and control at the University of Colorado Cancer Center.

Byers is senior author of a commentary recently published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute that discusses the clinical and policy implications of the increased cancer risk from high dose dietary supplements.

“We have a window into less than half of the biology of what these nutrients are doing,” Byers says. “We say generalized things about them, calling them an antioxidant or an essential mineral, but true biology turns out to be more complex than that. The effects of these supplements are certainly not limited to the label we give them. And, as we’ve seen, sometimes the unintended effects include increased cancer risk.”

Currently the FDA regulates dietary supplements as food, but, as Byers and colleagues suggest, supplements, especially at high doses, are more accurately described as inhabiting a mid-ground between food and drugs. Like drugs, supplement ingredients are biologically active – sometimes for better and sometimes for worse

“We need to do a better job as a society in ensuring that the messages people get about value versus risk is accurate for nutritional supplements,” Byers says. “My conclusion is that taking high doses of any particular nutrient is more likely to be a bad thing than a good thing.”

Source: University of Colorado, Denver

Presenting the results at the recent European Society of Hypertension (ESH) European Meeting on [...]]]> May 11, 2012 (London, United Kingdom) — A new meta-analysis, including the most contemporary studies that have examined coffee consumption and risk of cardiovascular events in a general population, has found that moderate intake may help protect against ischemic stroke [1].

Presenting the results at the recent European Society of Hypertension (ESH) European Meeting on Hypertension 2012, Dr Lanfranco D’Elia (Federico II University of Naples, Italy) told heartwire : “The first message is that coffee intake is not associated with a higher risk of stroke,” which he says is reassuring. “Second, the analysis showed that low to moderate intake–one to three cups of coffee per day–was associated with lower risk of stroke in the general population, across a wide range of countries, including some in Europe, the US, and Japan.”

However D’Elia stressed that these results apply to the general population only and that findings with regard to coffee intake and risk in those with cardiovascular disease have been conflicting. Nevertheless, he believes that “one coffee a day is not dangerous for people with heart disease.”

Protective effect independent of most identifiable confounders

D’Elia and colleagues performed a meta-analysis of the available prospective studies, including those that estimated baseline coffee consumption and risk of stroke in the general population, from 1966 to 2011. However, the majority of studies included were performed in the late 2000s, including a recent Swedish study and one from the Netherlands.

One to three cups of coffee per day was associated with lower risk of stroke in the general population.

For this analysis, coffee consumption was stratified into moderate (one to three cups/day), high (three to six), and very high (six or more) and compared with the reference category (zero to one). For each study, the values of relative risk (RR) and their confidence interval were extracted and then combined using a random effect model. Eight general-population studies were included in the analysis, for a total of 11 cohorts (484 757 participants, 7272 stroke events, follow-up two to 24 years).

In the pooled analysis, habitual moderate coffee consumption was associated with decreased risk of stroke (RR 0.86, 95% CI 0.75–0.98; p < 0.02).

Stroke risk in the high-consumption category showed a trend in the same direction, toward a reduction (RR 0.87, 95% CI 0.70–1.08; p=0.02), which reached statistical significance upon sensitivity analysis with the exclusion of a single outlier study (RR 0.81, 95% CI 0.70–0.95; p=0.01).

Habitual very high coffee consumption was not associated with any effect on stroke risk (RR 1.05, p=0.71).

D’Elia said that unlike low to moderate coffee intake, both “high” and “very high” consumption showed a significant heterogeneity between studies.

Statistical analysis did not find any significant sources of heterogeneity (length of follow-up, publication year, gender, countries, etc) that affected the relationship between coffee intake and stroke risk, but he noted, “We cannot exclude the potential limitations of the analysis around the standardization of coffee preparation or different types of coffee.

“The results of this meta-analysis, which included prospective studies of samples of the general population, indicate that coffee consumption is not associated with a higher risk of stroke and that actually habitual moderate consumption may exert a protective effect independently from most identifiable confounders,” he concluded.

Lisa Nainggolan

In a marathon 12-hour session, the panel recommended approval of a supplemental indication for Truvada (emtricitabine/tenofovir disoproxil fumarate) for preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in:

HIV-uninfected men who have sex [...]]]> The US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) Antiviral Drugs Advisory Committee has strongly backed approval of the first-ever drug for the prevention of sexually acquired HIV-1 infection.

In a marathon 12-hour session, the panel recommended approval of a supplemental indication for Truvada (emtricitabine/tenofovir disoproxil fumarate) for preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in:

HIV-uninfected men who have sex with men,

HIV-uninfected partners in serodiscordant couples, and

other individuals (such as sex workers) who are at risk of acquiring HIV through sexual activity.

The panel also urged the agency to “put some teeth into” Gilead’s proposed risk evaluation and mitigation strategy (REMS) because of concerns that healthy people taking Truvada for HIV prevention will be harmed if they become infected with HIV and do not change from single-drug PrEP prophylaxis to a 3-drug combination antiretroviral treatment regimen, that continuing single-drug Truvada after HIV infection will lead to development of Truvada-resistant viral strains, and that taking the PrEP regimen increases the risk for adverse effects, particularly kidney damage.

Truvada (emtricitabine/tenofovir disoproxil fumarate)

The hearing occurred against the background of growing concern that the number of new HIV infections in the United States has remained at about 50,000 per year for the past decade. Most (75%) new HIV infections are in men. Black men have the highest incidence of new HIV overall: Incidence is 8 times higher in blacks and 3 times higher in Hispanics/Latinos than in whites.

The main driver of HIV transmission in the United States is unprotected anal sex between men who have sex with men (MSM), who represent about 2% of the population older than 13 years but account for from 56% to 61% of new HIV infections annually. The number of new HIV infections among 13- to 29-year-old MSM increased 38% from 2006 to 2009, largely because of a 48% increase among young black MSM, according to the FDA background document. Proponents of the Truvada PrEP approach hope that the daily pill will be “another tool in the toolbox” for reducing the continuing spread of HIV.

In support of the requested new indication, Gilead Science presented data from the Preexposure Prophylaxis Initiative (iPrEx) trial, which found that MSM participants who took Truvada daily had a 44% reduction in HIV incidence over the course of 1.2 years of follow-up compared with placebo. The study participants also received monthly HIV testing, free condoms, treatment for other sexually transmitted diseases, and routine counseling and were paid for participation in the study. Even with this supportive structure, nearly half of the study participants had no detectable level of Truvada when tested, suggesting that they were not taking the drug regularly.

Results of the iPrEx study were published online November 23, 2010, in the New England Journal of Medicine. Several speakers during the public comments part of the committee meeting reported that Truvada is already being seen as a “medical condom” (in the words of AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s Whitney Engeran-Cordova) and might be taken intermittently or as a “party drug,” leading to rapid development of Truvada-resistant HIV.

The resistance problem is one reason the FDA took the unusual step of asking that Gilead design a REMS, something that typically happens only when there are concerns about drug toxicity. The proposed REMS includes mailings to about 200,000 healthcare providers; a medication guide for uninfected individuals; voluntary training for primary care prescribers, infectious disease specialists, emergency medicine physicians, obstetrician-gynecologists, and addiction specialists on the importance of strict adherence to daily dosing and of regular monitoring of HIV serostatus; a prescriber safety brochure; an individual safety brochure; and a “TRUVADA for PrEP” wallet card for the patient. The REMS does not require participation by either physician or patient in the education program before making Truvada available.

The REMS plan also does not require a negative HIV test (“documentation of safe use condition”) for a patient to receive each 30-day supply of Truvada, which sparked considerable criticism from the panel.

The possibility of “behavioral compensation” (reduced condom use by a patient who assumes protection from the pill) was dismissed by Gilead speakers but remained a concern for several panelists, who noted that condoms, used correctly, are more than 90% effective at preventing HIV infection.

Panelist and speakers also questioned whether the 44% protection seen in the clinical trial would also occur in “real-world” settings, as it requires daily use by a healthy person of a drug that costs $13,000 per year and carries some risk for adverse effects.

The committee voted 19 to 3 in favor of Truvada PrEP for HIV-uninfected MSM, 19 to 2 (1 abstention) in favor of Truvada PrEP for HIV-uninfected partners of those with HIV, and 12 to 8 (2 abstentions) in favor of Truvada PrEP for others at risk of acquiring HIV through sexual activity. The panel also favored monthly HIV testing and regular monitoring of renal function for those taking Truvada PrEP.

The panel ran out of time before full consideration of the proposed REMS, of postmarketing studies that should be required, and on whether current evidence makes the conduct of placebo-controlled trials of primary HIV prevention unethical.

The FDA is expected to make a final decision on the Truvada prophylaxis indication by June 15. It is already approved as part of combination therapy for treatment of HIV infection.

FDA Antiviral Drugs Advisory Committee Meeting. Silver Spring, Maryland.   May 10, 2012.  Janis C. Kelly

Hari B. Krishnan and colleagues explain that the substance, Bowman-Birk Protease Inhibitor (BBI), has shown promise for preventing [...]]]> Soybeans soaking in warm water could become a new “green” source for production of a cancer-fighting substance now manufactured in a complicated and time-consuming industrial process, scientists are reporting in ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Hari B. Krishnan and colleagues explain that the substance, Bowman-Birk Protease Inhibitor (BBI), has shown promise for preventing certain forms of cancer in clinical trials. Those human tests resulted from evidence of BBI’s beneficial effects, including indications that BBI derived from the large amounts of soybeans in traditional Japanese diets might underpin low cancer mortality rates in Japan. However, the current method of extracting BBI from soybeans is time-consuming and involves harsh chemicals. The scientists set out to see if there might be a greener and more environmentally friendly way of obtaining BBI.

They found that soybean seeds incubated in water at 122 degrees Fahrenheit naturally release large amounts of BBI that can easily be harvested from the water. The protein appeared to be active, with tests showing that it stopped breast cancer cells from dividing in a laboratory dish. “The abundance of BBI in soybean seed exudates by incubating the seeds in warm water provides a simple and alternative method to isolate this low molecular weight protein,” the researchers said.

Source: American Chemical Society

In laboratory rat and cell-culture experiments, the scientists found that metformin, which is commonly used to control blood sugar [...]]]> University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston researchers have discovered that a drug already prescribed to millions of people with diabetes could also have another important use: treating one of the world’s leading causes of blindness.

In laboratory rat and cell-culture experiments, the scientists found that metformin, which is commonly used to control blood sugar levels in type 2 diabetes, also substantially reduced the effects of uveitis, an inflammation of the tissues just below the outer surface of the eyeball. Uveitis causes 10 to 15 percent of all cases of blindness in the United States, and is responsible for an even higher proportion of blindness globally. The only treatment now available for the disorder is steroid therapy, which has serious side effects and cannot be used long-term.

“Uveitis has various causes — the most common are infectious diseases and autoimmune disorders— but they all produce inflammation within the eye,” said UTMB professor Kota V. Ramana, senior author of a paper on the study now online in the journal Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science. “Metformin inhibits the process that causes that inflammation.”

The scientists discovered metformin’s efficacy when they tested it in rats given an endotoxin that mimicked the inflammatory effects of bacterial infection. The results showed clearly that metformin was a very effective anti-uveitis agent.

“We found that the drug is therapeutic as well as preventive — if we gave our rats the drug beforehand, they didn’t develop uveitis, and if we gave it after uveitis had developed, it was therapeutic,” said UTMB professor Satish Srivastava, also an author of the IOVS paper. “Metformin’s strong anti-inflammatory properties make this possible.”

According to the researchers, metformin works by activating an enzyme called AMPK, which in turn damps down the activity of the protein NF-kappa B. The inhibition of NF-kappa B suppresses the production of inflammatory signaling molecules — cytokines and chemokines — needed to initiate and sustain uveitis.

Because metformin is already used so widely as a therapy for diabetes, the UTMB scientists believe that it has a good chance of being rapidly adopted as an anti-uveitis drug.

“I think after a few more pre-clinical studies are done, we can get this drug to patients in a shorter time than usual,” Ramana said. “Its safety is already known, so all that we need to see is its efficacy in humans.”

Source: University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston

On average, women with breast cancer lived two years longer than men in the biggest study yet of the [...]]]> Men rarely get breast cancer, but those who do often don’t survive as long as women, largely because they don’t even realize they can get it and are slow to recognize the warning signs, researchers say.

On average, women with breast cancer lived two years longer than men in the biggest study yet of the disease in males.

The study found that men’s breast tumors were larger at diagnosis, more advanced and more likely to have spread to other parts of the body. Men were also diagnosed later in life; in the study, they were 63 on average, versus 59 for women.

Many men have no idea that they can get breast cancer, and some doctors are in the dark, too, dismissing symptoms that would be an automatic red flag in women, said study leader Dr. Jon Greif, a breast cancer surgeon in Oakland, Calif.

The American Cancer Society estimates 1 in 1,000 men will get breast cancer, versus 1 in 8 women. By comparison, 1 in 6 men will get prostate cancer, the most common cancer in men.

“It’s not really been on the radar screen to think about breast cancer in men,” said Dr. David Winchester, a breast cancer surgeon in NorthShore University HealthSystem in suburban Chicago who was not involved in the study. Winchester treats only a few men with breast cancer each year, compared with at least 100 women.

The researchers analyzed 10 years of national data on breast cancer cases, from 1998 to 2007. A total of 13,457 male patients diagnosed during those years were included, versus 1.4 million women. The database contains about 75 percent of all U.S. breast cancer cases.

The men who were studied lived an average of about eight years after being diagnosed, compared with more than 10 years for women. The study doesn’t indicate whether patients died of breast cancer or something else.

Greif prepared a summary of his study for presentation Friday at a meeting of American Society of Breast Surgeons in Phoenix.

Dr. Akkamma Ravi, a breast cancer specialist at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, said the research bolsters results in smaller studies and may help raise awareness. Because the disease is so rare in men, research is pretty scant, and doctors are left to treat it the same way they manage the disease in women, she said.

Some doctors said one finding in the study suggests men’s breast tumors might be biologically different from women’s: Men with early-stage disease had worse survival rates than women with early-stage cancer. But men’s older age at diagnosis also might explain that result, Greif said.

The causes of breast cancer in men are not well-studied, but some of the same things that increase women’s chances for developing it also affect men, including older age, cancer-linked gene mutations, a family history of the disease, and heavy drinking.

There are no formal guidelines for detecting breast cancer in men. The American Cancer Society says routine, across-the-board screening of men is unlikely to be beneficial because the disease is so rare.

For men at high risk because of a strong family history or genetic mutations, mammograms and breast exams may be helpful, but men should discuss this with their doctors, the group says.

Men’s breast cancer usually shows up as a lump under or near a nipple. Nipple discharge and breasts that are misshapen or don’t match are also possible signs that should be checked out.

Tom More, 67, of Custer, Wash., was showering when he felt a pea-size lump last year near his right nipple. Because a golfing buddy had breast cancer, More didn’t put off seeing his doctor. The doctor told More that he was his first male breast cancer patient.

Robert Kaitz, a computer business owner in Severna Park, Md., thought the small growth under his left nipple was just a harmless cyst, like ones that had been removed from his back. By the time he had it checked out in 2006, almost two years later, the lump had started to hurt.

The diagnosis was a shock.

“I had no idea in the world that men could even get breast cancer,” Kaitz said. He had a mastectomy, and 25 nearby lymph nodes were removed, some with cancer. Chemotherapy and radiation followed.

Tests showed Kaitz, 52, had a BRCA genetic mutation that has been linked to breast and ovarian cancer in women. He may have gotten the mutation from his mother, who is also a breast cancer survivor. It has also been linked to prostate cancer, which Kaitz was treated for in 2009.

A powerboater and motorcycle buff, Kaitz jokes about being a man with a woman’s disease but said he is not embarrassed and doesn’t mind showing his breast surgery scar.

The one thing he couldn’t tolerate was tamoxifen, a hormone treatment commonly used to help prevent breast cancer from returning in women. It can cause menopausal symptoms, so he stopped taking it.

“It killed me. I tell you what — night sweats, hot flashes, mood swings, depression. I’d be sitting in front of the TV watching a drama and the tears wouldn’t stop pouring,” he said.

Doctors sometimes prescribe antidepressants or other medication to control those symptoms.

Now Kaitz gets mammograms every year. Men need to know that “we’re not immune,” he said. “We have the same plumbing.”

AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner

The study found that people who chose to put in more effort — even in [...]]]> Whether someone is a “go-getter” or a “slacker” may depend on individual differences in the brain chemical dopamine, according to new research in the May 2 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. The findings suggest that dopamine affects cost-benefit analyses.

The study found that people who chose to put in more effort — even in the face of long odds — showed greater dopamine response in the striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, areas of the brain important in reward and motivation. In contrast, those who were least likely to expend effort showed increased dopamine response in the insula, a brain region involved in perception, social behavior, and self-awareness.

Researchers led by Michael Treadway, a graduate student working with David Zald, PhD, at Vanderbilt University, asked participants to rapidly press a button in order to earn varying amounts of money. Participants got to decide how hard they were willing to work depending on the odds of a payout and the amount of money they could win. Some accepted harder challenges for more money even against long odds, whereas less motivated subjects would forgo an attempt if it cost them too much effort.

In a separate session, the participants underwent a type of brain imaging called positron emission tomography (PET) that measured dopamine system activity in different parts of the brain. The researchers then examined whether there was a relationship between each individual’s dopamine responsiveness and their scores on the motivational test described earlier.

Previous rodent research also showed that dopamine activity in motivational centers is important for long-shot decisions. However, in the current study, the researchers were surprised to find that those with increased dopamine activity in the insula were the least likely to expend effort on the task. “These results show for the first time that increased dopamine in the insula is associated with decreased motivation — suggesting that the behavioral effects of dopaminergic drugs may vary depending on where they act in the brain,” said lead study author Treadway.

“Previous research has indicated that dopamine influences the motivation to seek out rewards. Now, this elegant new study provides the clearest evidence to date that individual differences in dopamine-related motivation might be a trait,” said Marco Leyton, PhD, an expert on dopamine at McGill University, who was not involved in the study. “A striking implication highlighted by the authors is that abnormal dopamine transmission could affect a wide range of decision-making processes and susceptibility to depression.”

Source: Society for Neuroscience

Palm Beach Research Center is proud to announce its Sponsorship of MergenMartialArts.com

We’re in the business of changing lives. Through our unique and positive age appropriate teaching. We give you the physical and mental power to reach your goals no matter what they are, while building the [...]]]> April 23, 2012

Palm Beach Research Center is proud to announce its Sponsorship of MergenMartialArts.com

We’re in the business of changing lives. Through our unique and positive age appropriate teaching. We give you the physical and mental power to reach your goals no matter what they are, while building the Self-Confidence to say no to unhealthy peer pressure. 

We offer complete fitness programs for kids, teens, and adults that benefit your: 

Mind – Develop greater discipline, concentration, and self-respect 

Body – Increase your flexibility, endurance, and muscle tone through our PIT workout

Soul – Martial Arts is a way of living and known to be great for the soul 

Stop by our studio today for a tour and ask about our “Award winning Kids program”

Mr Mergen Started teaching karate in 1991 in Boca Raton, at T’s East West Karate. Since then he has attended numerous Instructor Seminars and workshops on how to interact with children ages 3 to the teens.  His accomplishments include (but are not limited to!):  

• 5th Degree Black Belt in Evolution Combat Kickboxing and MMA
• Trains under John “PIT MASTER” Hackleman who is Chuck “The ICEMAN” Liddell’s Instructor
• 5th Degree Black Belt in Ed Parker’s American KenpoDave Hebler
• Also has an extensive experience in TKD, Judo/Jui-Jitsu and MMA
• Instructor Certification (Black Belt Schools of America)
• Pit Certified Instructor and Affiliate school www.ThePIT.TV
• Member and Board Member of I.I.M.A.A.
• Instructs Law enforcement officers, and Military Personnel
• Trains Amateur and Pro Fighters

Mergen Martial Arts is located at Lyons Road and Boynton Beach Blvd in Boynton Beach and can be reached at 561-364-3500