Science Says: Recent Episodes
Science Says
New and interesting research in health and medicine is never-ending. Keep up and tune in daily to Science Says to hear the abstracts of groundbreaking research in different topics of health and medicine. Science Says a daily dose of this podcast will make you smarter.
The response to the novel coronavirus outbreak in China suggests that many of the lessons from the 2003 SARS epidemic have been implemented and the response improved as a consequence. Nevertheless some questions remain and not all lessons have been successful. The national and international response demonstrates the complex link between public health, science and politics when an outbreak threatens to impact on global economies and reputations. The unprecedented measures implemented in China are a bold attempt to control the outbreak – we need to understand their effectiveness to balance costs and benefits for similar events in the future. McCloskey B, Heymann DL. SARS to novel coronavirus - old lessons and new lessons. Epidemiol Infect. 2020;148:e22. Published 2020 Feb 5. doi:10.1017/S0950268820000254 Published by Cambridge University Press. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Sections of the Abstract and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Link to full text: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7026896/ Science Says is supported by Leksi (https://Leksi.co): the best education and study app to convert your notes, articles, or any document to audio so you can listen and learn no matter where you.
There is a heated debate on whether markets erode social responsibility and moral behavior. However, it is a challenging task to identify and measure moral behavior in markets. Based on a theoretical model, we examine in an experiment the relation between trading volume, prices and moral behavior by setting up markets that either impose a negative externality on third parties or not. We find that moral behavior reveals itself in lower trading volume in markets with a negative externality, while prices mostly depend on the market structure. We further investigate individual characteristics that explain trading behavior in markets with negative externalities. Sutter M, Huber J, Kirchler M, Stefan M, Walzl M. Where to look for the morals in markets?. Exp Econ. 2020;23(1):30–52. doi:10.1007/s10683-019-09608-z This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Discussion and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. Link to full text: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6991999/ Science Says is supported by Leksi (https://Leksi.co): the best education and study app to convert your notes, articles, or any document to audio so you can listen and learn no matter where you.
The presence of delay of gratification (DG) in childhood is correlated with success later in a person's life. Is there any way of helping adults with a low level of DG to obtain similar success? The present research examines how social support helps those low in DG nonetheless to act similarly to those high in DG. This research includes both correlational studies and experiments that manipulate social support as well as both field studies and a laboratory study. The results show that with high social support, employees (Study 1) and university students (Study 2) low in DG report vocational and academic DG behavioral intentions, respectively, similar to those high in DG. Study 3 found that participants low in DG who were primed with high social support expressed job-choice DG similar to those high in the DG. Study 4 controlled for mood and self-image and found that participants low in DG who were primed with high social support expressed more money-choice DG than those high in the DG. Study 5 showed that social support moderated the relationship between DG and actual DG behaviors. These findings provide evidence for a moderating role of social support in the expression of DG behavior. Liu X, Wang L, Liao J. Enabling Delay of Gratification Behavior in Those Not So Predisposed: The Moderating Role of Social Support. Front Psychol. 2016;7:366. Published 2016 Mar 18. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00366. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and General Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Link to full text: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4796028/.
Science Says is supported by Leksi (https://Leksi.co): the best education and study app to convert your notes and articles to audio so you can listen and learn anywhere, anytime. Objectives: Undergraduate medical students experience a considerable amount of stress and anxiety due to frequent exams. The goal of the present study was to examine the development of exam related anxiety and to test for a correlation between anxiety and learning approaches. Methods: A whole class of 212 medical students was invited to participate in the study. During their first term, trait anxiety and learning approaches were assessed by use of the state-trait-anxiety inventory (STAI-T) and the approaches-and-study-skills-inventory-for-students (ASSIST), respectively. Acute state anxiety was assessed twice in the course of the second term. To that extent, the STAI-S in combination with measuring salivary cortisol were employed immediately before two oral anatomy exams. Results: Our most important results were that a surface learning approach correlated significantly with anxiety as a trait and that students with a predominantly strategic approach to learning were the least anxious yet academically most successful. Conclusion: As surface learners are at risk of being academically less successful and because anxiety is a prerequisite for burn-out, we suggest that medical faculties place particular emphasis on conveying strategies for both, coping with stress and successful learning. Cipra C, Müller-Hilke B. Testing anxiety in undergraduate medical students and its correlation with different learning approaches. PLoS One. 2019;14(3):e0210130. Published 2019 Mar 13. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0210130. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Link to full text: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6415780/
Science Says is supported by Leksi (https://Leksi.co): the best education and study app to convert your notes and articles to audio so you can listen and learn anywhere, anytime. Learning outcomes may be a result of several factors including the learning environment, students’ predispositions, study efforts, cultural factors and approaches towards studying. This study examined the influence of demographic variables, education-related factors, and approaches to studying on occupational therapy students’ Grade Point Average (GPA). Undergraduate occupational therapy students (n = 712) from four countries completed the Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students (ASSIST). Demographic background, education-related factors, and ASSIST scores were used in a hierarchical linear regression analysis to predict the students’ GPA. Being older, female and more time engaged in self-study activities were associated with higher GPA among the students. In addition, five ASSIST subscales predicted higher GPA: higher scores on ‘seeking meaning’, ‘achieving’, and ‘lack of purpose’, and lower scores on ‘time management’ and ‘fear of failure’. The full model accounted for 9.6% of the variance related to the occupational therapy students’ GPA. To improve academic performance among occupational therapy students, it appears important to increase their personal search for meaning and motivation for achievement, and to reduce their fear of failure. The results should be interpreted with caution due to small effect sizes and a modest amount of variance explained by the regression model, and further research on predictors of academic performance is required. Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. Bonsaksen T, Brown T, K Fong. PApproaches to studying predict academic performance in undergraduate occupational therapy students: a cross-cultural study. 2017;17(1):76. Published 2017 May 2. doi: 10.1186/s12909-017-0914-3.S Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Conclusions are presented in the Podcast. Link to full text: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5414187/#__ffn_sectitle.
Science Says is supported by Leksi (https://Leksi.co): the best education and study app to convert your notes and articles to audio so you can listen and learn anywhere, anytime. Physical activity (PA) has been central in the life of our species for most of its history, and thus shaped our physiology during evolution. However, only recently the health consequences of a sedentary lifestyle, and of highly energetic diets, are becoming clear. It has been also acknowledged that lifestyle and diet can induce epigenetic modifications which modify chromatin structure and gene expression, thus causing even heritable metabolic outcomes. Many studies have shown that PA can reverse at least some of the unwanted effects of sedentary lifestyle, and can also contribute in delaying brain aging and degenerative pathologies such as Alzheimer’s Disease, diabetes, and multiple sclerosis. Most importantly, PA improves cognitive processes and memory, has analgesic and antidepressant effects, and even induces a sense of wellbeing, giving strength to the ancient principle of “mens sana in corpore sano” (i.e., a sound mind in a sound body). In this review we will discuss the potential mechanisms underlying the effects of PA on brain health, focusing on hormones, neurotrophins, and neurotransmitters, the release of which is modulated by PA, as well as on the intra- and extra-cellular pathways that regulate the expression of some of the genes involved. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Di Liegro CM, Schiera G, Proia P, Di Liegro I. Physical Activity and Brain Health. Genes (Basel). 2019;10(9):720. Published 2019 Sep 17. doi:10.3390/genes10090720. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Conclusions and Perspectives are presented in the Podcast. Link to full text: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6770965/.
Science Says is supported by Leksi (https://Leksi.co): the best education and study app to convert your notes and articles to audio so you can listen anywhere, anytime. Two studies investigated associations between habits and identity, in particular what people consider as their “true self.” Habit-identity associations were assessed by within-participant correlations between self-reported habit and associated true self ratings of 80 behaviors. The behaviors were instantiations of 10 basic values. In Study 1, significant correlations were observed between individual differences in the strength of habit-identity associations, measures of cognitive self-integration (prioritizing self-relevant information), self-esteem, and an orientation toward an ideal self. Study 2 further tested the assumption that habits are associated with identity if these relate to important goals or values. An experimental manipulation of value affirmation demonstrated that, compared to a control condition, habit-identity associations were stronger if participants explicitly generated the habit and true self ratings while indicating which values the behaviors would serve. Taken together, the results suggest that habits may serve to define who we are, in particular when these are considered in the context of self-related goals or central values. When habits relate to feelings of identity this comes with stronger cognitive self-integration, higher self-esteem, and a striving toward an ideal self. Linking habits to identity may sustain newly formed behaviors and may thus lead to more effective behavior change interventions. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Verplanken B, Sui J. Habit and Identity: Behavioral, Cognitive, Affective, and Motivational Facets of an Integrated Self. Front Psychol. 2019;10:1504. Published 2019 Jul 10. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01504. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, Genral Discussion, and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. Link to full text: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6635880/
Inner speech involvement in self-reflection was examined by reviewing 130 studies assessing brain activation during self-referential processing in key self-domains: agency, self-recognition, emotions, personality traits, autobiographical memory, and miscellaneous (e.g., prospection, judgments). The left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) has been shown to be reliably recruited during inner speech production. The percentage of studies reporting LIFG activity for each self-dimension was calculated. Fifty five percent of all studies reviewed indicated LIFG (and presumably inner speech) activity during self-reflection tasks; on average LIFG activation is observed 16% of the time during completion of non-self tasks (e.g., attention, perception). The highest LIFG activation rate was observed during retrieval of autobiographical information. The LIFG was significantly more recruited during conceptual tasks (e.g., prospection, traits) than during perceptual tasks (agency and self-recognition). This constitutes additional evidence supporting the idea of a participation of inner speech in self-related thinking. Morin A, Hamper B. Self-reflection and the inner voice: activation of the left inferior frontal gyrus during perceptual and conceptual self-referential thinking. Open Neuroimag J. 2012;6:78–89. doi:10.2174/1874440001206010078 This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. Link to full-text: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3462327/
Generous behaviour is known to increase happiness, which could thereby motivate generosity. In this study, we use functional magnetic resonance imaging and a public pledge for future generosity to investigate the brain mechanisms that link generous behaviour with increases in happiness. Participants promised to spend money over the next 4 weeks either on others (experimental group) or on themselves (control group). Here, we report that, compared to controls, participants in the experimental group make more generous choices in an independent decision-making task and show stronger increases in self-reported happiness. Generous decisions engage the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) in the experimental more than in the control group and differentially modulate the connectivity between TPJ and ventral striatum. Importantly, striatal activity during generous decisions is directly related to changes in happiness. These results demonstrate that top–down control of striatal activity plays a fundamental role in linking commitment-induced generosity with happiness. Park SQ, Kahnt T, Dogan A, Strang S, Fehr E, Tobler PN. A neural link between generosity and happiness. Nat Commun. 2017;8:15964. Published 2017 Jul 11. doi:10.1038/ncomms15964. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Discussion are presented in this Podcast. Link to full-text: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5508200/
Background: The rising number of young people going to university has led to concerns about an increasing demand for student mental health services. We aimed to assess whether provision of mindfulness courses to university students would improve their resilience to stress. Methods: We did this pragmatic randomised controlled trial at the University of Cambridge, UK. Students aged 18 years or older with no severe mental illness or crisis (self-assessed) were randomly assigned (1:1), via remote survey software using computer-generated random numbers, to receive either an 8 week mindfulness course adapted for university students (Mindfulness Skills for Students [MSS]) plus mental health support as usual, or mental health support as usual alone. Participants and the study management team were aware of group allocation, but allocation was concealed from the researchers, outcome assessors, and study statistician. The primary outcome was self-reported psychological distress during the examination period, as measured with the Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation Outcome Measure (CORE–OM), with higher scores indicating more distress. The primary analysis was by intention to treat. This trial is registered with the Australia and New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry, number ACTRN12615001160527. Findings: Between Sept 28, 2015, and Jan 15, 2016, we randomly assigned 616 students to the MSS group (n=309) or the support as usual group (n=307). 453 (74%) participants completed the CORE–OM during the examination period and 182 (59%) MSS participants completed at least half of the course. MSS reduced distress scores during the examination period compared with support as usual, with mean CORE–OM scores of 0·87 (SD 0·50) in 237 MSS participants versus 1·11 (0·57) in 216 support as usual participants (adjusted mean difference −0·14, 95% CI −0·22 to −0·06; p=0·001), showing a moderate effect size (β −0·44, 95% CI −0·60 to −0·29; p<0·0001). 123 (57%) of 214 participants in the support as usual group had distress scores above an accepted clinical threshold compared with 88 (37%) of 235 participants in the MSS group. On average, six students (95% CI four to ten) needed to be offered the MSS course to prevent one from experiencing clinical levels of distress. No participants had adverse reactions related to self-harm, suicidality, or harm to others. Interpretation: Our findings show that provision of mindfulness training could be an effective component of a wider student mental health strategy. Further comparative effectiveness research with inclusion of controls for non-specific effects is needed to define a range of additional, effective interventions to increase resilience to stress in university students. Galante J, Dufour G, Vainre M, et al. A mindfulness-based intervention to increase resilience to stress in university students (the Mindful Student Study): a pragmatic randomised controlled trial. Lancet Public Health. 2018;3(2):e72–e81. doi:10.1016/S2468-2667(17)30231-1. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, Methods, and Discussion are presented in this Podcast. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5813792/
Left-handedness is a costly, sexually dimorphic trait found at low frequencies in all human populations. How the handedness polymorphism is maintained is unclear. The fighting hypothesis argues that left-handed men have a negative frequency-dependent advantage in violent intrasexual competition giving them a selective advantage. In support of this, many studies have found that left-handed men are overrepresented among modern professional fighters, but studies typically find no difference in fighting success between left and right-handed fighters. We studied over 13,800 professional boxers and mixed martial artists of varying abilities in three of the largest samples to test this hypothesis to date, finding robust evidence that left-handed fighters have greater fighting success. This held for both male and female fighters, and for both percentage of fights won and an objective measure of fighting ability. We replicated previous results showing that left-handed fighters are strongly overrepresented in professional combat sports, but left-handed fighters did not show greater variance in fighting ability, a hypothesis suggested in previous studies. Overall we find strong evidence consistent with the fighting hypothesis. Richardson T, Gilman RT. Left-handedness is associated with greater fighting success in humans. Sci Rep. 2019;9(1):15402. Published 2019 Oct 28. doi:10.1038/s41598-019-51975-3. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6817864/
Introduction: Many medical education journals use Twitter to garner attention for their articles. The purpose of this study was to test the effects of tweeting on article page views and downloads. Methods: The authors conducted a randomized trial using Academic Medicine articles published in 2015. Beginning in February through May 2018, one article per day was randomly assigned to a Twitter (case) or control group. Daily, an individual tweet was generated for each article in the Twitter group that included the title, #MedEd, and a link to the article. The link delivered users to the article’s landing page, which included immediate access to the HTML full text and a PDF link. The authors extracted HTML page views and PDF downloads from the publisher. To assess differences in page views and downloads between cases and controls, a time-centered approach was used, with outcomes measured at 1, 7, and 30 days. Results: In total, 189 articles (94 cases, 95 controls) were analyzed. After days 1 and 7, there were no statistically significant differences between cases and controls on any metric. On day 30, HTML page views exhibited a 63% increase for cases (M = 14.72, SD = 63.68) when compared to controls (M = 9.01, SD = 14.34; incident rate ratio = 1.63, p = 0.01). There were no differences between cases and controls for PDF downloads on day 30. Discussion: Contrary to the authors’ hypothesis, only one statistically significant difference in page views between the Twitter and control groups was found. These findings provide preliminary evidence that after 30 days a tweet can have a small positive effect on article page views. Maggio LA, Leroux TC, Artino AR Jr. To tweet or not to tweet, that is the question: A randomized trial of Twitter effects in medical education. PLoS One. 2019;14(10):e0223992. Published 2019 Oct 16. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0223992 This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6795488/
The practice of medicine is changing with the development of new Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods of machine learning. Coupled with rapid improvements in computer processing, these AI-based systems are already improving the accuracy and efficiency of diagnosis and treatment across various specializations. The increasing focus of AI in radiology has led to some experts suggesting that someday AI may even replace radiologists. These suggestions raise the question of whether AI-based systems will eventually replace physicians in some specializations or will augment the role of physicians without actually replacing them. To assess the impact on physicians this research seeks to better understand this technology and how it is transforming medicine. To that end this paper researches the role of AI-based systems in performing medical work in specializations including radiology, pathology, ophthalmology, and cardiology. It concludes that AI-based systems will augment physicians and are unlikely to replace the traditional physician–patient relationship. Ahuja AS. The impact of artificial intelligence in medicine on the future role of the physician. PeerJ. 2019;7:e7702. Published 2019 Oct 4. doi:10.7717/peerj.7702. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6779111/
Convergent creativity is a form of creative thinking that uses existing knowledge or traditional methods to analyze available information and generate an appropriate solution. The differences in the performance of participants in convergent creativity caused by bilingual learning is a popular research area in creativity. A final sample of 68 participants was asked to complete the remote associates test (RAT). The results indicate that a moderate positive correlation exists between bilingual learning and convergent creativity. Students who want to study abroad perform better on the RAT than those who do not, and this effect is mediated by second language proficiency. These findings suggest that improving students’ English proficiency and increasing their opportunities to study abroad may be effective ways to promoting convergent creativity. Zhao Y, Yuan Y, Shen W, Zhu C, Liu D. The relationships between bilingual learning, willingness to study abroad and convergent creativity. PeerJ. 2019;7:e7776. Published 2019 Sep 26. doi:10.7717/peerj.7776. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, Discussion, and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6766371/
Using artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques in different medical fields, especially emergency medicine is rapidly growing. In this paper, studies conducted in the recent years on using artificial intelligence in emergency medicine have been collected and assessed. These studies belonged to three categories: prediction and detection of disease; prediction of need for admission, discharge and also mortality; and machine learning based triage systems. In each of these categories, the most important studies have been chosen and accuracy and results of the algorithms have been briefly evaluated by mentioning machine learning techniques and used datasets. Shafaf N, Malek H. Applications of Machine Learning Approaches in Emergency Medicine; a Review Article. Arch Acad Emerg Med. 2019;7(1):34. Published 2019 Jun 3. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6732202/
Due to the societal dissemination of digital technology, people are increasingly experiencing environmental topics through digital media channels such as social networks. Several researchers therefore have proposed these channels as a possibility to strengthen sustainable development based on their cost-efficient nature. But while prior studies have investigated isolated factors for understanding environmental social media behavior, there is still scarce understanding of the relevant underlying motivational factors and possible connections with more traditional environmental behaviors. Therefore, the present study applied the established socio-psychological model of goal-directed behavior and compared the desires for liking as a fundamental form of digital social media behavior with the desires for two traditional environmental behaviors (money donation and volunteering) in a cross-sectional research design. Within the biodiversity conservation case of the Andean bear (Tremarctos ornatus) in Ecuador, we compared the antecedents for the desires for the corresponding environmental behaviors (RQ1) as well as their connections between each other (RQ2). Within a sample of 407 Ecuadorian students (Mage = 20.94 years, SD = 2.25, 61.2% female), we found the marginal effect of perceived behavioral control on the desires for liking on social media as the main difference concerning the antecedents of the behaviors because money donation and volunteering largely depended on personal resources such as time or money. Furthermore, gender emerged as the second main difference between the behaviors due to it only being predictive for the liking motivation. Enjoyment was the only variable that coherently predicted all three behaviors. Finally, desires for liking on social media predicted both other behaviors in robust regression analyses, but were only predictive for volunteering in corresponding path models. The results illustrate how cost-efficient digital environmental behaviors such as liking may be suitable for sparking low-level environmental action, which may entail more pronounced forms of environmental activism, at least when they involve feasible personal costs. Overall, the findings are in line with prior research regarding the less demanding nature of liking, but further elaborate on the importance of gender for digital environmental behavior and correlates between digital and classical environmental behaviors. Büssing AG, Thielking A, Menzel S. Can a Like Save the Planet? Comparing Antecedents of and Correlations Between Environmental Liking on Social Media, Money Donation, and Volunteering. Front Psychol. 2019;10:1989. Published 2019 Aug 28. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01989. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6722222/
Adolescence is a period of life during which peers play a pivotal role in decision-making. The narrative of social influence during adolescence often revolves around risky and maladaptive decisions, like driving under the influence, and using illegal substances (Steinberg, 2005). However, research has also shown that social influence can lead to increased prosocial behaviors (Van Hoorn et al., 2017) and a reduction in risk-taking (Braams et al., 2019). While many studies support the notion that adolescents are more sensitive to peer influence than children or adults, the developmental processes that underlie this sensitivity remain poorly understood. We argue that one important reason for this lack of understanding is the absence of precisely formulated models. To make a first step toward formal models of social influence during adolescence, we first identify three prominent verbal models of social influence in the literature: (1) social motivation, (2) reward sensitivity, and (3) distraction. We then illustrate how these can be translated into formal models, and how such formal models can inform experimental design and help identify developmental processes. Finally, by applying our formal models to existing datasets, we demonstrate the usefulness of formalization by synthesizing different studies with seemingly disparate results. We conclude with a discussion on how formal modeling can be utilized to better investigate the development of peer influence in adolescence. Ciranka S, van den Bos W. Social Influence in Adolescent Decision-Making: A Formal Framework. Front Psychol. 2019;10:1915. Published 2019 Aug 29. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01915. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6727856/
American parents greatly value children’s happiness, citing it well above other possible priorities. This commitment to happiness, shared with parents in other Western societies but not elsewhere, is an important feature of popular emotional culture. But the commitment is also the product of modern history, emerging clearly only in the 19th century. This article explains the contrast between more traditional and modern views, and explains the origins but also the evolution of the idea of a happy childhood. Early outcomes, for example, included the novel practice of hosting parties for children’s birthdays, another mid-19th-century innovation that has expanded over time. Explaining the intensification of the happiness commitment also reveals some of the downsides of this aspect of popular emotional culture, for example in measurably complicating reactions to childish unhappiness. The basic goal of the essay is to use this important facet of modern emotional history to evaluate a commitment that many modern parents assume is simply natural. Stearns PN. Happy Children: A Modern Emotional Commitment. Front Psychol. 2019;10:2025. Published 2019 Sep 6. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02025. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6742924/
Background: Public health and governmental organizations are expected to provide guidance to the public on emerging health issues in accessible formats. It is, therefore, important to examine how such organizations are discussing cannabis online and the information that is being provided to the public about this increasingly legal and available substance. Methods: This paper presents a concise thematic analysis of both the volume and content of cannabis-related health information from selected (n = 13) national-level public health and governmental organizations in Canada and the U.S. on Twitter. Results: There were eight themes identified in Tweets including 1) health-related topics; 2) legalization and legislation; 3) research on cannabis; 4) special populations; 5) driving and cannabis; 6) population issues; 7) medical cannabis, and 8) public health issues. The majority of cannabis-related Tweets from the organizations studied came from relatively few organizations and there were substantial differences between the topics covered by U.S. and Canadian organizations. The organizations studied provided limited information regarding how to use cannabis in ways that will minimize health-related harms. Conclusions: Authoritative organizations that deal with public health may consider designing timely social media communications with emerging cannabis-related information, to benefit a general public otherwise exposed to primarily pro-cannabis content on Twitter. van Draanen J, Krishna T, Tsang C, Liu S. Keeping up with the times: how national public health and governmental organizations communicate about cannabis on Twitter. Subst Abuse Treat Prev Policy. 2019;14(1):38. Published 2019 Sep 12. doi:10.1186/s13011-019-0224-3. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, Methods, and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6739954/
Investigating the mood-creativity relationship in everyday life is important for innovation promotion in organizational management. This study explores the relationship between mood states and everyday creativity using two different measurement methods. Both the experience sampling method (ESM) and the day reconstruction method (DRM) were simultaneously applied to conduct a 15-day follow-up study of the relationship between 10 typical positive and negative moods and creativity in daily situations. In total, 31 corporate employees participated in the study. Participants reported their mood states and creativity at three time points per day by using ESM; they also recalled and reported their mood states and creativity for at least three major events per day at the end of each day by using DRM. In total, we collected 935 valid measurements from ESM and 1260 valid measurements from DRM. The results revealed that highly active, positive moods including happiness, concentration, feeling active and interested had significant positive correlations with creativity, while the low-activity, negative mood states of feeling tired and sleepy were associated with low creativity. Both DRM-based and ESM-based results were largely consistent in measuring individual’s mood states and everyday creativity. To our knowledge, this is the first study to conduct DRM for mood-creativity relationship. The high consistency between the two daily research methods provides further empirical evidence toward a comprehensive understanding of mood and creativity. As DRM imposes a lessened respondent load on the participants as compared to ESM, our results suggest DRM as a promising tool for further mood-creativity research. Han W, Feng X, Zhang M, Peng K, Zhang D. Mood States and Everyday Creativity: Employing an Experience Sampling Method and a Day Reconstruction Method. Front Psychol. 2019;10:1698. Published 2019 Jul 19. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01698. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6658875/
Background: Eating disorders among adolescents are an ongoing public health concern. Sustainable health promotion programmes require a thorough understanding of the social context in which minors engage. Initial studies show that young people make extensive use of social networks in order to exchange experiences and gather information. During this process their (buying) behaviour is significantly affected by so-called influencers. Methods: The exploratory research studies non-campaign driven health communication on dieting and exercise by influencers in social networks with a focus on content, techniques and visible impact. In a mixed methods approach, we initially analysed 1000 posts from influencers on Instagram quantitatively. Subsequently we conducted an in-depth content analysis of 9 extreme and 27 typical communication threads. Results: Influencers gain the trust and friendship of their followers by designing body-shape focused visual content and targeted communication techniques. They identify and define diet and exercise as factors to be controlled for body perfection. By consuming dietary supplements and wearing tight-fitting branded sportswear, influencers promise a simplified way of optimizing one’s appearance as the key to happiness. Direct and surreptitious advertising of industry-specific products constitutes the communicative focus. At the same time, minors identify with the roles and ideals demonstrated by influencers and their needs are satisfied on several different levels. This creates a relationship of dependency between influencers and their followers. Conclusions: The dynamics in the field of health communication by influencers on social networks will become increasingly important in the coming years. This is largely due to the targeted demand on the part of (mainly) underage users and the high attractiveness of influencer marketing on the part of companies. Influencers suggest a dependence on happiness, well-being, health and beauty. Only those who create a body shaped through control and discipline are healthy and beautiful - and can be happy. The indirectly communicated conclusions, which can be considered as extremely critical, illustrate the need for action in order to protect and positively accompany young people in their psychological and physical development. The shift of authority figures within Generation Z, as well as identified communication techniques, can be considered and may be harnessed by targeted, group-oriented campaign designs. Pilgrim K, Bohnet-Joschko S. Selling health and happiness how influencers communicate on Instagram about dieting and exercise: mixed methods research. BMC Public Health. 2019;19(1):1054. Published 2019 Aug 6. doi:10.1186/s12889-019-7387-8. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6683418
Background: Previous studies have reported impaired performance, sleepiness and sleep deprivation among night workers. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of color screen Light Filtering software on cognitive performance, alertness and sleep quality among night shift operators of a medical emergency operations center. Methods: This field trial interventional study was carried out among 30 nightshift operators of shiraz emergency control center. The baseline assessments were carried out under the existing computer screen light conditions in the week preceding the installation of f.lux software. The same measurements were repeated again 4 weeks after installing the software. The cognitive performance of the participants was measured using continuous performance test (CPT) and n-back, while their sleep quality was assessed through Pietersburg Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). Further, to assess their subjective and objective alertness, Stanford sleepiness index and go/nogo test were used, respectively. Results: The results of this study showed that Screen Light Filtering software significantly increased subjective (P<0.001) and objective alertness (P<0.05). Additionally, the performance of the working memory (P=0.008) and sleep quality (P=0.008) improved significantly after the intervention. Conclusion: The results revealed that using Screen Light Filtering software is an effective and low-cost method to improve sleep quality and cognitive performance since it filters the short wavelength part of the spectrum and helps body adaptation. Kazemi R, Alighanbari N, Zamanian Z. The effects of screen light filtering software on cognitive performance and sleep among night workers. Health Promot Perspect. 2019;9(3):233–240. Published 2019 Aug 6. doi:10.15171/hpp.2019.32. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6717920
In recent years, digital communication and social media have taken an indispensable role in human society. Social interactions are no longer bound to real-life encounters, but more often happen from behind a screen. Mimicking an online communication platform, we developed a new, fMRI compatible, social threat paradigm to investigate sex differences in reactions to social rejection. During the Verbal Interaction Social Threat Task (VISTTA), participants initiate 30 short conversations by selecting one of four predefined opening sentences. Two computerized interlocutors respond to the opening sentence mostly with negative comments and rejections toward the participant, which should induce social-evaluative threat. Physiological and subjective responses were measured, before, during, and after the VISTTA in 61 (29 male and 32 female) first year students who received either mostly negative (n = 31; threat group) or neutral comments (n = 30; control group). Two-level behavioral validation included social threatinduced mood changes in participants, and interlocutor evaluation. The latter consisted of multiple variables such as “willingness to cooperate” after every conversation, an overall fairness evaluation of interlocutors, and evaluations per reaction indicating how positive or negative it was received. We acquired additional physiological measures including cortisol assays via saliva samples, heart rate, and blood pressure. Confirming our hypotheses, peer rejection and exclusion during the VISTTA led to less willingness to cooperate and lower fairness evaluation of interlocutors. It also induced feelings of anger and surprise and lower happiness in the social-threat group. Women showed overall higher emotion ratings compared to men. Contrary to our a priori hypothesis, the VISTTA did not induce cortisol and heart rate increases. However, the stable cortisol response in women in the threat group does not follow the circadian decline and might reflect an endocrinological response. The decline in cortisol response in men in both the threat and control group could indicate faster habituation to the VISTTA. Taken together, these findings indicate effects of social-evaluative threat on a behavioral level, and more moderate effects on the emotional and physiological level. Sex differences in affective and cortisol responses may indicate that women are more susceptible for the social-evaluative threat than men. With a realistic implementation of verbal, interactive, and social components, the VISTTA is designed as an fMRI paradigm that can be applied to elucidate the neural representation of social-evaluative threat. Tops S, Habel U, Abel T, Derntl B, Radke S. The Verbal Interaction Social Threat Task: A New Paradigm Investigating the Effects of Social Rejection in Men and Women. Front Neurosci. 2019;13:830. Published 2019 Aug 7. doi:10.3389/fnins.2019.00830. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Associated Data. Sections of Abstract, Introduction, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6692967/
Raising public awareness of sepsis, a potentially life-threatening dysregulated host response to infection, to hasten its recognition has become a major focus of physicians, investigators, and both non-governmental and governmental agencies. While the internet is a common means by which to seek out healthcare information, little is understood about patterns and drivers of these behaviors. We sought to examine traffic to Wikipedia, a popular and publicly available online encyclopedia, to better understand how, when, and why users access information about sepsis. Utilizing pageview traffic data for all available language localizations of the sepsis and septic shock pages between July 1, 2015 and June 30, 2018, significantly outlying daily pageview totals were identified using a seasonal hybrid extreme studentized deviate approach. Consecutive outlying days were aggregated, and a qualitative analysis was undertaken of print and online news media coverage to identify potential correlates. Traffic patterns were further characterized using paired referrer to resource (i.e. clickstream) data, which were available for a temporal subset of the pageviews. Of the 20,557,055 pageviews across 65 linguistic localizations, 47 of the 1,096 total daily pageview counts were identified as upward outliers. After aggregating sequential outlying days, 25 epochs were examined. Qualitative analysis identified at least one major news media correlate for each, which were typically related to high-profile deaths from sepsis and, less commonly, awareness promotion efforts. Clickstream analysis suggests that most sepsis and septic shock Wikipedia pageviews originate from external referrals, namely search engines. Owing to its granular and publicly available traffic data, Wikipedia holds promise as a means by which to better understand global drivers of online sepsis information seeking. Further characterization of user engagement with this information may help to elucidate means by which to optimize the visibility, content, and delivery of awareness promotion efforts. Jabaley CS, Groff RF, Barnes TJ, Caridi-Scheible ME, Blum JM, O'Reilly-Shah VN. Sepsis information-seeking behaviors via Wikipedia between 2015 and 2018: A mixed methods retrospective observational study. PLoS One. 2019;14(8):e0221596. Published 2019 Aug 22. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0221596. This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. Sections of Abstract, Introduction, and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6705833
Registered Dietitian Nutritionists (RDNs) are clinicians trained in the application of food, nutrition, and dietetics. Vegetarians and vegans have a lower risk of many nutrition-related chronic diseases that are epidemic while vegetarian and vegan diets are associated with reduced environmental impact. Despite this strong diet-disease and diet-environment connection, it is not known if dietetics students are taught the principles of vegetarian and vegan nutrition. The overarching goal of our study was to investigate curricular practices in accredited dietetics training programs in the United States (U.S.) including (1) the prevalence and perceived importance of vegetarian and vegan nutrition instruction and (2) if program directors connect vegetarian and vegan diets to climate change mitigation and resource conservation. Primary data were collected by way of a cross-sectional, Internet-based survey. All Accreditation Council for Education in Nutrition and Dietetics (ACEND) program directors in the U.S. (N = 574) were sent a 37-question survey and invited to participate in the study. Outcome measures included the prevalence of vegetarian and vegan nutrition instruction, quantifying if relationships exist among variables, and the frequency of connecting vegetarian and vegan diets to environmental impact. Descriptive and inferential statistics were utilized. Respondents (n = 205) indicated that over 51% of programs teach vegetarian nutrition while 49% teach vegan nutrition. There were significant differences between program type and the prevalence of vegetarian (p = 0.00005) and vegan (p = 0.00005) nutrition instruction. Over 90% of program directors believe that vegetarian and vegan nutrition should be taught. Over 50% of programs identify the connection between vegetarian and vegan diets in climate change mitigation and resource conservation. Most ACEND program directors believe vegetarian and vegan nutrition should be taught and half connect diet to environmental concern. Nevertheless, there is a discrepancy between beliefs and practice behaviors. These results suggest the need for increased collaboration and the use of novel techniques that better incorporate vegan and vegetarian nutrition throughout dietetics education. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Hawkins IW, Mangels AR, Goldman R and Wood RJ (2019) Dietetics Program Directors in the United States Support Teaching Vegetarian and Vegan Nutrition and Half Connect Vegetarian and Vegan Diets to Environmental Impact. Front. Nutr. 6:123. doi: 10.3389/fnut.2019.00123. Sections of Abstract, Introduction, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2019.00123/full
Stress and anxiety have intertwined behavioral and neural underpinnings. These commonalities are critical for understanding each state, as well as their mutual interactions. Grasping the mechanisms underlying this bidirectional relationship will have major clinical implications for managing a wide range of psychopathologies. After briefly defining key concepts for the study of stress and anxiety in pre-clinical models, we present circuit, as well as cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in either or both stress and anxiety. First, we review studies on divergent circuits of the basolateral amygdala (BLA) underlying emotional valence processing and anxiety-like behaviors, and how norepinephrine inputs from the locus coeruleus (LC) to the BLA are responsible for acute-stress induced anxiety. We then describe recent studies revealing a new role for mitochondrial function within the nucleus accumbens (NAc), defining individual trait anxiety in rodents, and participating in the link between stress and anxiety. Next, we report findings on the impact of anxiety on reward encoding through alteration of circuit dynamic synchronicity. Finally, we present work unravelling a new role for hypothalamic corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) neurons in controlling anxiety-like and stress-induce behaviors. Altogether, the research reviewed here reveals circuits sharing subcortical nodes and underlying the processing of both stress and anxiety. Understanding the neural overlap between these two psychobiological states, might provide alternative strategies to manage disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Daviu N, Bruchas MR, Moghaddam B, Sandi C, Beyeler A. Neurobiological links between stress and anxiety. Neurobiol Stress. 2019;11:100191. Published 2019 Aug 13. doi:10.1016/j.ynstr.2019.100191. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Sections of Abstract, Introduction, and Perspective are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6712367
Mental health conditions pose a major challenge to healthcare providers and society at large. The World Health Organization predicts that by 2030 mental illnesses will be the leading disease burden globally. Mental health services are struggling to meet the needs of users and arguably fail to reach large proportions of those in need. According to New Zealand Mental Health Foundation, one in five will experience a serious mood disorder, including depression, at some time in their life. Games for Health including those supporting mental health have recently gained a lot of attention. However, game interface preferences for users with a history of mental health conditions have not been systematically studied, making it difficult to determine what game features may attract and further engage users affected by mental health conditions. We present MoodJumper, a prototype Android mobile game, which enables players to jump to the top of the level by steering the avatar from platform to platform, gradually gaining height and collecting coins on the way up. We conducted a preliminary study (n = 25), in which participants were able to modify different settings of the game (background color, dark/light, character movement, gender, and music), while their gaming behavior was tracked. The results show that regardless of self-reported history of mood disorder, the majority of participants prefer the dark and colored layout setting and there were no differences in gaming variables including session duration and high scores. This represents a first indication that history of mood disorder does not affect user preferences for game interface settings. It will be important to follow up with data on users currently affected by low mood. Systematic study of game interface preferences in users with mood disorder constitutes a vital step in being able to harness the potential power of games for supporting mental health. Baghaei N, Hach S, Liang H-N and Brucker M (2019) MoodJumper: An Exploration of Game Interface Preferences in Users With/Out Mood Disorder. Front. Public Health 7:220. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2019.00220 This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Sections of Abstract, Introduction, Games for Health, MoodJumper Design, and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2019.00220/full
Background: During the reproductive age, the human brain becomes a target for gonadal steroid hormones. Estrogens influence neural function through effects on neurons and affects indirectly the oxidative stress, inflammation, the cerebral vascular and the immune system. Objective: To evaluate the effect of the traditional hormone replacement therapy (HRT) on the cognitive function in postmenopausal women. Materials and Methods: In this randomized clinical trial, 140 postmenopausal women, from November 2014 to February 2015, were included. Women were randomly divided into two groups. Each woman in the case group took traditional HRT (0.625mg conjugated equine estrogens+2.5mg medroxyprogesterone acetate daily) plus one Cal+D tablet (500 mg calcium+200 IU vitamin D) daily for four months. Women in the control group received only one Cal+D tablet (500 mg calcium+200 IU vitamin D) daily for four months period. The Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) and Green Climacteric Scale (GCS) questionnaires filled out after the intervention and compared between the two groups. Results: The mean points of the MoCA after the intervention indicate that all MoCA domains except for the orientation improved in the case group. There was a significant difference in the memory domain after the treatment between the two groups. MoCA domains and GCS were negatively correlated after the intervention (r=−0.235,p=0.006). Conclusion: The HRT has affected some of the MoCA factors. The effects of HRT on cognitive function should be studied in a large prospective study in a group of women in their early and late menopausal ages with periodic assessment of their cognitive function during these follow-up years. Moradi F, Jahanian Sadatmahalleh S, Ziaei S. The effect of hormone replacement therapy on cognitive function in postmenopausal women: An RCT. Int J Reprod Biomed (Yazd). 2019;16(12):ijrm.v16i12.3682. Published 2019 Jan 28. doi:10.18502/ijrm.v16i12.3682. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Sections of Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6600282/
Personal health systems (PHS) are designed to provide the individual with tailored care while enabling the healthcare system to deliver high-quality care to large populations and maintain a sustainable system. Solutions using electronic health records (EHRs) that include predictive models for the risk of disease onset and deterioration enable the care provider to better identify and treat patients with chronic disease and provide personalized prevention. These tools are well-accepted by doctors and have been proven to improve health outcomes and reduce costs. Integrated telecare programs were implemented for comorbid patients showing improved clinical outcomes self-management and quality of life (QoL). However, different patient populations benefit in different ways from these care plans, and thus, continuous evaluation, service adaptation in a real-life environment set with clear outcome measures, is required for best results. The challenge of the PHS today is to acquire patient-generated data (PGD) and behavioral and patient-reported outcomes (PROs) for PHS development that can be combined with existing clinical data. Some initiatives of healthcare organizations [health maintenance organizations (HMOs)] in Israel demonstrate how this goal can be achieved with relatively small efforts by using a stepwise and agile approach to service implementation that improve service by enabling adoption and adaptation of the service in the short term while collecting data for advanced PHS development in the long term. This approach, combined with programs and incentive payments at the national level, creates an environment and infrastructure for collaboration between healthcare, academia, and industry for research, development, and implementation of future PHS. This article presents examples of PHS development and implementation from the Israeli healthcare system. We discuss the lessons learned and suggest new approaches for research, development implementation, and evaluation of PHS that will address the needs of future healthcare. Lewy H, Barkan R, Sela T. Personalized Health Systems-Past, Present, and Future of Research Development and Implementation in Real-Life Environment. Front Med (Lausanne). 2019;6:149. Published 2019 Jul 31. doi:10.3389/fmed.2019.00149. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Sections of Abstract, Background, and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6684784/
Ensuring quality of care in nursing homes is a public health priority, yet how nursing home quality relates to cost is not well understood. This paper addresses this relationship for 132 VA community living centers (nursing homes), for fiscal years 2014 and 2015. We estimated cost models using the VA Decision Support System which tracks total direct costs and nursing direct costs for individual resident segments of care. We summed residents’ total costs and nursing costs to the community living center level for each year. Annual facility costs then were regressed on quality of care measured with composite scores based on 13 distinct adverse events. Results indicated that higher quality was associated with higher predicted cost. However, we did not find evidence that higher costs were driven by high nurse staffing levels. Carey K, Zhao S, Snow AL, Hartmann CW. The relationship between nursing home quality and costs: Evidence from the VA. PLoS One. 2018;13(9):e0203764. Published 2018 Sep 19. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0203764. This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. Sections of Abstract, Introduction, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6145531/
Graphics are becoming increasingly important for scientists to effectively communicate their findings to broad audiences, but most researchers lack expertise in visual media. We suggest collaboration between scientists and graphic designers as a way forward and discuss the results of a pilot project to test this type of collaboration. Khoury CK, Kisel Y, Kantar M, et al. Science-graphic art partnerships to increase research impact. Commun Biol. 2019;2:295. Published 2019 Aug 6. doi:10.1038/s42003-019-0516-1. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Sections of Abstract, Introduction, Test Project Overview, and Recommendations are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6684576/
Aims/Hypothesis: Early recognition of those at high risk for diabetes as well as diabetes itself can permit preventive management, but many Americans with diabetes are undiagnosed. We sought to determine whether routinely available outpatient random plasma glucose (RPG) would be useful to facilitate the diagnosis of diabetes. Methods: Retrospective cohort study of 942,446 U.S. Veterans without diagnosed diabetes, ≥3 RPG in a baseline year, and ≥1 primary care visit/year during 5-year follow-up. The primary outcome was incident diabetes (defined by diagnostic codes and outpatient prescription of a diabetes drug). Results: Over 5 years, 94,599 were diagnosed with diabetes [DIAB] while 847,847 were not [NONDIAB]. Baseline demographics of DIAB and NONDIAB were clinically similar, except DIAB had higher BMI (32 vs. 28 kg/m2) and RPG (150 vs. 107 mg/dl), and were more likely to have Black race (18% vs. 15%), all p<0.001. ROC area for prediction of DIAB diagnosis within 1 year by demographic factors was 0.701, and 0.708 with addition of SBP, non-HDL cholesterol, and smoking. These were significantly less than that for prediction by baseline RPG alone (≥2 RPGs at/above a given level, ROC 0.878, p<0.001), which improved slightly when other factors were added (ROC 0.900, p<0.001). Having ≥2 RPGs ≥115 mg/dl had specificity 77% and sensitivity 87%, and ≥2 RPGs ≥130 mg/dl had specificity 93% and sensitivity 59%. For predicting diagnosis within 3 and 5 years by RPG alone, ROC was reduced but remained substantial (ROC 0.839 and 0.803, respectively). Conclusions: RPG levels below the diabetes “diagnostic” range (≥200 mg/dl) provide good discrimination for follow-up diagnosis. Use of such levels–obtained opportunistically, during outpatient visits–could signal the need for further testing, allow preventive intervention in high risk individuals before onset of disease, and lead to earlier identification of diabetes. Rhee MK, Ho YL, Raghavan S, et al. Random plasma glucose predicts the diagnosis of diabetes. PLoS One. 2019;14(7):e0219964. Published 2019 Jul 19. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0219964. This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. Sections of Abstract, Introduction, Research Design and Methods, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6641200/.
Chronic stress is a major underlying origin of the top leading causes of death, globally. Yet, the mechanistic explanation of the association between stress and disease is poorly understood. This stems from the inability to adequately measure stress in its naturally occurring state and the extreme heterogeneity by inter and intraindividual characteristics. The growth and availability of digital technologies involving wearable devices and mobile phone apps afford the opportunity to dramatically improve measurement of the biological stress response in real time. In parallel, the advancement and capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning could discern heterogeneous, multidimensional information from individual signs of stress, and possibly inform how these signs forecast the downstream consequences of stress in the form of end-organ damage. The marriage of these tools could dramatically enhance the field of stress research contributing to impactful and empowering interventions for individuals bridging knowledge to practice, and intervention to real-world use. Here we discuss this potential, anticipated challenges, and emerging opportunities. Goodday SM, Friend S. Unlocking stress and forecasting its consequences with digital technology. NPJ Digit Med. 2019;2:75. Published 2019 Jul 31. doi:10.1038/s41746-019-0151-8. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, Defining Stress, and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6668457/
Background: This research is an investigation into the role of expert quotes in health news, specifically whether news articles containing a quote from an independent expert are less often exaggerated than articles without such a quote. Methods: Retrospective quantitative content analysis of journal articles, press releases, and associated news articles was performed. The investigated sample are press releases on peer-reviewed health research and the associated research articles and news stories. Our sample consisted of 462 press releases and 668 news articles from the UK (2011) and 129 press releases and 185 news articles from The Netherlands (2015). We hand-coded all journal articles, press releases and news articles for correlational claims, using a well-tested codebook. The main outcome measures are types of sources that were quoted and exaggeration of correlational claims. We used counts, 2x2 tables and odds ratios to assess the relationship between presence of quotes and exaggeration of the causal claim. Results: Overall, 99.1% of the UK press releases and 84.5% of the Dutch press releases contain at least one quote. For the associated news articles these percentages are: 88.6% in the UK and 69.7% in the Netherlands. Authors of the study are most often quoted and only 7.5% of UK and 7.0% of Dutch news articles contained a new quote by an expert source, i.e. one not provided by the press release. The relative odds that an article without an external expert quote contains an exaggeration of causality is 2.6. Conclusions: The number of articles containing a quote from an independent expert is low, but articles that cite an external expert do contain less exaggeration. Bossema FG, Burger P, Bratton L, et al. Expert quotes and exaggeration in health news: a retrospective quantitative content analysis. Wellcome Open Res. 2019;4:56. Published 2019 Jul 8. doi:10.12688/wellcomeopenres.15147.2. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6619368/#ref-24
Background: Some individuals with autism find it challenging to use and understand language in conversation, despite having good abilities in core aspects of language such as grammar and vocabulary. This suggests that pragmatic skills (such as understanding implied meanings in conversation) are separable from core language skills. However, it has been surprisingly difficult to demonstrate this dissociation in the general population. We propose that this may be because prior studies have used tasks in which different aspects of language are confounded. Methods: The present study used novel language tasks and factor analysis to test whether pragmatic understanding of implied meaning, as part of a broader domain involving social understanding, is separable from core language skills. 120 adult participants were recruited online to complete a 7-task battery, including a test assessing comprehension of conversational implicature. Results: In confirmatory analysis of a preregistered model, we compared whether the data showed better fit to a two-factor structure (including a “social understanding” and “core language” factor) or a simpler one-factor structure (comprising a general factor). The two-factor model showed significantly better fit. Conclusions: This study supports the view that interpreting context-dependent conversational meaning is partially distinct from core language skills. This has implications for understanding the pragmatic language impairments reported in autism. Wilson AC, Bishop DVM. If you catch my drift...: ability to infer implied meaning is distinct from vocabulary and grammar skills. Wellcome Open Res. 2019;4:68. Published 2019 Jul 10. doi:10.12688/wellcomeopenres.15210.2. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Sections of the Abstract, Introductions, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6589929/
Relationship problems among school children can lead to bullying situations. In this regard, it should be noted that, among healthy lifestyle habits, sports practice (non-competitive) promotes responsibility and improves coexistence. The objective of the present study was to analyze the incidence of the frequency of practice of healthy physical activity on the risks of students directly involved in school bullying (harasser and victim) by gender. The participants of the study were 1,248 students of Compulsory Secondary Education with ages between 11 and 18 (M = 14.42, SD = 1.43), being 50.8% males. The results of the study indicated that students who practiced physical activity in the recommended frequency rated as healthy, at least four or more times per week, had higher values in the indicators of aggressiveness than students who practiced with a lower frequency, appreciating a greater relationship between both variables in male rather than in female students. The study will make progress in preventive and intervention programs whose central axis is the promotion of physical activity and healthy sport (non-competitive) among students involved in situations of bullying. Likewise, teacher training in the recognition of bullying is considered a priority, providing them with guidelines for action. Méndez I, Ruiz-Esteban C, Ortega E. Impact of the Physical Activity on Bullying. Front Psychol. 2019;10:1520. Published 2019 Jul 2. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01520. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6614442/.
Introduction: The Dutch Pharmacogenetics Working Group (DPWG) indicated a list of actionable genotypes that affect patients’ response to more 50 drugs; these drugs which show variable effects based on patients’ genetic traits were named as pharmacogenetics (PGX) drugs. Preemptive genetic testing before using these drugs may protect certain patients from serious adverse reactions and could help in avoiding treatment failures. The objectives of this study include identifying the rate of PGX drug usage among Dutch population, estimating the level of users who carry the actionable genotypes and determining the main genes involved in drug’s effect variability. Methods: Usage of PGX drugs over 2011–2017 by the insured population (an average of 11.4 million) in outpatient clinics in Netherlands was obtained from the publically available GIP databank. The data of 45 drugs were analyzed and their interactions with selected pharmacogenes were estimated. Frequency of actionable genotypes of 249 Dutch parents was obtained from the public database: Genome of Netherlands (GoNL), to identify the pattern of genetic characteristics of Dutch population. Results: Over a 7 year period, 51.3 million exposures of patients to PGX drugs were reported with an average of 5.3 exposures per each drug user. One quarterof the exposures (12.4 million) are predicted to be experienced by individuals with actionable genotypes (risky exposures). Up to 60% of the risky exposures (around 7.5 million) were related to drugs metabolized by CYP2D6. SLCO1B1, and CYP2C19 were also identified among the top genes affecting response of drugs users (involved in about 22 and 12.4% of the risky exposures, respectively). Cardiovascular medications were the top prescribed PGX drug class (43%), followed by gastroenterology (29%) and psychiatry/neurology medications (15%). Women use more PGX drugs than men (55.8 vs. 44.2%, respectively) with the majority (84%) of users in both sexes are above 45 years. Conclusion: PGX drugs are commonly used in Netherlands. Preemptive panel testing for CYP2D6, SLCO1B1, and CYP2C19 only could be useful to predict 95% of vulnerable patients’ exposures to PGX drugs. Future studies to assess the economic impact of preemptive panel testing on patients of older age are suggested. Alshabeeb MA, Deneer VHM, Khan A, Asselbergs FW. Use of Pharmacogenetic Drugs by the Dutch Population. Front Genet. 2019;10:567. Published 2019 Jul 2. doi:10.3389/fgene.2019.00567. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6614185/
Objectives: To explore if short term, high dose vitamin D supplementation is safe and improves balance in persons with Parkinson's disease (PD). Methods: A pilot randomized, double-blind intervention trial to measure the effects of 16 weeks of high dose vitamin D (10,000 IU/day) on balance as well as other motor and non-motor features of PD. We measured balance, gait, strength, falls, cognition, mood, PD severity, and quality of life before and after 16 weeks of high dose vitamin D supplementation or placebo. All participants also received 1000 mg calcium once daily. Results: Fifty-one randomized participants completed sixteen weeks of high dose vitamin D supplementation or placebo. The intervention resulted in a rise in serum concentrations of vitamin D (25-OH) (30.2 ng/ml to 61.1 ng/ml) and was well tolerated with no serious adverse events. Serum vitamin D (25-OH) levels rose steadily and did not suggest a leveling off at the end of the 16 weeks. There was not an improvement in the primary endpoint, balance as measured by the Sensory Organization Test (p = 0.43). A post hoc analysis examining treatment effects in younger (ages 52–66) versus older (ages 67–86) participants found a significant improvement in the SOT of 10.6 points in the younger half of the cohort (p = 0.012). Conclusions: Short term, high dose vitamin D supplementation appears safe in persons with PD, but did not significantly improve balance as measured with the Sensory Organization Test in this pilot study population. A post hoc analysis suggests that vitamin D may have potential for improving balance in a younger population with PD. High dose vitamin D supplementation in PD needs further study especially in light of new research suggesting that mega doses and even moderate doses (as low as 4000IU a day) may increase falls in an older populations. Hiller AL, Murchison CF, Lobb BM, O'Connor S, O'Connor M, Quinn JF. A randomized, controlled pilot study of the effects of vitamin D supplementation on balance in Parkinson's disease: Does age matter?. PLoS One. 2018;13(9):e0203637. Published 2018 Sep 26. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0203637. This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6157857/
As public health advertisements move online, it becomes possible to run inexpensive randomized-controlled trials (RCTs) thereof. Here we report the results of an online RCT to improve food choices and integrate exercise into daily activities of internet users. People searching for pre-specified terms were randomized to receive one of several professionally developed campaign advertisements or the “status quo” (ads that would otherwise have been served). For 1-month pre-intervention and post-intervention, their searches for health-promoting goods or services were recorded. Our results show that 48% of people who were exposed to the ads made future searches for weight loss information, compared with 32% of those in the control group—a 50% increase. The advertisements varied in efficacy. However, the effectiveness of the advertisements may be greatly improved by targeting individuals based on their lifestyle preferences and/or sociodemographic characteristics, which together explain 49% of the variation in response to the ads. These results demonstrate that online advertisements hold promise as a mechanism for changing population health behaviors. They also provide researchers powerful ways to measure and improve the effectiveness of online public health interventions. Finally, we show that corporations that use these sophisticated tools to promote unhealthy products can potentially be outbid and outmaneuvered. Yom-Tov E, Shembekar J, Barclay S, Muennig P. The effectiveness of public health advertisements to promote health: a randomized-controlled trial on 794,000 participants [published correction appears in NPJ Digit Med. 2018 Aug 16;1:38]. NPJ Digit Med. 2018;1:24. Published 2018 Jun 27. doi:10.1038/s41746-018-0031-7. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6550260/
Background: Reducing diet costs may lead to the selection of energy-dense foods, such as refined grains or foods high in added sugars and/or fats, which can lower overall dietary quality. We examined the longitudinal association between the monetary value of the diet (MVD) and the overall dietary quality across sex, race and income groups. Methods and findings: Longitudinal data from 1,466 adult urban participants from Healthy Aging in Neighborhoods of Diversity across the Life Span (HANDLS) study were used. Healthy Eating Index–2010 (HEI–2010) and Mean Adequacy Ratio (MAR) were computed and a national food price database was used to estimate MVD. Multiple linear regression analyses were conducted linking annual rates of change (Δ) in MVD to ΔHEI-2010 and ΔMAR, stratifying by sex, race and income groups. Among key findings, ΔHEI-2010 was comparable across socio-demographic groups, while ΔMAR was higher among women and individuals above poverty. Adjusting for key covariates, ΔMVD was positively associated with both ΔHEI-2010 and ΔMAR, and with a consistently stronger association among individuals above poverty, specifically for the total proteins and empty calories components of HEI-2010 and several nutrient adequacy ratios (NARs: vitamins C, E, B-6 and Zinc). ΔMVD-ΔMAR association was stronger in women, mainly influenced by ΔMVD’s positive associations with B-vitamins, copper, calcium, magnesium and phosphorus NARs. ΔMVD-Δvitamin D NAR’s positive relationship was stronger among Whites, while ΔMVD-Δvitamin B-12 NAR’s association was stronger among African-Americans. Conclusions: In sum, a potential increase in MVD may have a stronger impact on dietary quality among urban adult women and above-poverty individuals. Beydoun MA, Fanelli-Kuczmarski MT, Poti J, et al. Longitudinal change in the diet's monetary value is associated with its change in quality and micronutrient adequacy among urban adults. PLoS One. 2018;13(10):e0204141. Published 2018 Oct 12. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0204141. This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, Methods, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6193582/
Keeping commitments to others can be difficult, and we know that people sometimes fail to keep them. How does a speaker’s ability to keep commitments affect children’s practical decisions to trust and their epistemic decisions to learn? An amassing body of research documents children’s trust in testimonial learning decisions, which can be moved in the face of epistemic and moral evidence about an agent. However, other bases for trust go largely unexplored in this literature, such as interpersonal reasons to trust. Here, we investigated how direct bids for interpersonal trust in the form of making commitments, or obligations to the listener, influence a range of decisions toward that agent. We found that 3- and 4-year-olds’ (N = 75) practical decisions to wait and to share were moved as a function of a person’s commitment-keeping ability, but epistemic decisions to learn were not. Keeping one’s commitments may provide children with interpersonal reasons to trust, reasons that may function in ways distinct from the considerations that bear on accepting a claim. Pesch A, Koenig MA. Varieties of trust in preschoolers' learning and practical decisions. PLoS One. 2018;13(8):e0202506. Published 2018 Aug 20. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0202506. This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6101396/
Background: In order to improve interventions for problem gambling, there is a need for studies that can highlight psychological factors that support the desire to reduce gambling. Objective: To explore online problem gamblers' motivation for change by studying participants' reactions to an online treatment referral website designed to motivate at-risk gamblers to seek help. Design: A qualitative evaluation study, combining focus groups and in-depth interviews. Data were analyzed using the general inductive approach. Informants: The informants included 19 male, treatment- and non-treatment seeking, online gamblers who played a variety of games, including poker, sports betting and online casino. Results: Motivation to change emerged as two processes including (a) empathy with others, which included projection of their thoughts and feelings onto others, and (b) dissonance between gambling behavior and ideal self-image. Dissonance included two subthemes: (i) dissonance due to positive feelings towards sports and athletics, and (ii) dissonance due to gambling among family. Conclusions: The findings have implications for interventions designed to evoke motivation early in treatment of online problem gambling. Inducing problem gamblers to reflect on the thoughts and feelings of concerned significant others, real or fictional, could be a viable strategy to motivate online problem gamblers to consider change. Johansen AB, Helland PF, Wennesland DK, Henden E, Brendryen H. Exploring online problem gamblers' motivation to change. Addict Behav Rep. 2019;10:100187. Published 2019 Jun 17. doi:10.1016/j.abrep.2019.100187 This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6597935/
Climate change impacts on health—including increased exposures to heat, poor air quality, extreme weather events, altered vector-borne disease transmission, reduced water quality, and decreased food security—affect men and women differently, depending on local geographic and socioeconomic factors. Climate change threatens to widen existing gender-based health disparities, especially in low- and middle-income countries. Health impacts, and gender differences in those impacts, are mediated through socioeconomic, cultural, and physiologic factors. Policy action targeted towards these factors, which are often modifiable, can decrease negative health outcomes. Integration of a gendered perspective into existing climate, development, and disaster-risk reduction policy frameworks requires improvement in data acquisition, monitoring of gender-specific targets, coordination between sectors, and equitable stakeholder engagement. Empowering women as educators, caregivers, holders of knowledge, and agents of social change can improve mitigation and adaptation policy interventions. Sorensen C, Murray V, Lemery J, Balbus J. Climate change and women's health: Impacts and policy directions. PLoS Med. 2018;15(7):e1002603. Published 2018 Jul 10. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1002603. This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. Sections of the Summary, Introduction, Health Imacts, and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6038986/
Purpose: Cardiologists are known to consider patients' race when treating heart failure, but their views on the benefits and harms of this practice are largely undocumented. We set out to explore cardiologists' perspectives on the benefits and harms of race-based drug labels and guidelines. Specifically, we focused on isosorbide dinitrate and hydralazine hydrochloride (sold in a patented form as BiDil), a combination of drugs recommended for the treatment of black patients receiving optimal medical therapy for symptomatic heart failure and reduced ejection fraction. Methods: We conducted 81 semistructured interviews at an American College of Cardiology Annual meeting to assess cardiologists' and cardiology fellows' attitudes toward the use of race in drug prescribing. Investigators reviewed and coded the interviews using inductive qualitative analysis techniques. Results: Many participants believed that race-based drug labels might help doctors prescribe effective medications to patients sooner. More than half of the participants expressed concerns, however, that considering race within the context of treating heart failure could potentially harm patients as well. Harms identified included the likelihood that patients who could benefit from a drug may not receive it because of their race; insufficient understanding about gene–drug–environment interactions; and simplistic applications of race in the clinic. Conclusions: Few participants expressed approval of using race in drug prescribing without recognizing the potential harms, yet most participants stated that they continue to consider race when prescribing isosorbide dinitrate and hydralazine hydrochloride. Within the context of treating heart failure, more open discussions about the benefits and harms of race-based drug labels and prescribing are needed to address cardiologists' concerns. Callier SL, Cunningham BA, Powell J, McDonald MA, Royal CDM. Cardiologists' Perspectives on Race-Based Drug Labels and Prescribing Within the Context of Treating Heart Failure. Health Equity. 2019;3(1):246–253. Published 2019 May 22. doi:10.1089/heq.2018.0074. This Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6608680/
As the sport of outdoor rock climbing rapidly grows, there is increasing pressure to understand how it can affect communities of organisms in cliff habitats. To that end, we surveyed 32 cliff sites in Boulder, Colorado, USA, and assessed the relative roles of human recreation and natural habitat features as drivers of bird diversity and activity. We detected only native avian species during our observations. Whereas avian abundance was not affected by climbing, avian species diversity and community conservation value were higher at low-use climbing formations. Models indicated that climber presence and cliff aspect were important predictors of both avian diversity and avian cliff use within our study area, while long-term climbing use frequency has a smaller, but still negative association with conservation value and cliff use by birds in the area. In contrast, the diversity of species on the cliff itself was not affected by any of our measured factors. To assess additional community dynamics, we surveyed vegetation and arthropods at ten site pairs. Climbing negatively affected lichen communities, but did not significantly affect other vegetation metrics or arthropods. We found no correlations between avian diversity and diversity of either vegetation or arthropods. Avian cliff use rate was positively correlated with arthropod biomass. We conclude that while rock climbing is associated with lower community diversity at cliffs, some common cliff-dwelling birds, arthropods and plants appear to be tolerant of climbing activity. An abiotic factor, cliff aspect strongly affected patterns of both avian diversity and cliff use, suggesting that the negative effects of rock climbing may be mitigated by informed management of cliff habitat that considers multiple site features. Covy N, Benedict L, Keeley WH. Rock climbing activity and physical habitat attributes impact avian community diversity in cliff environments. PLoS One. 2019;14(1):e0209557. Published 2019 Jan 16. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0209557. This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6334907/
Rationale & objective: As the prevalence of obesity continues to rise in the United States, it is important to understand its impact on the lifetime risk of chronic kidney disease (CKD). Study design: The CKD Health Policy Model was used to simulate the lifetime risk of CKD for those with and without obesity at baseline. Model structure was updated for glomerular filtration rate (GFR) decline to incorporate new longitudinal data from the Chronic Renal Insufficiency Cohort (CRIC) study. Setting and population: The updated model was populated with a nationally representative cohort from National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Outcomes: Lifetime risk of CKD, highest stage and any stage. Model, perspective, & timeframe: Simulation model following up individuals from current age through death or age 90 years. Results: Lifetime risk of any CKD stage was 32.5% (95% CI 28.6%–36.3%) for persons with normal weight, 37.6% (95% CI 33.5%–41.7%) for persons who were overweight, and 41.0% (95% CI 36.7%–45.3%) for persons with obesity at baseline. The difference between persons with normal weight and persons with obesity at baseline was statistically significant (p<0.01). Lifetime risk of CKD stages 4 and 5 was higher for persons with obesity at baseline (Stage 4: 2.1%, 95% CI 0.9%–3.3%; stage 5: 0.6%, 95% CI 0.0%–1.1%), but the differences were not statistically significant (stage 4: p = 0.08; stage 5: p = 0.23). Limitations: Due to limited data, our simulation model estimates are based on assumptions about the causal pathways from obesity to CKD, diabetes, and hypertension. Conclusions: The results of this study indicate that obesity may have a large impact on the lifetime risk of CKD. This is important information for policymakers seeking to set priorities and targets for CKD prevention and treatment. Yarnoff BO, Hoerger TJ, Shrestha SS, et al. Modeling the impact of obesity on the lifetime risk of chronic kidney disease in the United States using updated estimates of GFR progression from the CRIC study. PLoS One. 2018;13(10):e0205530. Published 2018 Oct 19. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0205530 This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6195263/
Continuity is a critical but often neglected function of high-quality primary care and has three core domains: relational, informational and managerial continuity. Improving continuity is feasible in low-income and middle-income country health systems by using comprehensive empanelment systems or community-based follow-up programmes to improve retention in care. Continuity must receive more attention, measurement and improvement efforts, in order to achieve equitable, high-quality health for all. Schwarz D, Hirschhorn LR, Kim JH, Ratcliffe HL, Bitton A. Continuity in primary care: a critical but neglected component for achieving high-quality universal health coverage. BMJ Glob Health. 2019;4(3):e001435. Published 2019 May 23. doi:10.1136/bmjgh-2019-001435. This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Sections of the Summary, Introduction, You cannot improve what you do not see, and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6570977/
We studied whether medical conditions across 21 broad categories were predictable from social media content across approximately 20 million words written by 999 consenting patients. Facebook language significantly improved upon the prediction accuracy of demographic variables for 18 of the 21 disease categories; it was particularly effective at predicting diabetes and mental health conditions including anxiety, depression and psychoses. Social media data are a quantifiable link into the otherwise elusive daily lives of patients, providing an avenue for study and assessment of behavioral and environmental disease risk factors. Analogous to the genome, social media data linked to medical diagnoses can be banked with patients’ consent, and an encoding of social media language can be used as markers of disease risk, serve as a screening tool, and elucidate disease epidemiology. In what we believe to be the first report linking electronic medical record data with social media data from consenting patients, we identified that patients’ Facebook status updates can predict many health conditions, suggesting opportunities to use social media data to determine disease onset or exacerbation and to conduct social media-based health interventions. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Results and discussion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6576767/
Dietary intake of adult vegetarians from large prospective studies has been well-characterized but is rarely reported in vegetarian adolescents. Our objective was to describe and compare the dietary intake of vegetarian adolescents with their non-vegetarian counterparts in a population known to espouse healthy living. Adolescents (n = 534) aged 12–18 years old from middle and high schools near major Adventist universities in Michigan and Southern California provided dietary, demographic, and anthropometric data. Dietary intake was measured with a validated 151-item self-administered web-based food frequency questionnaire; weight and height were measured during school visits. Vegetarian was defined as the combined intake of meat, meat derivatives, poultry, and fish of <1 serving per week. Descriptive statistics and ANCOVA were used to compare the intake of vegetarians and non-vegetarians. Vegetarians significantly ate more fruits, vegetables, and other plant-based foods, but significantly less foods of animal origin, sugar-sweetened beverages, and coffee/tea compared to non-vegetarians. Vegetarians had significantly higher intakes of carbohydrates and total protein but lower intakes of fats, animal protein, and zinc compared to their counterparts. A majority (75% or more) of both groups met the 2015 Dietary Guidelines' age-and-gender-specific recommendations for most nutrients but only 16–18% of vegetarians/non-vegetarians did not exceed the upper limit for sodium. More vegetarians (49%) than non-vegetarians (25%) had <10% of their caloric intake from SFA. More than 90% of both groups met dairy recommendations, but greater proportions of vegetarians met recommendations for vegetables, fruits, nuts/soy products, and legumes than non-vegetarians. Of the non-vegetarians, only 7% and 44% met the fish and meats/poultry/eggs recommendation, respectively, which none of the vegetarians met. Compared to the general US adolescent population, both diet groups ate more fruits, vegetables, dairy and protein foods, and also consumed more micronutrients but less macronutrients. Overall, vegetarian adolescents have a more favorable dietary intake profile than non-vegetarians, but both vegetarians and non-vegetarians in this study population have a more adequate diet than the general US adolescent population. The influence of the Adventist plant-based diet culture that is translated both at home and at school is evident in our findings. Segovia-Siapco G, Burkholder-Cooley N, Haddad Tabrizi S, Sabaté J. Beyond Meat: A Comparison of the Dietary Intakes of Vegetarian and Non-vegetarian Adolescents. Front Nutr. 2019;6:86. Published 2019 Jun 13. doi:10.3389/fnut.2019.00086. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Conclusions are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6584749/
Purpose of Review: Effective responses to the US opioid overdose epidemic rely on accurate and timely drug overdose mortality data, which are generated from medicolegal death investigations (MDI) and certifications of overdose deaths. We identify nuances of MDI and certification of overdose deaths that can influence drug overdose mortality surveillance, as well as recent research, recommendations, and epidemiological tools for improved identification and quantification of specific drug involvement in overdose mortality. Recent Findings: Death certificates are the foundation of drug overdose mortality surveillance. Accordingly, counts and rates of specific drug involvement in overdose deaths are only as accurate as the drug listed on death certificates. Variation in systematic approaches or jurisdictional office policy in drug overdose death certification can lead to bias in mortality rate calculations. Recent research has examined statistical adjustments to improve underreported opioid involvement in overdose deaths. New cause-of-death natural language text analysis tools improve quantification of specific opioid overdose mortality rates. Enhanced opioid overdose surveillance, which combines death certificate data with other MDI-generated data, has the potential to improve understanding of factors and circumstances of opioid overdose mortality. Summary: The opioid overdose crisis has brought into focus some of the limitations of US MDI systems for drug overdose surveillance and has given rise to a sense of urgency regarding the pressing need for improvements in our MDI data for public health action and research. Epidemiologists can stimulate positive changes in MDI data quality by demonstrating the critical role of data in guiding public health and safety decisions and addressing the challenges of accurate and timely overdose mortality measures with stakeholders. Education, training, and resources specific to drug overdose surveillance and analysis will be essential as the nation’s overdose crisis continues to evolve. Slavova S, Delcher C, Buchanich JM, Bunn TL, Goldberger BA, Costich JF. Methodological Complexities in Quantifying Rates of Fatal Opioid-Related Overdose. Curr Epidemiol Rep. 2019;6(2):263–274. doi:10.1007/s40471-019-00201-9. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, Epidemiologic Analysis of Drug Overdose Death Data,Death Certificates Remain the Core of Population-Based Drug Overdose Mortality Surveillance, and Conclusions are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6559129/
Early life adversity (ELA) contributes to behavioral impulsivity along with risk for substance use disorders, both accompanied by blunted stress-axis reactivity. However, the biological contributors to blunted stress reactivity are not known. We took advantage of the fact that women have significant opioid inhibition of cortisol output by using the opioid antagonist, naltrexone, to unmask opioid interactions due to ELA. We administered 50 mg of naltrexone or placebo to 72 healthy women (23 years of age) in a double-blind crossover study and observed deviations in cortisol secretion from placebo over the next 180 minutes. ELA was assessed by reported exposure to physical and sexual abuse or neglect and low socioeconomic status and scored as Low, Medium, or High (0, 1–2, and 3+). The ELA groups all had identical placebo-day cortisol secretion, indicating normal basal regulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical axis. Cortisol rises to naltrexone were largest in the Low-ELA group and strongly blunted in the High-ELA group (F = 3.51, p = 0.035), indicating a lack of opioid function in women with high degrees of ELA. The Low-ELA women reported dysphoric responses to naltrexone (F = 4.05, p = .022) indicating a mild opioid withdrawal, an effect that was absent in the High-ELA group. Women exposed to ELA have blunted cortisol responses to naltrexone, indicating reduced opioid regulation of the stress axis. Central opioid changes may be one pathway linking ELA to blunted stress reactivity in adulthood. Lovallo WR, Acheson A, Vincent AS, Sorocco KH, Cohoon AJ. Early life adversity diminishes the cortisol response to opioid blockade in women: Studies from the Family Health Patterns project. PLoS One. 2018;13(10):e0205723. Published 2018 Oct 12. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0205723. This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6185842/
We investigated the effect of snacking habits in childhood on changes in body mass index (BMI) and high BMI in adolescence and adulthood. In total, 2141 Japanese children from the Ibaraki Children’s Cohort Study were evaluated at age 6 years (baseline), then at ages 12 and 22 years. We examined associations between snacking (scheduled times, when children wanted, and freely) at age 6 years and changes in BMI over time and the proportion of high BMI at ages 12 and 22 years, using time-dependent mixed-effects and logistic regression models. Compared with children who snacked at scheduled times, those provided snacks when they wanted experienced larger increases in BMI over time between ages 6 and 22 years (multivariable time-dependent effect: 0.03 kg/m2 for boys, p = 0.047; 0.04 kg/m2 for girls, p = 0.019). No differences were observed in children who snacked freely. A higher proportion of high BMI was found in boys who were provided snacks when they wanted compared with those who snacked at scheduled times. The multivariable odds ratio (95% confidence interval) was 1.52 (1.04–2.23) at age 12 years and 2.23 (1.12–4.45) at age 22 years. No differences were observed for girls at either age. Children who were provided snacks when they wanted showed larger increases in BMI over time compared with those who snacked at scheduled times. Boys who were provided snacks when they wanted showed the higher proportion of high BMI at follow-up. Sata M, Yamagishi K, Sairenchi T, et al. Long-term effect of feeding snacks at age 6 years on body mass index at ages 12 and 22 years. Sci Rep. 2019;9(1):8627. Published 2019 Jun 13. doi:10.1038/s41598-019-40730-3. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6565708/
Exposure to media coverage of mass violence has been shown to predict poorer mental health symptomology. However, it is unknown whether such media coverage can have ubiquitous effects on average community members, extending to biological and perceptual processes that underlie everyday decision making and behavior. Here, we used a repeated-measures design over the first anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombings to track participants’ self-reported distress, their eye blink startle reactivity while viewing images of the bombings, and their ability to perceptually distinguish armed from unarmed individuals in a behavioral shooting task. We leveraged a computational linguistics method in which we sampled news content from the sources our participants most commonly self-reported reading, and then quantified both the extent of news coverage about the marathon and the affective tone of that news coverage. Results revealed that participants experienced greater current distress, greater physiological reactivity to threats, and poorer perceptual sensitivity when recent news coverage of the marathon contained more affectively negative words. This is the first empirical work to examine relationships between the media’s affective tone in its coverage of mass violence and individuals’ threat perception and physiological threat reactivity. Wormwood JB, Lin YR, Lynn SK, Barrett LF, Quigley KS. Psychological impact of mass violence depends on affective tone of media content. PLoS One. 2019;14(4):e0213891. Published 2019 Apr 1. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0213891. This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6443148/
Background: The NOVA food classification scheme divides foods into ultra-processed, processed, unprocessed, and culinary ingredients. Ultra-processed foods contribute >60% of energy to diets in the US. Objective: To characterize ultra-processed foods by energy density, nutrient density, and monetary cost. Methods: The 384 component foods of Fred Hutch (FHCRC) food frequency questionnaire (FFQ), were assigned to 4 NOVA categories and to 7 USDA MyPyramid food groups. Energy density was kcal/g. Nutrient density was measured using the Nutrient Rich Food index NRF9.3. Food prices were collected in local supermarkets from 2004 to 2016. Analyses examined time trends in food prices by NOVA category and by USDA food group. Results: The ultra-processed classification captured mostly grains (91%), fats and sweets (73%), dairy (71%), and beans, nuts and seeds (70%), but only 36% of meat, poultry and fish, 26% of vegetables, and 20% of fruit. Compared to unprocessed foods, ultra-processed foods had lower nutrient density (NRF9.3 per 100 kcal: 21.2 vs. 108.5),higher energy density (mean (SD): 2.2 vs. 1.10 in kcal/g), and lower per calorie cost (0.55 vs. 1.45 in $/100 kcal). Ultra-processed foods did not increase in price as much as unprocessed foods over the 12 year period. Conclusion: Ultra-processed foods tend to be energy-dense, low-cost, and nutrient-poor. Low energy cost could be one mechanism linking ultra-processed foods with negative health outcomes. Food-based Dietary Guidelines may need to address food processing in relation to economic aspects of food choice. Gupta S, Hawk T, Aggarwal A and Drewnowski A (2019)Characterizing Ultra-Processed Foods by Energy Density, Nutrient Density, and Cost. Front. Nutr. 6:70. doi: 10.3389/fnut.2019.00070 This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2019.00070/full
Background: Life satisfaction is a cognitive and evaluative judgement of one’s outlook on life and an integral component of subjective wellbeing. There is a strong association between life satisfaction and mental and physical health, but it is currently unclear how environmental factors may influence life satisfaction. Our aim was to investigate the association between environmental factors and life satisfaction and to gain a better understanding of general life satisfaction statistics in the EU. Methods: We used a three-level mixed effects logistic regression model to examine the effects of sociodemographic, macroeconomic and environmental factors on life satisfaction using a large sample size from Eurobarometer surveys (n = 268,696) representative of 27 EU countries. Data were collected through face-to-face interviews between May 2014 and June 2015. Results: We found wide variation between countries, as well as between regions within the same country with regards to levels of life satisfaction. Having adjusted for individual sociodemographic factors, our analysis did not indicate statistically significant associations of mean temperature and precipitation with life satisfaction. However, there was a statistically significant association between environmental degradation and lower life satisfaction (OR = 0.98; 95% CI: 0.97–1.00). Consistent with existing literature, our results show statistically significant effects of sociodemographic factors such as sex, financial situation and employment on life satisfaction. Conclusions: Future research should extend analyses to a wider range of sociodemographic, macroeconomic and geographical variables to gain insight on all possible factors affecting life satisfaction to inform policy makers and ensure higher quality of life, and in turn better mental and physical health. Rajani NB, Skianis V, Filippidis FT. Association of environmental and sociodemographic factors with life satisfaction in 27 European countries. BMC Public Health. 2019;19(1):534. Published 2019 May 10. doi:10.1186/s12889-019-6886-y. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article,unless otherwise stated. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6509815/
Alzheimer’s disease is one of the most severe neurodegenerative diseases among elderly people. Different pathogenic factors for Alzheimer’s disease have been posited and studied in recent decades, but no effective treatment has been found, necessitating further studies. In this Viewpoint article, we assess studies on the mechanisms underlying the accumulation of amyloid (Aβ) peptide and the formation of Aβ oligomers because their accumulation in amyloid plaques in brain tissue has become a well-studied hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease. We focus on the production of Aβ and its impact on the function of synapses and neural circuits, and also discuss the clinical prospects for amyloid-targeted therapies. Zhou Y, Sun Y, Ma QH, Liu Y. Alzheimer's disease: amyloid-based pathogenesis and potential therapies. Cell Stress. 2018;2(7):150–161. Published 2018 Jun 29. doi:10.15698/cst2018.07.143. This is an open-access article released under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows the unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are acknowledged. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, The Amyloid Cascade Hypothesis and Subsequent Studies, and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6551797/
Demographic and income disparities may impact food accessibility. Research has not yet well documented the precise location of healthy and unhealthy food resources around children’s homes and schools. The objective of this study was to examine the food environment around homes and schools for all public school children, stratified by race/ethnicity and poverty status. This cross-sectional study linked data on the exact home and school addresses of a population-based sample of public school children in New York City from 2013 to all corner stores, supermarkets, fast-food restaurants, and wait-service restaurants. Two measures were created around these addresses for all children: 1) distance to the nearest outlet, and 2) count of outlets within 0.25 miles. The total analytic sample included 789,520 K-12 graders. The average age was 11.78 years (SD ± 4.0 years). Black, Hispanic, and Asian students live and attend schools closer to nearly all food outlet types than White students, regardless of poverty status. Among not low-income students, Black, Hispanic, and Asian students were closer from home and school to corner stores and supermarkets, and had more supermarkets around school than White students. The context in which children live matters, and more nuanced data is important for development of appropriate solutions for childhood obesity. Future research should examine disparities in the food environment in other geographies and by other demographic characteristics, and then link these differences to health outcomes like body mass index. These findings can be used to better understand disparities in food access and to help design policies intended to promote healthy eating among children. Elbel B, Tamura K, McDermott ZT, et al. Disparities in food access around homes and schools for New York City children. PLoS One. 2019;14(6):e0217341. Published 2019 Jun 12. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0217341. This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6561543/
Objectives: While patients’ health priorities should inform healthcare, strategies for doing so are lacking for patients with multiple conditions. We describe challenges to, and strategies that support, patients’ priorities-aligned decision-making. Design: Participant observation qualitative study. Setting: Primary care and cardiology practices in Connecticut. Participants: Ten primary care clinicians, five cardiologists, and the Patient Priorities implementation team (four geriatricians, physician expert in clinician training, behavioral medicine expert). The patients discussed were ≥ 66 years with >3 chronic conditions and ≥10 medications or saw ≥ two specialists. Exposure: Following initial training and experience in providing Patient Priorities Care, the clinicians and Patient Priorities implementation team participated in 21 case-based, group discussions (10 face-to-face;11 telephonic). Using emergent learning (i.e. learning which arises from interactions among the participants), participants discussed challenges, posed solutions, and worked together to determine how to align care options with the health priorities of 35 patients participating in the Patient Priorities Care pilot. Main outcomes: Challenges to, and strategies for, aligning decision-making with patient’s health priorities. Results: Categories of challenges discussed among participants included uncertainty, complexity, and multiplicity of problems and treatments; difficulty switching to patients’ priorities as the focus of decision-making; and differing perspectives between patients and clinicians, and among clinicians. Strategies identified to support patient priorities-aligned decision-making included starting with one thing that matters most to each patient; conducting serial trials of starting, stopping, or continuing interventions; focusing on function (i.e. achieving patient’s desired activities) rather than eliminating symptoms; basing communications, decision-making, and effectiveness on patients’ priorities not solely on diseases; and negotiating shared decisions when there are differences in perspectives. Conclusions: The discrete set of challenges encountered and the implementable strategies identified suggest that patient priorities-aligned decision-making in the care of patients with multiple chronic conditions is feasible, albeit complicated. Findings require replication in additional settings and determination of their effect on patient outcomes. Tinetti M, Dindo L, Smith CD, et al. Challenges and strategies in patients' health priorities-aligned decision-making for older adults with multiple chronic conditions. PLoS One. 2019;14(6):e0218249. Published 2019 Jun 10. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0218249. This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. Sections of the Abstract and Introduction are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6557523/
A substantial body of work has depicted a positive association between physical exercise and cognition, although the key factors driving that link are still a matter of scientific debate. Here, we aimed to contribute further to that topic by pooling the data from seven studies (N = 361) conducted by our research group to examine whether cardiovascular fitness (VO2), sport type participation (externally-paced (e.g., football or basketball) and self-paced (e.g., triathlon or track and field athletes) vs. sedentary), or both, are crucial factors to explain the association between the regular practice of exercise and vigilance capacity. We controlled for relevant variables such as age and the method of VO2 estimation. The Psychomotor Vigilance Task was used to measure vigilance performance by means of reaction time (RT). The results showed that externally-paced sport practice (e.g., football) resulted in significantly shorter RT compared to self-paced sport (e.g., triathlon) and sedentary condition, depicting larger effects in children and adolescents than in adults. Further analyses revealed no significant effect of cardiovascular fitness and self-paced sport practice, in comparison to the sedentary condition, on RT. Our data point to the relevance of considering the type of sport practice over and above the level of cardiovascular fitness as crucial factor to explain the positive association between the regular practice of exercise and vigilance capacity. Sanabria D, Luque-Casado A, Perales JC, et al. The relationship between vigilance capacity and physical exercise: a mixed-effects multistudy analysis. PeerJ. 2019;7:e7118. Published 2019 Jun 6. doi:10.7717/peerj.7118 This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, Discussion,and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6556370/
Fibromyalgia (FM) is one of the most frequent generalized pain disorders with poorly understood neurobiological mechanisms. This condition accounts for an enormous proportion of healthcare costs. Despite extensive research, the etiology of FM is unknown and thus, there is no disease modifying therapy available for this condition. We show that most (if not all) patients with FM belong to a distinct population that can be segregated from a control group by their glycated hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) levels, a surrogate marker of insulin resistance (IR). This was demonstrated by analyzing the data after introducing an age stratification correction into a linear regression model. This strategy showed highly significant differences between FM patients and control subjects (p < 0.0001 and p = 0.0002, for two separate control populations, respectively). A subgroup of patients meeting criteria for pre-diabetes or diabetes (patients with HbA1c values of 5.7% or greater) who had undergone treatment with metformin showed dramatic improvements of their widespread myofascial pain, as shown by their scores using a pre and post-treatment numerical pain rating scale (NPRS) for evaluation. Although preliminary, these findings suggest a pathogenetic relationship between FM and IR, which may lead to a radical paradigm shift in the management of this disorder. Pappolla MA, Manchikanti L, Andersen CR, et al. Is insulin resistance the cause of fibromyalgia? A preliminary report. PLoS One. 2019;14(5):e0216079. Published 2019 May 6. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0216079. This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6502334/
Objective: To investigate the incidence of trampoline park injuries (TPIs) at a local recreational facility and to quantify the burden on emergency and orthopaedic services at our institute. Methods: All patients that presented to the Emergency Department (ED) from the trampoline park via ambulance from July 2014 to November 2015 were included in the study. Patients’ medical records were reviewed for clinical details including date, location and type of injury, treatment received, length of stay and outpatient follow-up. A cost analysis was performed to estimate the financial impact of each injury. Results: A total of 71 patients were included in the study, with a mean age of 20 (7-48). Soft tissue sprains (n=29, 41%) and fractures (n=25, 35%) were the most common injuries, with the majority occurring in the lower limb. Two patients sustained open tibial fractures necessitating transfer to level 1 trauma centres. Fourteen patients (20%) underwent surgery, predominantly requiring open reduction and internal fixation. Overall, 18 patients (25%) required admission to hospital with mean length of stay of 2 days. The cost for pre-hospital, emergency and in-patient care amounted to over £80,000. Conclusion: TPIs pose a significant financial cost for local orthopaedic and emergency services. Contrary to studies evaluating home trampoline injuries, the majority of fractures at trampoline parks occurred in the lower limbs. Improved injury prevention strategies are required to help reduce morbidity and lower the financial implications for local NHS trusts. Jordan SJ, To CJ, Shafafy R, Davidson AE, Gill K, Solan MC. Trampoline Park Injuries and Their Burden on Local Orthopaedic and Emergency Services. Bull Emerg Trauma. 2019;7(2):162–168. doi:10.29252/beat-070212. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6555216/
Objectives: To investigate the role of body mass index (BMI), systolic blood pressure, and smoking behaviour in explaining the effect of education on the risk of cardiovascular disease outcomes. Design: Mendelian randomisation study. Setting: UK Biobank and international genome-wide association study data. Participants: Predominantly participants of European ancestry. Exposure: Educational attainment, BMI, systolic blood pressure, and smoking behaviour in observational analysis, and randomly allocated genetic variants to instrument these traits in mendelian randomisation. Main outcomes measure: The risk of coronary heart disease, stroke, myocardial infarction, and cardiovascular disease (all subtypes; all measured in odds ratio), and the degree to which this is mediated through BMI, systolic blood pressure, and smoking behaviour respectively. Results: Each additional standard deviation of education (3.6 years) was associated with a 13% lower risk of coronary heart disease (odds ratio 0.86, 95% confidence interval 0.84 to 0.89) in observational analysis and a 37% lower risk (0.63, 0.60 to 0.67) in mendelian randomisation analysis. As a proportion of the total risk reduction, BMI was estimated to mediate 15% (95% confidence interval 13% to 17%) and 18% (14% to 23%) in the observational and mendelian randomisation estimates, respectively. Corresponding estimates were 11% (9% to 13%) and 21% (15% to 27%) for systolic blood pressure and 19% (15% to 22%) and 34% (17% to 50%) for smoking behaviour. All three risk factors combined were estimated to mediate 42% (36% to 48%) and 36% (5% to 68%) of the effect of education on coronary heart disease in observational and mendelian randomisation analyses, respectively. Similar results were obtained when investigating the risk of stroke, myocardial infarction, and cardiovascular disease. Conclusions: BMI, systolic blood pressure, and smoking behaviour mediate a substantial proportion of the protective effect of education on the risk of cardiovascular outcomes and intervening on these would lead to reductions in cases of cardiovascular disease attributable to lower levels of education. However, more than half of the protective effect of education remains unexplained and requires further investigation. Carter AR, Gill D, Davies NM, et al. Understanding the consequences of education inequality on cardiovascular disease: mendelian randomisation study. BMJ. 2019;365:l1855. Published 2019 May 22. doi:10.1136/bmj.l1855 This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt and build upon this work, for commercial use, provided the original work is properly cited. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6529852/
Linking human behavior to resting-state brain function is a central question in systems neuroscience. In particular, the functional timescales at which different types of behavioral factors are encoded remain largely unexplored. The behavioral counterparts of static functional connectivity (FC), at the resolution of several minutes, have been studied but behavioral correlates of dynamic measures of FC at the resolution of a few seconds remain unclear. Here, using resting-state fMRI and 58 phenotypic measures from the Human Connectome Project, we find that dynamic FC captures task-based phenotypes (e.g., processing speed or fluid intelligence scores), whereas self-reported measures (e.g., loneliness or life satisfaction) are equally well explained by static and dynamic FC. Furthermore, behaviorally relevant dynamic FC emerges from the interconnections across all resting-state networks, rather than within or between pairs of networks. Our findings shed new light on the timescales of cognitive processes involved in distinct facets of behavior. Liégeois R, Li J, Kong R, et al. Resting brain dynamics at different timescales capture distinct aspects of human behavior. Nat Commun. 2019;10(1):2317. Published 2019 May 24. doi:10.1038/s41467-019-10317-7. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6534566/
Aging is the progressive decline of physiological functions necessary for survival and reproduction. In gaining a better understanding of the inevitable aging process, the hope is to preserve, promote, or delay healthy aging through the treatment of common age-associated diseases. Although there are theories that try to explain the aging process, none of them seem to fully satisfy. Microcirculation describes blood flow through the capillaries in the circulatory system. The main functions of the microcirculation are the delivery of oxgen and nutrients and the removal of CO2, metabolic debris, and toxins. The microcirculatory impairment or dysfunction over time will result in the accumulation of toxic products and CO2 and loss of nutrition supplementation and O2 in corresponding tissue systems or internal organs, which eventually affect normal tissue and organ functions, leading to aging. Therefore, I propose a microcirculatory theory of aging: aging is the process of continuous impairment of microcirculation in the body. Jin K. A Microcirculatory Theory of Aging. Aging Dis. 2019;10(3):676–683. Published 2019 Jun 1. doi:10.14336/AD.2019.0315. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided that the original work is properly attributed. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Aging: consequence of microcirculatory impairment are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6538209/
Research has shown that individual differences in adult attachment predict several organizational outcomes. However, little is known about the mechanism that underlies these associations. The current study examines whether self-compassion can serve as a potential mediator explaining the associations between individual differences in attachment and organizational outcomes. Four outcome measures were evaluated: job performance (HPQ; Kessler et al., 2003), organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) (Goodman and Svyantek, 1999), turnover intentions (Abrams et al., 1998), and emotional exhaustion (Schaufeli et al., 1996). In addition, participants (N = 202, response rate 81%) also completed several questionnaires assessing attachment style (ECR; Brennan et al., 1998) and self-compassion (SCS; Neff, 2003). Using structural equation modeling (SEM) for testing the research hypotheses, the hypothesized model was supported, with self-compassion mediating the relationship between attachment styles and all four work-related outcomes. The research findings suggest that self-compassion can provide a solid mechanism for understanding organizational outcomes and for understanding individual differences related to attachment functioning in the workplace. Reizer A. Bringing Self-Kindness Into the Workplace: Exploring the Mediating Role of Self-Compassion in the Associations Between Attachment and Organizational Outcomes. Front Psychol. 2019;10:1148. Published 2019 May 21. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01148 This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6536612/
Background: Positive psychology indicators like well-being and life satisfaction may play a pivotal role in pain-related outcomes. In this study, we aimed to examine the prospective associations of positive well-being and life satisfaction with pain severity. Methods and Subjects: This longitudinal study, with a follow-up of 2 years, included 9361 participants (4266 males, 5095 females; mean age: 52.5 years; SD: 17.5) without and with chronic pain (CP) at baseline. All analyses were stratified by the two sub-cohorts—participants without CP (sub-cohort 1) and participants with CP (sub-cohort 2) at baseline. The predictive associations, assessed using ordinal regression in a Generalized Linear Model, were adjusted for baseline potential confounders and reported as odds ratios (ORs) with corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Results: After adjustments, in sub-cohort 1 positive well-being at baseline was associated with lower severe pain at follow-up compared to participants with severe distress (OR: 0.64; 95% CI 0.49–0.84; p < 0.001). In sub-cohort 2, both positive well-being and life satisfaction at baseline were associated with lower severe pain at follow-up compared to participants with severe distress and not satisfied with life (OR: 0.80; 95% CI 0.65–0.98; p = 0.031 and OR: 0.82; 95% CI 0.69–0.96; p = 0.014, respectively). Conclusions: Positive well-being is predictive of lower pain severity both among participants without and with CP at baseline, whereas life satisfaction was found predictive of lower pain severity only for subjects with CP. Future research should emphasize implementing treatments associated with promoting and maintaining positive well-being and life satisfaction in patients who suffer from chronic pain and in risk populations. Larsson B, Dragioti E, Gerdle B, Björk J. Positive psychological well-being predicts lower severe pain in the general population: a 2-year follow-up study of the SwePain cohort. Ann Gen Psychiatry. 2019;18:8. Published 2019 May 31. doi:10.1186/s12991-019-0231-9. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article,unless otherwise stated. Sections of the Abstract, Background, and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6543656/
Background: Online dating has become increasingly popular over the years. Few research studies have examined the association between dating apps and disordered eating. In this study, we evaluated the association between dating app use and unhealthy weight control behaviors (UWCBs) among a sample of U.S. adults. Methods: Our sample includes 1769 adults who completed an online survey assessing dating app use and UWCBs in the past year. Survey assessed participants’ self-reported frequency of using dating apps within the past 30 days and engagement in six UWCBs with the purpose of lowering weight or changing their body shape within the past 12 months. UWCBs included vomiting, laxative use, fasting, diet pill use, muscle building supplement use, and use of anabolic steroids. Results: Results of multivariate logistic regression models suggest dating app users had substantially elevated odds of UWCBs compared with non-users (odds ratios [OR] range = 2.7—16.2). These findings were supported by results of additional gender-stratified multivariate logistic regression analyses among women and men. Conclusions: This study’s findings contribute to the limited literature exploring the association between dating app use and adverse health outcomes, particularly UWCBs. While additional longitudinal and representative research is needed, public health professionals ought to explore dating app use as a potential risk factor for UWCBs. Tran A, Suharlim C, Mattie H, Davison K, Agénor M, Austin SB. Dating app use and unhealthy weight control behaviors among a sample of U.S. adults: a cross-sectional study. J Eat Disord. 2019;7:16. Published 2019 May 31. doi:10.1186/s40337-019-0244-4. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article,unless otherwise stated. Sections of the Abstract, Background, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6543621/
Background: The energy content of whole, fresh fruit derives primarily from simple sugars, which are currently under heightened scrutiny for their potential contribution to obesity and chronic disease risk. Yet fruit also has a relatively low energy density, moderate palatability/reward value, and high fiber content, which together may limit energy intake. Although reasoned arguments can be made that fruit is fattening or slimming, the question is best resolved empirically. Methods: Methods were preregistered with PROSPERO (CRD42018111830). The primary outcome is the impact of whole, fresh fruit consumption on measures of adiposity including body weight in randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Secondary outcomes are the impact of whole, fresh fruit consumption on energy intake in RCTs, and the association between whole, fresh fruit consumption and changes in measures of adiposity in prospective observational studies. CENTRAL and PubMed databases were searched through October 2018. Cochrane risk of bias tool was used to assess risk of bias in RCTs, and the GRADE method was used to judge and convey the certainty of conclusions. Reporting follows PRISMA guidelines. Results: RCTs, and particularly those of higher quality, suggest that increasing whole, fresh fruit consumption promotes weight maintenance or modest weight loss over periods of 3–24 weeks (moderate certainty), with limited evidence suggesting that a high intake of fruit favors weight loss among people with overweight or obesity. Consistent with this, single-meal RCTs suggest that consuming whole, fresh fruit tends to decrease energy intake, particularly when consumed prior to a meal or when displacing more energy-dense foods (moderate certainty). Prospective observational studies suggest that habitually higher fruit intake is not associated with weight change, or is associated with modest protection against weight gain, over five or more years. Conclusions: Current evidence suggests that whole, fresh fruit consumption is unlikely to contribute to excess energy intake and adiposity, but rather has little effect on these outcomes or constrains them modestly. Single-meal RCTs, RCTs lasting 3–24 weeks, and long-term observational studies are relatively consistent in supporting this conclusion. Whole, fresh fruit probably does not contribute to obesity and may have a place in the prevention and management of excess adiposity. Guyenet SJ. Impact of Whole, Fresh Fruit Consumption on Energy Intake and Adiposity: A Systematic Review. Front Nutr. 2019;6:66. Published 2019 May 8. doi:10.3389/fnut.2019.00066 This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6518666/
The core symptoms of psychosis—delusions, hallucinations, and thought disorders—are not unique to the disorder traditionally called schizophrenia. They occur at the early stages of various brain diseases, too. Psychosis seems to be a preformed pattern of response of the human brain. Most schizophrenia onsets are marked by a prodromal stage extending over several years and producing the maximum of social consequences. Schizophrenia incidence shows a steep increase culminating at age 15 to 25 years in males. In females it reaches a first peak at age 15 to 30 years and a second, flatter peak at menopausal age (44-49 years). Thereafter, incidence declines to a plateau at later ages. Unlike what the findings of most large-scale epidemiological studies applying an upper age limit of 45 to 55 years suggest, schizophrenia is a disorder of all ages. The lifetime risk seems to be the same for both sexes. The lower incidence in premenopausal women is accounted for by the downregulating effect of oestrogen on dopamine receptors. This hormonal protective effect is antagonised by the genetic effect of a high familial load. In the long-term illness course, right-censored to 11.2 years following first admission, the number of psychotic relapse episodes ranges from 0 to 29 with a mean of 3. The positive symptom dimension produces the highest number of relapses and the shortest duration of exacerbations with a mean length of two months. The depressive and negative symptom dimensions show exacerbations extending over nearly six months on average. Following the first illness episode symptom scores decline sharply, reaching a plateau five years after first admission. Negative symptoms come to a plateau after 2 to 3 years in females and after 5 years in males. Depression is the most frequent type of symptom in the long-term course. In the light of these results urgent treatment issues will be discussed. Häfner H. From Onset and Prodromal Stage to a Life-Long Course of Schizophrenia and Its Symptom Dimensions: How Sex, Age, and Other Risk Factors Influence Incidence and Course of Illness. Psychiatry J. 2019;2019:9804836. Published 2019 Apr 16. doi:10.1155/2019/9804836. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article:
Background/Objectives: Antibiotic use in early life has been associated with weight gain in several populations. However, associations between chronic antibiotic use and weight among adults in the general population are unknown. Subjects/Methods: The NIEHS Sister Study is a longitudinal cohort of sisters of women with breast cancer. We examined associations between chronic antibiotic use (≥ 3 months) during the fourth decade of life (30–39 years) and subsequent obesity at enrollment (mean age = 55) via logistic regression. We also examined associations between chronic antibiotic use in the 5 years and 12 months prior to enrollment and weight gain after enrollment in linear mixed models. Models were adjusted for race/ethnicity, education, urban/rural status, age, and smoking. Results: In adjusted analyses (n = 50,237), chronic penicillin use during the 4th decade of life was associated with obesity at enrollment (OR 2.00, 95% CI 1.40, 2.87), and use in the 5 years prior to enrollment was associated with increased BMI change after enrollment (β 1.00 95% CI 0.01, 2.00). Use of bactericidals (OR 1.71, 95% CI 1.29, 2.26) during the 4th decade of life was also associated with obesity at enrollment. Associations for penicillins and bactericidals were consistent across indications for use. Bacteriostatic use in the 5 years prior to enrollment was associated with a reduction in BMI after enrollment (β -0.52, 95% CI -1.04, 0.00), and tetracycline use during the 4th decade of life was associated with reduced odds of obesity at enrollment (OR 0.72, 95% CI 0.56, 0.92). However, these inverse associations were only present for those who reported taking antibiotics for skin purposes. Cephalosporins, macrolides, quinolones, and sulfonamides were not associated with BMI change over time. Conclusions: Chronic use of antibiotics during adulthood may have long-lasting impacts on BMI. Associations may differ by antibiotic class, and confounding by indication may be important for some antibiotic classes. Furlong M, Deming-Halverson S, Sandler DP. Chronic antibiotic use during adulthood and weight change in the Sister Study. PLoS One. 2019;14(5):e0216959. Published 2019 May 16. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0216959. This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. Sections of the Abstract and Introduction are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6522121/
Objective: Dementia is a common and feared aspect of Parkinson's disease but there are no robust predictors of cognitive outcome. Visuoperceptual deficits are linked to risk of dementia in Parkinson's disease but whether they predict cognitive change is not known, and the neural substrates of visuoperceptual dysfunction in Parkinson's have not yet been identified. Methods: We compared patients with Parkinson's disease and unaffected controls who underwent BOLD fMRI while performing our previously validated visuoperceptual task and tested how functional connectivity between task‐specific regions and the rest of the brain differed between patients who performed well and poorly in the task. Results: We show that task performance at baseline predicts change in cognition in Parkinson's disease after 1 year. Our task‐based fMRI study showed that the performance in this task is associated with activity in the posterior cingulate cortex/precuneus. We found that functional connectivity between this region and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex was reduced in poor performers compared with good performers of this task. Interpretation: Our findings suggest that functional connectivity is reduced between posterior and anterior hubs of the default mode network in Parkinson's patients who are likely to progress to worsening cognitive dysfunction. Our work implicates posterior default mode nodes and their connections as key brain regions in early stages of dementia in Parkinson's disease. Weil RS, Winston JS, Leyland LA, et al. Neural correlates of early cognitive dysfunction in Parkinson's disease. Ann Clin Transl Neurol. 2019;6(5):902–912. Published 2019 Mar 28. doi:10.1002/acn3.767. This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Sections of the Abstract and Introduction are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6529983/
Sepsis is a complex of life-threating organ dysfunction in critically ill patients, with a primary infectious cause or through secondary infection of damaged tissues. The systemic consequences of sepsis have been intensively examined and evidences of local alterations and repercussions in the intestinal mucosal compartment is gradually defining gut-associated changes during sepsis. In the present review, we focus on sepsis-induced dysfunction of the intestinal barrier, consisting of an increased permeability of the epithelial lining, which may facilitate bacterial translocation. We discuss disturbances in intestinal vascular tonus and perfusion and coagulopathies with respect to their proposed underlying molecular mechanisms. The consequences of enzymatic responses by pancreatic proteases, intestinal alkaline phosphatases, and several matrix metalloproteases are also described. We conclude our insight with a discussion on novel therapeutic interventions derived from crucial aspects of the gut mucosal dynamics during sepsis. Haussner F, Chakraborty S, Halbgebauer R, Huber-Lang M. Challenge to the Intestinal Mucosa During Sepsis. Front Immunol. 2019;10:891. Published 2019 Apr 30. doi:10.3389/fimmu.2019.00891. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6502990/
Background: Smoking tobacco products remains a significant public health problem. The Foundation for a Smoke-Free World commissioned a 13-country survey to gain a clearer understanding of the current landscape of smoking behavior and preferences across the world. Methods: Over 17,000 participants in 13 countries, representing different regions and income groups, answered questions on their smoking patterns and product use, their social context, their motivation to smoke, quit, or switch, and their perception of risks of products and substances. Rim weighting was done for each country to align responses with population demographics, and an additional 200 smokers for each country were surveyed to achieve sufficient sample size for sub-analyses of smoker data. Results: The observed prevalence of smoking ranged from an age-adjusted high of 57.5% in Lebanon to 8.4% in New Zealand among men, with lower rates for women. The majority of smokers were between 25-54 years old, had daily routines and social patterns associated with smoking, used boxed cigarettes, and rated their health more poorly compared to never smokers. Among a range of products and substances, smokers tended to give both cigarettes and nicotine the highest harm ratings. Smokers in high income countries were largely familiar with electronic nicotine delivery systems; the most commonly given reasons for using them were to cut down or quit smoking. A majority of smokers had tried to quit at least once, and while many tried without assistance, motivations, intentions, and methods for smoking cessation, including professional help, nicotine replacement therapies or medications, or electronic cigarettes, varied among countries. Conclusions: Smoking is deeply integrated in smokers’ lives worldwide. Although a majority of smokers have tried to quit, and are concerned for their health, they do not seek help. Smokers lack understanding of the harmful components of smoking tobacco products and the risk profile of alternatives. Riahi F, Rajkumar S, Yach D. Tobacco smoking and nicotine delivery alternatives: patterns of product use and perceptions in 13 countries. F1000Res. 2019;8:80. Published 2019 May 13. doi:10.12688/f1000research.17635.2. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, Methods, and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. Link to the full-text article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6518446/
Scientific literature examining cannabis use in the context of health behaviors, such as exercise engagement, is extremely sparse and has yielded inconsistent findings. This issue is becoming increasingly relevant as cannabis legalization continues, a situation that has been associated with increased initiation of use among adults, and increased potency of available products in legalized states. Physical activity is among the most important health behaviors, but many Americans do not meet minimum exercise recommendations for healthy living. Common issues surrounding low exercise rates include inadequate enjoyment of and motivation to exercise, and poor recovery from exercise. It is unclear whether cannabis use shortly before and/or after exercise impacts these issues, and whether this co-use affects exercise performance. The present online survey study examines attitudes and behaviors regarding cannabis use with exercise among adult cannabis users living in states with full legal access (N = 605). Results indicated that the majority (81.7%) of participants endorsed using cannabis concurrently with exercise, and those who did tended to be younger and more likely to be males (p < 0.0005 for both). Even after controlling for these differences, co-users reported engaging in more minutes of aerobic and anaerobic exercise per week (p < 0.01 and p < 0.05, respectively). In addition, the majority of participants who endorsed using cannabis shortly before/after exercise reported that doing so enhances their enjoyment of and recovery from exercise, and approximately half reported that it increases their motivation to exercise. This study represents an important step in clarifying cannabis use with exercise among adult users in states with legal cannabis markets, and provides guidance for future research directions. YorkWilliams SL, Gust CJ, Mueller R, et al. The New Runner's High? Examining Relationships Between Cannabis Use and Exercise Behavior in States With Legalized Cannabis. Front Public Health. 2019;7:99. Published 2019 Apr 30. doi:10.3389/fpubh.2019.00099. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Access the full-text article here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6503143/
Disparities exist in enrollment in clinical trials and biorepositories among adults with low socioeconomic status, racial and ethnic minority groups and individuals who live in rural areas. Diverse participation is necessary to identify the most effective treatments in different groups. The purpose of this study was to use qualitative methods to identify factors that may affect the likelihood that members of underrepresented groups choose to participate in clinical trials and/or biobanking. We conducted 14 focus groups and seven telephone interviews in urban and rural areas of Louisiana to: (1) identify barriers and facilitators to participation; and (2) elicit input in crafting clear, culturally appropriate language and recruitment strategies. Of 103 participants, 25 were safety-net healthcare providers, 18 were primary care or oncology clinic patients, and 60 were members of social and faith-based groups. Patients and community participants were English-speaking, 79% were African American, 81% were female and 24% lived in rural areas. Barriers to participation identified were lack of knowledge about clinical trials and biobanks; limited specific information and access to participation, trust and privacy concerns about clinical trials and biobanking Facilitators included: altruism, high interest in medical research particularly studies that might benefit them or their families; plain language, culturally appropriate information; convenient access to studies; and input of a trusted provider. In addition, all primary care providers were interested in having clinical trial options available for their patients but did not have time to search for available trials. Results of this study can inform the development of education materials and strategies to increase participation of underrepresented groups in clinical trial and biobanking. Davis TC, Arnold CL, Mills G, Miele L. A Qualitative Study Exploring Barriers and Facilitators of Enrolling Underrepresented Populations in Clinical Trials and Biobanking. Front Cell Dev Biol. 2019;7:74. Published 2019 Apr 30. doi:10.3389/fcell.2019.00074. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Sections of the Abstract, and Conclusion and Recommencations are presented in the Podcast. Access the full-text article here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6502895/
Studies have revealed conflicting results regarding the risk of cancer from alcohol consumption. Furthermore, some studies have suggested that wine may have benefits that separate it from other alcoholic beverages. As wine contains a significant amount of chemicals, specifically polyphenols like anthocyanins and proanthocyanidins (PA), that can affect cellular function and promote health, this hypothesis is reasonably supported by recent research. Polyphenols promote several anticancer cellular pathways, including xenobiotic metabolism, support of innate antioxidant production, and stimulation of phase I and II detoxification of carcinogens. However, the multitude of growing and production conditions of grapes, including temperature, water availability, soil type, maceration, and aging can result in a remarkably varying final product based on the available literature. Thus, we hypothesize that wines produced from grapes cultivated between steady daily temperatures at 15–25°C with moderate sun exposure from flowering to harvest, lower vine-water status, resulting either from lower precipitation, and irrigation practices or more permeable soil types, limitation of fertilizers, extended maceration, and aging in oak will impact the concentration of anthocyanins and PA in the finished wine and may have a differential impact on cancer. This higher concentration of polyphenols would, in theory, create a healthier wine, thus explaining the conflicting reports on the benefits or harms of wine. Champ CE, Kundu-Champ A. Maximizing Polyphenol Content to Uncork the Relationship Between Wine and Cancer. Front Nutr. 2019;6:44. Published 2019 Apr 30. doi:10.3389/fnut.2019.00044 This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. Access the full-text article here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6502998/
Background: Numerous diets, apps and websites help guide and monitor dietary behaviour with the goal of losing weight, yet dieting success is highly dependent on personal preferences and circumstances. To enable a more quantitative approach to dieting, we developed an integrated platform that allows tracking of life-style information alongside molecular biofeedback measurements (lactate and insulin). Methods: To facilitate weight loss, participants (≥18 years) omitted one main meal from the usual three-meal routine. Daily caloric intake was restricted to ~1200KCal with one optional snack ≤250KCal. A mobile health platform (personalhealth.warwick.ac.uk) was developed and used to maintain diaries of food intake, weight, urine collection and volume. A survey was conducted to understand participants’ willingness to collect samples, motivation for taking part in the study and reasons for dropout. Results: Meal skipping resulted in weight loss after a 24 h period in contrast to 3-meal control days regardless of the meal that was skipped, breakfast, lunch or dinner (p < 0.001). Common reasons for engagement were interest in losing weight and personal metabolic profile. Total insulin and lactate values varied significantly between healthy and obese individuals at p = 0.01 and 0.05 respectively. Conclusion: In a proof of concept study with a meal-skipping diet, we show that insulin and lactate values in urine correlate with weight loss, making these molecules potential candidates for quantitative feedback on food intake behaviour to people dieting. Tejpal S, Sanghera N, Manoharan V, Planas-Iglesias J, Myler K, Klein-Seetharaman J. Towards personalised molecular feedback for weight loss. BMC Obes. 2019;6:20. Published 2019 May 6. doi:10.1186/s40608-019-0237-5. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article,unless otherwise stated. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, Discussion, and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. Access the full-text article here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6501287/
The most preferable mode of drugs administration is via the oral route but physiological barriers such as pH, enzymatic degradation etc. limit the absolute use of this route. Herein lies the importance of nanotechnology having a wide range of applications in the field of nano-medicine, particularly in drug delivery systems. The exclusive properties particularly small size and high surface area (which can be modified as required), exhibited by these nanoparticlesrender these structures more suitable for the purpose of drug delivery. Various nanostructures, like liposomes, dendrimers, mesoporous silica nanoparticles, etc. have been designed for the said purpose. These nanostructures have several advantages over traditional administration of medicine. Apart from overcoming the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamics limitations of many potential therapeutic molecules, they may also be useful for advanced drug delivery purposes like targeted drug delivery, controlled release, enhanced permeability and retention (EPR) effect. In this review, we attempt to describe an up-to-date knowledge on various strategically devised nanostructures to overcome the problems related to oral drug administration. Ghosh S, Ghosh S, Sil PC. Role of nanostructures in improvising oral medicine. Toxicol Rep. 2019;6:358–368. Published 2019 Apr 15. doi:10.1016/j.toxrep.2019.04.004. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, Oral Administration and Nanostructures, and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. Access the full-text article here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6502743/
Background: As schools of public health adapt to the new Council on Public Health (CEPH) competencies there is increased relevance in training public health professionals in public health entrepreneurship. Public health entrepreneurship provides an alternate process to traditional academic approaches focusing on translating public health knowledge into effective, sustainable, and scalable solutions. Objective: This study reports student perceptions of public health entrepreneurship and training needs for successfully equipping future public health professionals. Methods: Focus groups were conducted in April 2018 with graduate public health students in pilot entrepreneurship courses at two U.S.-based CEPH-accredited schools of public health. Results: Participating students (n = 29) were mainly pursing MPH degrees (62%) within Health Management and Policy (38%) or Health Promotion/Global Health (31%) departments. Most students (52%) were between 21 and 30 years old. For 71% of students this was their first academic course with a focus on entrepreneurial thinking. Four themes emerged regarding public health entrepreneurship and training needs for becoming a successful public health professional of the future. Students confirmed a place for public health entrepreneurship in the emerging educational paradigm because it is action-oriented, skills-driven, and fosters innovation through inter-professional collaboration and cross-pollination of knowledge and skills between professional disciplines. Conclusions: The competencies required for public health entrepreneurship are in alignment with CEPH competencies and are well-received by the next generation of public health professionals as an adjunct but nascent approach to stimulate public health innovation. Becker ERB, Chahine T, Shegog R. Public Health Entrepreneurship: A Novel Path for Training Future Public Health Professionals. Front Public Health. 2019;7:89. Published 2019 Apr 24. doi:10.3389/fpubh.2019.00089 This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Access the full-text article here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6499151/
Introduction: Many patients who were diagnosed as polycystic ovary syndrome- (PCOS-) related acne were not capable of sustaining or beginning oral contraceptive pills (OCPs) due to pill scaring, contraindications of OCP use, migraine, or smoking. In this situation, oral isotretinoin treatment may become an important option for PCOS-related acne. The aim of the study was to determine the effects of isotretinoin treatment on PCOS patients who were complicated with severe cystic acne. Materials and Methods: This study consisted of 40 female patients diagnosed as PCOS complicated with severe cystic acne. These patients were not eligible candidates for OCP use due to migraine, thrombophilia, heavy smoking, or pill scare. To establish baseline values of hormone levels, on days 2–5 of the menstrual cycle, venous blood samples were obtained. Moreover Modified Ferriman-Gallwey (mFG) score, acne score (AS), follicle count, and bilateral ovarian volumes were evaluated both before and after isotretinoin treatment. Results: Isotretinoin treatment significantly decreased Ferriman-Gallwey score, free testosterone, insulin level, hemoglobin level, acne score, and ovarian volume. Increased triglyceride and cholesterol levels were detected after treatment. Conclusion: Isotretinoin treatment may have beneficial effects on free testosterone, insulin, acne score, and Ferriman-Gallwey score. Solely isotretinoin administration may supply adequate healing in PCOS patients' symptoms complicated with severe cystic acne who is not eligible candidates for OCP use. This trial is registered with Clinicaltrials.gov NCT02855138. Acmaz G, Cınar L, Acmaz B, et al. The Effects of Oral Isotretinoin in Women with Acne and Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. Biomed Res Int. 2019;2019:2513067. Published 2019 Apr 7. doi:10.1155/2019/2513067 This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, Methods, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Access the full-text article here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6475563/
Identify the socio-economic correlates of sugar sweetened beverage (SSB) consumption among pregnant women and analyze to what extent SSB consumption is associated with diet quality and total energy intake. Additionally, we aim to predict how diet quality scores and totally energy intakes would change if SSB consumption was artificially set to 0. Design: Repeated Cross Sectional Study. Setting: United States. Subjects: SSB consumption was estimated from 1–2 24-hour dietary recalls from 1,154 pregnant women who participated in the 1999–2006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Methods: Linear regression models were used to identify socioeconomic and demographic factors associated with SSB consumption and to assess the associations between SSB consumption and diet quality and total energy intake. Diet quality was measured with the Alternate Healthy Eating Index modified for Pregnancy (AHEI-P). Results: The mean SSB intake was 1.3 servings per day (sd 1.5). Having a household income ≤100% of the Federal Poverty Level, being born in the United States, and not being married or living with a partner were positively associated with SSB consumption. Every 12 oz. of SSBs consumed was associated with a 2.3 lower AHEI-P score (95% CI: 1.6, 2.9) and the consumption of 124 more calories (95% CI: 85, 163), after adjusting for age, country of birth, race/ethnicity, educational attainment, marital status, household income, survey year and day/s of the week the recall/s were collected. Our predictive models indicated that average AHEI-P would be 6.4 (5.4, 7.6) higher and average total energy intakes would be 203.5 calories (122.2, 284.8) lower if SSB intake was set to 0. Conclusions: SSB consumption is associated with poorer diet quality and higher total energy intake among pregnant women. Gamba RJ, Leung CW, Petito L, Abrams B, Laraia BA. Sugar sweetened beverage consumption during pregnancy is associated with lower diet quality and greater total energy intake. PLoS One. 2019;14(4):e0215686. Published 2019 Apr 25. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0215686. This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, Methods, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Access the full-text article here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6483237/
Health is important in workplaces. A good organisational climate in a workplace plays a major role in the employees' well-being at work and is also associated with increased productivity. Today, employees are expected to work into older age and it is a challenge for companies to promote health and well-being for this growing group. The purpose of this study was to explore how to promote workplace health at present time and for the end of working life in the perspective of employees. The study had an explorative design, and a thematic analysis was chosen. The inclusion criteria were persons 50 years and older, working in the company and planning to continue working into old age. A total of 21 coworkers (14 men) participated in the study. Three focus group interviews were conducted. The results from the focus group interviews are presented in four themes: handle change in a changeable workplace, take responsibility for health concerns, get confirmation for feeling needed, and support and tolerance adapted for each employee. Promoting health should be an urgent mission for employees themselves as well as for managers in order to support employees in working into old age. The health promotion must be suitable for each employee and should be designed in such a way as to avoid inequality in workplace health. There is a need for more health-promoting behaviours, support,and activities for employees in order to work into old age. Lydell M, Hildingh C, Söderbom A, Ziegert K. How to Promote Workplace Health in order to Work into Old Age: Experiences from Employees in an Industrial Setting. Scientifica (Cairo). 2019;2019:3942569. Published 2019 Apr 1. doi:10.1155/2019/3942569 This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. Access the full-text article here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6466871/
Novel approaches to advance the field of vaccinology must be investigated, and are particularly of importance for influenza in order to produce a more effective vaccine. A systematic review of human challenge studies for influenza was performed, with the goal of assessing safety and ethics and determining how these studies have led to therapeutic and vaccine development. A systematic review of systems biology approaches for the study of influenza was also performed, with a focus on how this technology has been utilized for influenza vaccine development. The PubMed database was searched for influenza human challenge studies, and for systems biology studies that have addressed both influenza infection and immunological effects of vaccination. Influenza human challenge studies have led to important advancements in therapeutics and influenza immunization, and can be performed safely and ethically if certain criteria are met. Many studies have investigated the use of systems biology for evaluating immune response to influenza vaccine, and several promising molecular signatures may help advance our understanding of pathogenesis and be used as targets for influenza interventions. Combining these methodologies has the potential to lead to significant advances in the field of influenza vaccinology and therapeutics. Human challenge studies and systems biology approaches are important tools that should be used in concert to advance our understanding of influenza infection and provide targets for novel therapeutics and immunizations. Sherman AC, Mehta A, Dickert NW, Anderson EJ, Rouphael N. The Future of Flu: A Review of the Human Challenge Model and Systems Biology for Advancement of Influenza Vaccinology. Front Cell Infect Microbiol. 2019;9:107. Published 2019 Apr 17. doi:10.3389/fcimb.2019.00107 This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Sections of the Abstract and Introduction are presented in the Podcast. Access the full-text article here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6489464/
Aging is a physiological process accompanied by cognitive decline, principally in memory and executive functions. Alterations in the connectivity of the default mode network (DMN) have been found to participate in cognitive decline, as well as in several neurocognitive disorders. The DMN has antisynchronic activity with attentional networks (task-positive networks (TPN)), which are critical to executive function and memory. Findings pointing to the regulation of the DMN via activation of TPN suggest that it can be used as a strategy for neuroprotection. Meditation is a noninvasive and nonpharmacological technique proven to increase meta-awareness, a cognitive ability which involves the control of both networks. In this review, we discuss the possibility of facilitating healthy aging through the regulation of networks through meditation. We propose that by practicing specific types of meditation, cognitive decline could be slowed, promoting a healthy lifestyle, which may enhance the quality of life for the elderly. Ramírez-Barrantes R, Arancibia M, Stojanova J, Aspé-Sánchez M,Córdova C, Henríquez-Ch RA. Default Mode Network, Meditation, and Age-Associated Brain Changes: What Can We Learn from the Impact of Mental Training on Well-Being as a Psychotherapeutic Approach?. Neural Plast. 2019;2019:7067592. Published 2019 Apr 2. doi:10.1155/2019/7067592 This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Sections of the Abstract and Aging and Mental Diseases are presented in the Podcast. Access the full-text article here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6466873/
Lung cancer (LC) is one of the most serious malignant tumors, which has the fastest growing morbidity and mortality worldwide. A role of the lung microbiota in LC pathogenesis has been analyzed, but a comparable role of the gut microbiota has not yet been investigated. In this study, the gut microbiota of 30 LC patients and 30 healthy controls were examined via next-generation sequencing of 16S rRNA and analyzed for diversity and biomarkers. We found that there was no decrease in significant microbial diversity (alpha diversity) in LC patients compared to controls (P observed = 0.1422), while the composition (beta diversity) differed significantly between patients and controls (phylum [stress = 0.153], class [stress = 0.16], order [stress = 0.146], family [stress = 0.153]). Controls had a higher abundance of the bacterial phylum Actinobacteria and genus Bifidobacterium, while patients with LC showed elevated levels of Enterococcus. These bacteria were found as possible biomarkers for LC. A decline of normal function of the gut microbiome in LC patients was also observed. These results provide the basic guidance for a systematic, multilayered assessment of the role of the gut microbiome in LC, which has a promising potential for early prevention and targeted intervention. Zhuang H, Cheng L, Wang Y, et al. Dysbiosis of the Gut Microbiome in Lung Cancer. Front Cell Infect Microbiol. 2019;9:112. Published 2019 Apr 18. doi:10.3389/fcimb.2019.00112. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods,and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Access the full-text article here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6489541/
Emergency physicians are witnesses to the impact of socioeconomic determinants of health on physical and psychiatric illness. Understanding structural barriers to the right to health (RTH) serves as a foundation for interventions to promote health equity. This study was performed to determine self-described barriers to fulfillment of the RTH among a public emergency department (ED) patient population. Samra S, Pelayo E, Richman M, McCollough M, Taira BR. Barriers to the Right to Health Among Patients of a Public Emergency Department After Implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Health Equity. 2019;3(1):186–192. Published 2019 May 2. doi:10.1089/heq.2018.0071. This Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, Methods, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Access the full-text article here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6503448/
A non-antimicrobial soap was benchmarked against 2 reference soaps for microbial removal and skin compatibility, key factors in soap effectiveness and usage. The non-antimicrobial test soap removed more Staphylococcus aureus (P = .024) when applied to nonwetted hands and showed no difference in skin barrier function compared with the reference soaps (P = .736). Bingham J, Cartner TJ, Mays Suko PA, Leslie RA. Multifactor Assessment of Non-Antimicrobial Soap Performance. Open Forum Infect Dis. 2019;6(5):ofz151. Published 2019 Mar 20. doi:10.1093/ofid/ofz151 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Access the full-text article here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6499895/
Wearable technologies for health monitoring are becoming increasingly mainstream. However, there is currently limited evidence exploring use from the perspective of healthcare professionals. This study aimed to explore health professionals’ attitudes toward their patients’ use of wearable technologies. Watt A, Swainston K, Wilson G. Health professionals' attitudes to patients' use of wearable technology. Digit Health. 2019;5:2055207619845544. Published 2019 Apr 24. doi:10.1177/2055207619845544. Creative Commons CC BY: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). Sections of the Introduction, Methods, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Access the full-text article here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6484238/
The ‘digital era’ of informatics and knowledge integration has changed the roles and experiences of patients, research participants and health consumers. No longer figured (merely) as passive recipients of healthcare services or as beneficiaries of top-down biomedical information, individuals are increasingly seen as active contributors in healthcare and research. They are positioned into multiple roles that are experienced simultaneously by those who access and co-produce digital content that can easily be transformed into data. This is contextualised by ‘big data’ technologies that have altered biomedicine, enabling collation and analysis of myriad data from digitised records to personal mobile data. Social media facilitate new formations of communities and knowledge enacted online, while novel kinds of commercial value emerge from digital networks that enable health data commodification. In this paper, we draw from exemplary digital era shifts towards participatory medicine to cast light on the rapprochements between patienthood, participation and consumption, and we explore how these rapprochements are mediated by, and materialise through, the use of participatory digital technologies and big data. We argue that there is a need to use new conceptual tools that account for the multiple roles and experiences of patient–participant–consumers that co-emerge through digital technologies. We must also ethically re-assess the rights and responsibilities of individuals in the digital era, and the implications of digital era changes for the future of biomedicine and healthcare. Erikainen, S., Pickersgill, M., Cunningham-Burley, S., & Chan, S. (2019). Patienthood and participation in the digital era. Digital Health. https://doi.org/10.1177/2055207619845546 Creative Commons CC BY: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). Sections of the Abstract and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast.
There is little research on differences in Emotional Intelligence (EI) ability at different stages of adult development. The few published studies tend not to use older adult samples. Previous studies on EI ability and age have shown contradictory results. Our main objective was to evaluate results in EI ability across different stages of adult development, taking into account gender, depressive symptoms, and educational level. Navarro-Bravo B et al. Ability emotional intelligence in young people and older adults with and without depressive symptoms, considering gender and educational level. PeerJ. 2019; 7: e6595. Published online 2019 Apr 19. doi: 10.7717/peerj.6595. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited. Sections of the Abstract and Introduction are presented in the Podcast. Access the full-text article here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6476293/
Burnout is pervasive in academic medicine. We administered the Maslach Burnout Inventory and an Infectious Diseases (ID) job description survey to our ID faculty. Respondents’ burnout (>50%) and job satisfaction (>90%) were each high. Although burnout may be balanced by job satisfaction, the relationship between the 2 deserves further study. Nori P et al. Is Burnout Infectious? Understanding Drivers of Burnout and Job Satisfaction Among Academic Infectious Diseases Physicians. Open Forum Infect Dis. 2019 Apr; 6(4): ofz092. Published online 2019 Feb 23. doi: 10.1093/ofid/ofz092. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Access the full-text article here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6483804/
The present study aimed at clarifying the effect of coffee consumption on gut pathways implicated in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) development such as intestinal and liver lipid metabolism, gut barrier functions and gut microbiota. To this purpose an animal study with mice fed an HFD and drinking water or a coffee extract as well as mice fed with a standard diet (SD) and drinking water for 12 weeks was implemented. Serum samples and liver histology were assessed in parallel with gene expression of molecular mediators of fat oxidation, cholesterol efflux, lipid digestion and energy metabolism regulation, gut permeability and composition of the gut microbiota. Vitaglione P et al. (2019) Coffee prevents fatty liver disease induced by a high-fat diet by modulating pathways of the gut–liver axis. J Nutr Sci. 8: e15. doi: 10.1017/jns.2019.10. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Sections of the Abstract/Introduction and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Access the full-text article here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6477661/
In the past decade, tracking health trends using social media data has shown great promise, due to a powerful combination of massive adoption of social media around the world, and increasingly potent hardware and software that enables us to work with these new big data streams. At the same time, many challenging problems have been identified. First, there is often a mismatch between how rapidly online data can change, and how rapidly algorithms are updated, which means that there is limited reusability for algorithms trained on past data as their performance decreases over time. Second, much of the work is focusing on specific issues during a specific past period in time, even though public health institutions would need flexible tools to assess multiple evolving situations in real time. Third, most tools providing such capabilities are proprietary systems with little algorithmic or data transparency, and thus little buy-in from the global public health and research community. Here, we introduce Crowdbreaks, an open platform which allows tracking of health trends by making use of continuous crowdsourced labeling of public social media content. The system is built in a way which automatizes the typical workflow from data collection, filtering, labeling and training of machine learning classifiers and therefore can greatly accelerate the research process in the public health domain. This work describes the technical aspects of the platform, thereby covering the functionalities at its current state and exploring its future use cases and extensions. Müller MM et al. (2019) Crowdbreaks: Tracking Health Trends Using Public Social Media Data and Crowdsourcing. Front Public Health. 7: 81. Published online 2019 Apr 12. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2019.00081. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Sections of the Abstract, Introduction, and Results are presented in the Podcast. Access the full-text article here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6476276/
Despite the plentiful evidence of the positive effects of physical activity on both physical health and general well-being, a significant share of the world’s population is not active enough. In an attempt to reach a high share of the population, public health authorities encourage employers to promote physical activity at the workplace, where most adults spend a significant amount of time. This research is highly relevant for companies that consider implementing a workplace health promotion programs (WHPP) as it provides insights on how to design such a program in a way that maximizes participation levels. Furthermore, it contributes to the advancement of research, as we are the first to analyze data of a fitness platform company that is interacting as intermediary between members and a variety of fitness outlets – a business model that is currently disrupting the fitness industry. Lier LM et al. (2019) Organizational-level determinants of participation in workplace health promotion programs: a cross-company study. BMC Public Health. 19: 268. doi: 10.1186/s12889-019-6578-7. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. Sections of the Background and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. Access the full-text article here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6427860/
The abilities of certain microorganisms to be transferred across the food production chain, persist in the final product and, potentially, colonize the human gut are poorly understood. Here, we provide strain-level evidence supporting that dairy cattle-associated bacteria can be transferred to the human gut via consumption of Parmesan cheese. We characterize the microbial communities in samples taken from five different locations across the Parmesan cheese production chain, confirming that the final product contains microorganisms derived from cattle gut, milk, and the nearby environment. In addition, we carry out a human pilot study showing that Bifidobacterium mongoliense strains from cheese can transiently colonize the human gut, a process that can be enhanced by cow milk consumption. Milani C et al. (2019) Colonization of the human gut by bovine bacteria present in Parmesan cheese. Nat Commun. 10: 1286.doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-09303-w. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Sections of the Introduction and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. Access the full-text article here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6426854/
Miscarriage is a common outcome of pregnancy, with most studies reporting 12% to 15% loss among recognised pregnancies by 20 weeks of gestation. Quantifying the full burden of miscarriage is challenging because rates of pregnancy loss are high around the time that pregnancies are clinically recognised. As a result, the total rate of recognised loss is sensitive to how early women recognise their pregnancies. There are also differences across countries and studies in distinguishing between miscarriage and stillbirth. Furthermore, the observed miscarriage rate is affected by the competing risk of induced abortion. A general lack of data on induced abortions has made it difficult to determine how seriously this competing risk distorts the estimation of miscarriage rates. Based on national registries or population based cohort studies, the reported risk of miscarriage in Sweden, Finland, and Denmark was between 12.9% and 13.5%. A previous Norwegian study included all women treated at one of the main hospitals in Oslo between 2000 and 2002, and estimated a miscarriage rate of 12% when taking into account induced abortions. The aim of the current study was to estimate the rate of miscarriage among Norwegian women and to evaluate the association with age and pregnancy history. Wilcox A et al. Role of maternal age and pregnancy history in risk of miscarriage: prospective register based study. (2019). BMJ. 364: l869. doi: 10.1136/bmj.l869. This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute,remix, adapt and build upon this work, for commercial use, provided the original work is properly cited. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Sections of the Introduction and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. Access the full-text article here:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6425455/
How similar is the human mind to the machines that can behave like it? After decades spent lagging behind the recognitional capabilities of even a young child, machine-vision systems can now classify natural images with accuracy rates that match adult humans. The success of such models, especially biologically inspired Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN's), has been exciting not only for the practical purpose of developing new technologies (for example screening baggage at airports, reading street signs in autonomous vehicles, or diagnosing radiological scans), but also for better understanding the human mind itself. Recent work, for example, has found that CNN's can be used to predict the behavior of humans and non-human primates, large-scale activation of brain regions, and even the firing patterns of individual neurons — leading to speculation that the mechanisms and computational principles underlying CNN's may resemble those of our own brains. To address this question, we introduce a “machine-theory-of-mind” task that asks whether humans can infer the classification that a machine-vision system would assign to a given image. We acquired images produced by several prominent adversarial attacks, and displayed them to human subjects who were told that a machine had classified them as familiar objects. The human’s task was to “think like a machine” and determine which label was generated for each image. We conducted eight experiments using this task, probing human understanding of five different adversarial image sets. Importantly, none of these images was created with human vision in mind —they were simply generated to fool a machine-vision system into misclassifying an image. Zhou Z et al. (2019) Humans can decipher adversarial images. Nat Commun. 10: 1334. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-08931-6 This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Sections of the Introduction and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Access the full-text article here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6430776
Kidney transplantation is the first choice treatment for end-stage renal disease patients. The main obstacle in offering this treatment to everyone who needs it is an organ deficiency. There is still a discrepancy between the number of patients on the waiting list for kidney transplantation and the number of performed transplants. The needs exceed the capabilities of supply. Strategies for increasing transplant availability include using expanded criteria donor (ECD) organs, donor after cardiac death organs, dual kidney transplantation, living organ donation, and experiments with artificial organs. This study examined organ donors presented acute kidney injury (AKI) as a potentially valuable origin of kidneys for transplantation. The aim of this study is to present, that renal transplants from donors with AKI may have adequate renal function 5 years after transplantation. Domagala P et al. (2019) Successful transplantation of kidneys from deceased donors with terminal acute kidney injury. Ren Fail. 41(1): 167–174. doi: 10.1080 0886022X.2019.1590209BMC. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Sections of the Background and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Access the full-text article here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6001022/
Each year, thousands of people die from an adverse drug reaction, defined as an undesirable health effect that occurs when medication is used as prescribed. Adverse drug reactions can vary from a simple rash to more severe effects, such as heart failure, acute liver injury, arrhythmias, and even death. These events have a significant impact on both patients and the health care system in terms of cost and health service utilization (for example frequent visits to physicians and emergency departments, hospitalizations). Post-marketing adverse drug reaction surveillance in most countries is suboptimal and consists largely of spontaneous reporting. As this is a rapidly evolving field, we conducted a comprehensive scoping review to assess the utility of social media data for detecting adverse events related to health products, including pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and natural health products. Tricco AC et al. (2018) Utility of social media and crowd-intelligence data for pharmacovigilance: a scoping review. BMC Med Inform Decis Mak. 18: 38. doi: 10.1186/s12911-018-0621-y. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. Sections of the Background, Discussion, and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. Access the full-text article here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6001022/
Methamphetamine (METH) is an illicit psychostimulant that is subject to abuse worldwide. While the modulatory effects of METH on dopamine neurotransmission and its neurotoxicity in the central nervous system are well studied, METH’s effects on modulating microglial neuroimmune functions and on eliciting neuroinflammation to affect dopaminergic neurotoxicity has attracted considerable attention in recent years. The primary goal of the current review is to re-evaluate this neurotoxicity from the perspective of reactive microglial cell changes, as neuroinflammatory reactions have been reported to occur following METH administration and are believed to causally contribute to METH-induced neurotoxicity. Fatemeh S et al. (2018) Methamphetamine neurotoxicity, microglia, and neuroinflammation. J Neuroinflammation. 15: 341. doi: 10.1186/s12974-018-1385-0. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. Sections of the Background, METH neurotoxicity and reactive gliosis, and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. Access the full-text article here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6292109/
Eating foods prepared away from home is a popular behavior in the U S population. In 2005–2008, over a third of the daily energy intake in the U S came from foods prepared away from home. Restaurant prepared foods are known to be energy-dense, and higher in fat and sodium, but lower in protective nutrients. To our knowledge there are no published prospective studies of the association of restaurant meal exposure with the risk of cardiometabolic and all-cause mortality in the U S population. To fill these gaps, we examined the prospective association of frequency of eating restaurant prepared meals and risk of all-cause and cardiometabolic mortality in a representative sample of the U S population. Given some prior reports of adverse cardiometabolic risk biomarker profiles of frequent consumers of restaurant meals, we also examined cross-sectional associations of cardiometabolic biomarkers with frequency of eating away from home meals. Kant AK et al. (2018) A prospective study of frequency of eating restaurant prepared meals and subsequent 9-year risk of all-cause and cardiometabolic mortality in U S adults. PLoS One. 13(1): e0191584. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0191584. This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. Sections of the Introduction and Discussion are presented in the Podcast. Access the full-text article here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5779659/
Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder following Alzheimer's disease. Clinically, PD is characterized by resting tremor, hypermyotonia, postural instability, and bradykinesia. In this review, we summarized the biological correlations between vitamins and PD as well as the underlying pathophysiological mechanisms. Additionally, we elaborated the therapeutic potentials of vitamins for PD. Zhao X et al. (2019) Benefits of Vitamins in the Treatment of Parkinson's Disease. Oxid Med Cell Longev. 2019: 9426867. doi: 10.1155/2019/9426867. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.. Sections of the Introduction and Conclusion are presented in the Podcast. Access the full-text article here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6402202/
The incidence of type 2 diabetes is rising, coinciding with the global obesity epidemic observed among both adults and children during the last three decades. The causal association between a high adult body mass index (BMI) and increased risk of type 2 diabetes is well established,and prevention of obesity remains among the most important measures to reduce the burden of type 2 diabetes. The aim of this study was to determine the role of change in body mass index (BMI) during puberty, independent of childhood overweight, for risk of adult type 2 diabetes in men. Ohlsson C et al. (2019) BMI Change During Puberty Is an Important Determinant of Adult Type 2 Diabetes Risk in Men. J Clin Endocrinol Metab 104(5): 1823–1832. doi: 10.1210/jc.2018-01339. This article has been published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Sections of the Abstract and Introduction are presented in the Podcast. Access the full-text article here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6456008/
With increases in marijuana use and legalization efforts, it is imperative to establish its impact on the developing brain. Therefore, we investigated whether exposure to marijuana alters brain derived neurotropic-factor (BDNF), given its critical role in brain development and plasticity. We then examined whether onset age of cannabis use was associated with more severe changes. Miguez MJ et al. (2019) Marijuana use among adolescents is associated with deleterious alterations in mature BDNF. AIMS Public Health 6(1): 4–14.: doi: 10.3934/publichealth.2019.1.4. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) Sections of the Abstract and Introduction are presented in the Podcast. Access the full-text article here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6433615/
It is estimated that around 700,000 people die annually from drug-resistant infections,with experts predicting an alarming possible increase to 10 million deaths each year by 2050 and major future challenges to the way we practice medicine and surgery. Globally, there has been much emphasis on a ‘One Health’ approach that involves connecting the health of humans, animals, and the environment to tackle AMR. This is driving much needed antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) activities in animal production sectors. However, we have yet to achieve and establish joined-up approaches within human health. This paper, therefore, focuses on an analysis of multisectoral AMS in human health. AMS remains a cornerstone for addressing AMR with numerous initiatives implemented with varying degrees of success. Mcleod M et al. (2019) A whole-health-economy approach to antimicrobial stewardship: Analysis of current models and future direction. PLoS Med 16(3): e1002774. doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1002774. Link to the full-text article: https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002774
Inflammation of the brain and spinal cord, known as encephalomyelitis, is a dangerous condition that can be caused by a wide range of pathogens, such as viruses and bacteria, and other medical conditions including autoimmunity or drug intoxications. This study showed that metabolomics may be useful in improving diagnosis and treatment of diseases affecting the central nervous system by enhancing understanding of their unique effects on metabolism. French CD et al. (2018) NMR metabolomics of cerebrospinal fluid differentiates inflammatory diseases of the central nervous system. PLoS Negl Trop Dis 12(12): e0007045. doi: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0007045.
The ability to produce timely and accurate flu forecasts in the United States can significantly impact public health. In this paper, we perform a controlled experiment, taking into account data backfill, to improve clarity on the benefits and limitations of augmenting an already good flu forecasting model with internet-based nowcasts. Osthus D et al. (2019) Even a good influenza forecasting model can benefit from internet-based nowcasts, but those benefits are limited. PLoS Comput Biol 15(2):e1006599. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006599.
Pharmacogenetics studies have identified several allelic variants with the potential to reduce toxicity and improve treatment outcome. The present study was designed to determine if such findings are reproducible in a heterogenous population of patients with lung cancer undergoing therapy with paclitaxel. Sissung TM et al. (2019) Reproducibility of pharmacogenetics findings for paclitaxel in a heterogeneous population of patients with lung cancer. PLoS One 14(2): e0212097. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0212097.
To the extent that outcomes are mediated through negative perceptions of generics (the nocebo effect), observational studies comparing brand-name and generic drugs are susceptible to bias favoring the brand-name drugs. We used authorized generic (AG) products, which are identical in composition and appearance to brand-name products but are marketed as generics. Desai RJ et al. (2019) Comparative effectiveness of generic and brand-name medication use: A database study of US health insurance claims. PLoS Med. 16(3): e1002763. doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1002763.
Shark attacks are a global phenomenon that attracts widespread attention and publicity, often with negative outcomes for shark populations. Our objective was to quantify increase or decrease in annual probability of shark attacks at the country and regional level, and describe spatial variability in fatal outcomes and relative risk of different water-based activities to shark attack. Midway RS et al. (2019) Trends in global shark attacks. PLoS One 14(2): e0211049. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0211049.
There is an increased need to understand how e-cigarette flavors may contribute to e-cigarette uptake and use among youth. We examined the relationship between perceived ease of flavored e-cigarette use and e-cigarette use susceptibility and progression among a nationally representative sample of U.S. youth never tobacco users. Chen-Sankey JC et al. (2019) Perceived ease of flavored e-cigarette use and e-cigarette use progression among youth never tobacco users. PLoS One 14(2): e0212353. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0212353.
Headaches are a common source of pain and suffering. The study's purpose was to assess beta-blockers efficacy in preventing migraine and tension-type headache. Jackson JL et al. (2019) Beta-blockers for the prevention of headache in adults, a systematic review and meta-analysis. PLoS One 14(3): e0212785. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0212785
The present study examined the effectiveness of threat appeals in influencing impulsive decision making associated with texting while driving. Hayashi Y et al. (2019) Threat appeals reduce impulsive decision making associated with texting while driving: A behavioral economic approach. PLoS One. 14(3): e0213453. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0213453.
Several studies indicate that placebo can enhance cognitive abilities including memory, implicit learning and general knowledge. Here, we ask whether placebo can enhance creativity, an important aspect of human cognition. Link to the full text article: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0182466
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