Individual, social and environmental factors influencing dietary behaviour in shift workers with type 2 diabetes working in UK healthcare: A cross-sectional survey

BACKGROUND: The present study aimed to understand the individual, social and environmental factors influencing dietary behaviour in shift workers with type 2 diabetes (T2D) working in UK healthcare settings. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted using data collected from an anonymous online survey. Participant agreement was measured using five-point Likert scale (strongly disagree to strongly agree) against 38 belief statements informed by the Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF) of behaviour change. RESULTS: From the complete responses (n = 119), 65% worked shifts without nights, 27% worked mixed shift rota including nights and 8% worked only night shifts. The statements ranked with the highest agreements were in the TDF domains: Environment Context/Resources (ECR) - mainly identified as a barrier to healthy eating, Behaviour Regulation (BR) and intention (IN) - identified as enablers to healthy eating. For the belief statement 'the available options for purchasing food are too expensive' (ECR), 80% of night workers and 75% non-night workers agreed/strongly agreed. Taking their own food to work to prevent making unhealthy food choices (BR) had agreement/strong agreement in 73% of non-night and 70% night workers; 74% non-night workers and 80% of night workers agreed/strongly agreed with the statement 'I would like to eat healthily at work' (IN). Mixed shift workers agreed that following dietary advice was easier when working a non-night compared to a night shift (p = 0.002). CONCLUSIONS: Access and affordability of food were identified as important determinants of dietary behaviour during shifts. The findings support interventions targeting the food environment for shift workers with T2D

Role of complement and antibodies in controlling infection with pathogenic simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) in macaques vaccinated with replication-deficient viral vectors

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>We investigated the interplay between complement and antibodies upon priming with single-cycle replicating viral vectors (SCIV) encoding SIV antigens combined with Adeno5-SIV or SCIV pseudotyped with murine leukemia virus envelope boosting strategies. The vaccine was applied via spray-immunization to the tonsils of rhesus macaques and compared with systemic regimens.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Independent of the application regimen or route, viral loads were significantly reduced after challenge with SIVmac239 (p < 0.03) compared to controls. Considerable amounts of neutralizing antibodies were induced in systemic immunized monkeys. Most of the sera harvested during peak viremia exhibited a trend with an inverse correlation between complement C3-deposition on viral particles and plasma viral load within the different vaccination groups. In contrast, the amount of the observed complement-mediated lysis did not correlate with the reduction of SIV titres.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The heterologous prime-boost strategy with replication-deficient viral vectors administered exclusively via the tonsils did not induce any neutralizing antibodies before challenge. However, after challenge, comparable SIV-specific humoral immune responses were observed in all vaccinated animals. Immunization with single cycle immunodeficiency viruses mounts humoral immune responses comparable to live-attenuated immunodeficiency virus vaccines.</p

Update on current views and advances on RSV infection (Review).

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection represents an excellent paradigm of precision medicine in modern paediatrics and several clinical trials are currently performed in the prevention and management of RSV infection. A new taxonomic terminology for RSV was recently adopted, while the diagnostic and omics techniques have revealed new modalities in the early identification of RSV infections and for better understanding of the disease pathogenesis. Coordinated clinical and research efforts constitute an important step in limiting RSV global predominance, improving epidemiological surveillance, and advancing neonatal and paediatric care. This review article presents the key messages of the plenary lectures, oral presentations and posters of the '5th workshop on paediatric virology' (Sparta, Greece, 12th October 2019) organized by the Paediatric Virology Study Group, focusing on recent advances in the epidemiology, pathogenesis, diagnosis, prognosis, clinical management and prevention of RSV infection in childhood

Integrating business process simulation and information system simulation for performance prediction

Business process (BP) designs and enterprise information system (IS) designs are often not well aligned. Missing alignment may result in performance problems at run-time, such as large process execution time or overloaded IS resources. The complex interrelations between BPs and ISs are not adequately understood and considered in development so far. Simulation is a promising approach to predict performance of both BP and IS designs. Based on prediction results, design alternatives can be compared and verified against requirements. Thus, BP and IS designs can be aligned to improve performance. In current simulation approaches, BP simulation and IS simulation are not adequately integrated. This results in limited prediction accuracy due to neglected interrelations between the BP and the IS in simulation. In this paper, we present the novel approach Integrated Business IT Impact Simulation (IntBIIS) to adequately reflect the mutual impact between BPs and ISs in simulation. Three types of mutual impact between BPs and ISs in terms of performance are specified. We discuss several solution alternatives to predict the impact of a BP on the performance of ISs and vice versa. It is argued that an integrated simulation of BPs and ISs is best suited to reflect their interrelations. We propose novel concepts for continuous modeling and integrated simulation. IntBIIS is implemented by extending the Palladio tool chain with BP simulation concepts. In a real-life case study with a BP and IS from practice, we validate the feasibility of IntBIIS and discuss the practicability of the corresponding tool support