Percentiles of body fat measured by bioelectrical impedance in children and adolescents from Bogotá (Colombia): the FUPRECOL study.

Objective. The analysis of body composition is a fundamental part of nutritional status assessment. The objective of this study was to establish body fat percentiles by bioelectrical impedance in children and adolescents from Bogota (Colombia) who were part of the FUPRECOL study (Asociacion de la Fuerza Prensil con Manifestaciones Tempranas de Riesgo Cardiovascular en Ninos y Adolescentes Colombianos - Association between prehensile force and early signs of cardiovascular risk in Colombian children and adolescents).Methods. This was a cross-sectional study conducted among 5850 students aged 9-17.9 years old from Bogota (Colombia). Body fat percentage was measured using foot-to-foot bioelectrical impedance (Tanita (R), BF-689), by age and gender. Weight, height, waist circumference, and hip circumference were measured, and sexual maturity was self-staged. Percentiles (P-3, P-10, P-25, P-50, P-75, P-90 and P-97) and centile curves were estimated using the LMS method (L [Box-Cox curve], M [median curve] and S [variation coefficient curve]), by age and gender.Results. Subjects included were 2526 children and 3324 adolescents. Body fat percentages and centile curves by age and gender were established. For most age groups, values resulted higher among girls than boys. Participants with values above P-90 were considered to have a high cardiovascular risk due to excess fat (boys > 23.4-28.3, girls > 31.0-34.1).Conclusions. Body fat percentage percentiles measured using bioelectrical impedance by age and gender are presented here and may be used as reference to assess nutritional status and to predict cardiovascular risk due to excess fat at an early age

The Relationship between Socioeconomic Status, Family Income, and Measures of Muscular and Cardiorespiratory Fitness in Colombian Schoolchildren

Objective To determine the associations between socioeconomic status (SES) and physical fitness in a sample of Colombian youth. Study design Prueba SER is cross-sectional survey of schoolchildren in Bogota, Colombia. Mass, stature, muscular fitness (standing long-jump, handgrip), and cardiorespiratory fitness (20-m shuttle run) were measured in 52 187 schoolchildren 14-16 years of age. Area-level SES was categorized from 1 (very low) to 4 (high) and parent-reported family income was categorized as low, middle, or high. Results Converting measures into z scores showed stature, muscular, and cardiorespiratory fitness were significantly (z = 0.3-0.7) below European values. Children in the mid- and high SES groups jumped significantly further than groups with very low SES. Differences were independent of sex but became nonsignificant when adjusted for anthropometric differences. Participants in the mid-SES and high-SES groups had better handgrip scores when adjusted for body dimension. There were, however, no significant between-group differences in cardiorespiratory fitness, which was strongly clustered by school and significantly greater in students from private schools. Conclusions Area-level SES is associated with measures of muscular fitness in Colombian schoolchildren. These associations were largely explained by the large differences in body dimensions observed between SES groups. When area-level SES is considered, there was no evidence that family income influenced fitness. The clustering of outcomes reaffirms the potential importance of schools and area-level factors in promoting fitness through opportunities for physical activity. Interventions implemented in schools, can improve academic attainment; a factor likely to be important in promoting the social mobility of children from poorer families

The effect of exercise training on mediators of inflammation in breast cancer survivors: A systematic review with meta-analysis

Several sources of evidence indicate that exercise during and after breast cancer could positively modulate the tumor microenvironment. This meta-analysis aimed to determine the effects of exercise training on mediators of inflammation in breast cancer survivors. We searched for randomized controlled trials published from January 1990 to March 2014. An inverse variance method of meta-analysis was performed using a random effects model in the presence of statistical heterogeneity. Eight high-quality trials (n = 478) were included. Exercise improved the serum concentrations of IL6 [weighted mean difference (WMD) = -0.55 pg/mL; 95% confidence interval (CI), -1.02 to -0.09], TNF? (WMD = -0.64 pg/mL; 95%CI, -1.21 to -0.06), IL8(MD= -0.49 pg/mL; 95% CI, -0.89 to -0.09), and IL2 (WMD = 1.03 pg/mL; 95% CI, 0.40 to 1.67). No significant differences were found in the serum concentrations of C-reactive protein (WMD = -0.15; 95% CI, -0.56 to 0.25) or IL10 (WMD = 0.41; 95% CI, -0.18 to 1.02). Exercise training positively modulates chronic low-grade inflammation in women with breast cancer, which may impact upon carcinogenic mechanisms and the tumor microenvironment. These findings align with the other positive effects of exercise for breast cancer survivors, reinforcing the appropriateness of exercise prescription in this population. © 2016 American Association for Cancer Research

A cross-sectional study of Colombian University students’ self-perceived lifestyle

Background: The Fantastic Lifestyle Questionnaire was designed for enabling staff working in health sciences and physical activity (PA) areas to measure lifestyles (LS) in the general population. The aim of this study was to assess the lifestyle in a sample of university students. Method: This was a cross-sectional, descriptive, observational study involving 5,921 subjects’ aged 18- to 30-years-old (3,471 females) from three Colombian cities. Was applied “Fantastic” instrument (that consists of 25 closed items on the lifestyle), translated to Spanish in versions of three and five answers. Results: Having a “good LS” was perceived by 57.4% of the females and 58.5% of the males; 14.0% of the females rating their LS as being “excellent” and males 19.3% (p  less than  0.001); 20.3% of the females and 36.6% of the males stated that they spent more than 20 min/day on PA (involving four or more times per week). Negative correlations between FANTASTIC score and weight (r = ?0.113; p  less than  0.01), body mass index (BMI) (r = ?0.152; p  less than  0.01) and waist circumference (r = ?0.178, p  less than  0.01) were observed regarding females, whilst the correlation concerning males was (r = ?0.143, p  less than  0.05) between Fantastic score and weight, (r = ?0.167 for BMI, p  less than  0.01) and (r = ?0.175, p  less than  0.01 for diastolic blood pressure). In spite of the students being evaluated referring to themselves as having a healthy LS (i.e. giving a self-perceived view of their LS), stated behaviour involving a health risk was observed in the domains concerning nutrition, PA and smoking. Conclusion: Specific diffusion, education and intervention action is thus suggested for motivating the adoption of healthy LS. © 2015, Ramírez-Vélez et al

Active commuting to and from university, obesity and metabolic syndrome among Colombian university students

Background: There is limited evidence concerning how active commuting (AC) is associated with health benefits in young. The aim of the study was to analyze the relationship between AC to and from campus (walking) and obesity and metabolic syndrome (MetS) in a sample of Colombian university students. Methods: A total of 784 university students (78.6% women, mean age = 20.1 ± 2.6 years old) participated in the study. The exposure variable was categorized into AC (active walker to campus) and non-AC (non/infrequent active walker to campus: car, motorcycle, or bus) to and from the university on a typical day. MetS was defined in accordance with the updated harmonized criteria of the International Diabetes Federation criteria. Results: The overall prevalence of MetS was 8.7%, and it was higher in non-AC than AC to campus. The percentage of AC was 65.3%. The commuting distances in this AC from/to university were 83.1%, 13.4% and 3.5% for < 2 km, 2- 5 km and > 5 km, respectively. Multiple logistic regressions for predicting unhealthy profile showed that male walking commuters had a lower probability of having obesity [OR = 0.45 (CI 95% 0.25–0.93)], high blood pressure [OR = 0.26 (CI 95% 0.13–0.55)] and low HDL cholesterol [OR = 0.29 (CI 95% 0.14–0.59)] than did passive commuters. Conclusions: Our results suggest that in young adulthood, a key life-stage for the development of obesity and MetS, AC could be associated with and increasing of daily physical activity levels, thereby promoting better cardiometabolic health.This study was part of the project entitled “Body Adiposity Index and Biomarkers of Endothelial and Cardiovascular Health in Adults”, which was funded by Centre for Studies on Measurement of Physical Activity, School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universidad del Rosario (Code N° FIUR DNBG001) and Universidad de Boyacá (Code N° RECT 60)

The Fourteenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic Data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey and from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment

The fourth generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-IV) has been in operation since July 2014. This paper describes the second data release from this phase, and the fourteenth from SDSS overall (making this, Data Release Fourteen or DR14). This release makes public data taken by SDSS-IV in its first two years of operation (July 2014-2016). Like all previous SDSS releases, DR14 is cumulative, including the most recent reductions and calibrations of all data taken by SDSS since the first phase began operations in 2000. New in DR14 is the first public release of data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS); the first data from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory (APO) Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE-2), including stellar parameter estimates from an innovative data driven machine learning algorithm known as "The Cannon"; and almost twice as many data cubes from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO (MaNGA) survey as were in the previous release (N = 2812 in total). This paper describes the location and format of the publicly available data from SDSS-IV surveys. We provide references to the important technical papers describing how these data have been taken (both targeting and observation details) and processed for scientific use. The SDSS website (www.sdss.org) has been updated for this release, and provides links to data downloads, as well as tutorials and examples of data use. SDSS-IV is planning to continue to collect astronomical data until 2020, and will be followed by SDSS-V.Comment: SDSS-IV collaboration alphabetical author data release paper. DR14 happened on 31st July 2017. 19 pages, 5 figures. Accepted by ApJS on 28th Nov 2017 (this is the "post-print" and "post-proofs" version; minor corrections only from v1, and most of errors found in proofs corrected

Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV: Mapping the Milky Way, Nearby Galaxies, and the Distant Universe

We describe the Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV (SDSS-IV), a project encompassing three major spectroscopic programs. The Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment 2 (APOGEE-2) is observing hundreds of thousands of Milky Way stars at high resolution and high signal-to-noise ratios in the near-infrared. The Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA) survey is obtaining spatially resolved spectroscopy for thousands of nearby galaxies (median $z\sim 0.03$). The extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) is mapping the galaxy, quasar, and neutral gas distributions between $z\sim 0.6$ and 3.5 to constrain cosmology using baryon acoustic oscillations, redshift space distortions, and the shape of the power spectrum. Within eBOSS, we are conducting two major subprograms: the SPectroscopic IDentification of eROSITA Sources (SPIDERS), investigating X-ray AGNs and galaxies in X-ray clusters, and the Time Domain Spectroscopic Survey (TDSS), obtaining spectra of variable sources. All programs use the 2.5 m Sloan Foundation Telescope at the Apache Point Observatory; observations there began in Summer 2014. APOGEE-2 also operates a second near-infrared spectrograph at the 2.5 m du Pont Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory, with observations beginning in early 2017. Observations at both facilities are scheduled to continue through 2020. In keeping with previous SDSS policy, SDSS-IV provides regularly scheduled public data releases; the first one, Data Release 13, was made available in 2016 July