Washington, Dec 01 (ANI): A new study has claimed that black rice, a little-known variety of the grain that is the staple food for one-third of the world's population, may help soothe the inflammation involved in allergies, asthma and other diseases.

Mendel Friedman and colleagues at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Western Regional Research Center in Albany, California conducted the research, which became the focus of the latest episode in the American Chemical Society's (ACS) award-winning podcast series, "Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions".

In previous research as well, the group identified several potential health benefits from eating black rice bran.

Bran is the outer husk of the grain, which is removed during the processing of brown rice to produce the familiar white rice.

Those experiments, which were done in cell cultures, hinted that black rice bran suppressed the release of histamine, which causes inflammation.

The new research involved giving black rice bran to laboratory mice.

A diet consisting of 10 percent black rice bran reduced inflammation associated with allergic contact dermatitis, a common type of skin irritation.

Full report of the research is published in ACS' bi-weekly Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. (ANI)