Temporal changes in a novel metric of physical activity tracking (personal activity intelligence) and mortality: the HUNT study, Norway

Background: Personal Activity Intelligence (PAI) is a novel activity metric that translates heart rate variations during exercise into a weekly score. Weekly PAI scores assessed at a single point in time were found to associate with lower risk of premature cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality in the general healthy population. However, to date, the associations between long-term longitudinal changes in weekly PAI scores and mortality have not been explored. Purpose: The aim of the present study was to prospectively examine the association between change in weekly PAI scores estimated 10 years apart, and risk of mortality from CVD and all-causes. Methods: We performed a prospective cohort study of 11,870 men and 13,010 women without known CVD in Norway. By using data from the Nord-Trøndelag Health Study (HUNT), PAI was estimated twice, ten years apart (HUNT1 1984-86 and HUNT2 1995-97). Mortality was followed-up until December 31, 2015. Adjusted hazard ratios (AHR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for death from CVD and all-causes related to temporal changes in PAI were estimated using Cox regression analyses. Results: During a mean (SD) of 18 (4) years of follow-up, there were 4782 deaths, including 1560 deaths caused by CVD. Multi-adjusted analyses demonstrated that participants achieving a score of ≥100 PAI at both time points had 32% lower risk of CVD mortality (AHR 0.68; CI: 0.54–0.86) for CVD mortality and 20% lower risk of all-cause mortality (AHR 0.80; CI: 71–0.91) compared with participants obtainin

High-intensity interval training is safe, feasible and efficacious in nonalcoholic steatohepatitis : a randomized controlled trial

Background: High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) involves bursts of high-intensity exercise interspersed with lower-intensity exercise recovery. HIIT may benefit cardiometabolic health in people with nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). Aims: We aimed to examine the safety, feasibility, and efficacy of 12-weeks of supervised HIIT compared with a sham-exercise control (CON) for improving aerobic fitness and peripheral insulin sensitivity in biopsy-proven NASH. Methods: Participants based in the community [(n = 14, 56 ± 10 years, BMI 39.2 ± 6.7 kg/m2, 64% male), NAFLD Activity Score 5 (range 3–7)] were randomized to 12-weeks of supervised HIIT (n = 8, 4 × 4 min at 85–95% maximal heart rate, interspersed with 3 min active recovery; 3 days/week) or CON (n = 6, stretching; 3 days/week). Safety (adverse events) and feasibility determined a

Exploring the vaccine conversation on TikTok in Italy: beyond classic vaccine stances

TikTok, a social media platform for creating and sharing short videos, has seen a surge in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic. To analyse the Italian vaccine conversation on TikTok, we downloaded a sample of videos with a high play count (Top Videos), identified through an unofficial Application Programming Interface (consistent with TikTok’s Terms of Service), and collected public videos from vaccine sceptic users through snowball sampling (Vaccine Sceptics’ videos). The videos were analysed using qualitative and quantitative methods, in terms of vaccine stance, tone of voice, topic, conformity with TikTok style, and other characteristics. The final datasets consisted of 754 Top Videos (by 510 single users) plus 180 Vaccine Sceptics’ videos (by 29 single users), posted between January 2020 and March 2021. In 40.5% of the Top Videos the stance was promotional, 33.9% were indefinite-ironic, 11.3% were neutral, 9.7% were discouraging, and 3.1% were ambiguous (i.e. expressing an ambivalent stance towards vaccines); 43% of promotional videos were from healthcare professionals. More than 95% of the Vaccine Sceptic videos were discouraging. Multiple correspondence analysis showed that, compared to other stances, promotional videos were more frequently created by healthcare professionals and by females, and their most frequent topic was herd immunity. Discouraging videos were associated with a polemical tone of voice and their topics were conspiracy and freedom of choice. Our analysis shows that Italian vaccine-sceptic users on TikTok are limited in number and vocality, and the large proportion of videos with an indefinite-ironic stance might imply that the incidence of affective polarisation could be lower on TikTok, compared to other social media, in the Italian context. Safety is the most frequent concern of users, and we recorded an interesting presence of healthcare professionals among the creators. TikTok should be considered as a medium for vaccine communication and for vaccine promotion campaigns

Sars-Cov2 Not Detected in a Pediatric Population With Acute Respiratory Infection in Primary Care in Central and Southern Italy From November 2019 to Early March 2020

Background: In December 2019, a novel coronavirus named SARS-CoV-2 started circulating in China and this led to a major epidemic in Northern Italy between February and May 2020. Young children (aged <5 years) seem to be less affected by this coronavirus disease (COVID-19) compared to adults, although there is very little information on the circulation of this new virus among children in Italy. We retrospectively tested nasopharyngeal swabs for SARS-CoV-2 in samples collected in young children between November, 2019 and March, 2020 in the context of the RSV ComNet study. Methods: Two networks of primary care pediatricians in Lazio (Central Italy) and Puglia (Southern Italy) collected nasopharyngeal swabs from children, aged <5 years, presenting with symptoms for an acute respiratory infection (ARI). The RSV ComNet study is a multicenter study implemented to estimate the burden of RSV in young children (aged <5 years) in the community. Swabs were sent to a central reference laboratory and tested for 14 respiratory viruses through RT-PCR. All collected samples were retrospectively tested for SARS-CoV-2 using RT-PCR (Istituto Superiore di Sanità protocol). Results: A total of 293 children with ARI were identified in the two participating networks. The highest number of cases were recruited in weeks 51/2019 and 3/2020. The majority of patients (57%) came from the Lazio region. All of the 293 samples tested negative for SARS-Cov2. Rhinovirus was the most frequently detected virus (44%), followed by RSV (41%) and influenza viruses (14%). Conclusions: Our study shows that in Lazio (a region of intermediate SARS-COV-2 incidence) and Puglia (a region of low incidence), the SARS-Cov2 virus did not circulate in a sample of ARI pediatric cases consulting primary care pediatricians between November 2019 and March 2020

Investigating the circulating sphingolipidome response to a single high-intensity interval training session within healthy females and males in their twenties (SphingoHIIT): Protocol for a randomised controlled trial [version 2; peer review: 2 approved]

Introduction: Growing scientific evidence indicates that sphingolipids predict cardiometabolic risk, independently of and beyond traditional biomarkers such as low-density lipoprotein cholesterol. To date, it remains largely unknown if and how exercise, a simple, low-cost, and patient-empowering modality to optimise cardiometabolic health, influences sphingolipid levels. The SphingoHIIT study aims to assess the response of circulating sphingolipid species to a single session of high-intensity interval training (HIIT). Methods: This single-centre randomised controlled trial (RCT) will last 11 days per participant and aim to include 32 young and healthy individuals aged 20-29 (50% females). Participants will be randomly allocated to the HIIT (n= 16) or control groups (physical rest, n= 16). Participants will self-sample fasted dried blood spots for three consecutive days before the intervention (HIIT versus rest) to determine baseline sphingolipid levels. Dried blood spots will also be collected at five time points (2, 15, 30, 60min, and 24h) following the intervention (HIIT versus rest). To minimise the dietary influence, participants will receive a standardised diet for four days, starting 24 hours before the first dried blood sampling. For females, interventions will be timed to fall within the early follicular phase to minimise the menstrual cycle's influence on sphingolipid levels. Finally, physical activity will be monitored for the whole study duration using a wrist accelerometer. Ethics and dissemination: The Ethics Committee of Northwest and Central Switzerland approved this protocol (ID 2022–00513). Findings will be disseminated in scientific journals and meetings. Trial Registration The trial was registered on www.clinicaltrials.gov (NCT05390866, https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT05390866) on May 25, 2022

A Multi-Center Comparison of VO2peak Trainability Between Interval Training and Moderate Intensity Continuous Training

There is heterogeneity in the observed VO2peak response to similar exercise training, and different exercise approaches produce variable degrees of exercise response (trainability). The aim of this study was to combine data from different laboratories to compare VO2peak trainability between various volumes of interval training and Moderate Intensity Continuous Training (MICT). For interval training, volumes were classified by the duration of total interval time. High-volume High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) included studies that had participants complete more than 15 min of high intensity efforts per session. Low-volume HIIT/Sprint Interval Training (SIT) included studies using less than 15 min of high intensity efforts per session. In total, 677 participants across 18 aerobic exercise training interventions from eight different universities in five countries were included in the analysis. Participants had completed 3 weeks or more of either high-volume HIIT (n = 299), low-volume HIIT/SIT (n = 116), or MICT (n = 262) and were predominately men (n = 495) with a mix of healthy, elderly and clinical populations. Each training intervention improved mean VO2peak at the group level (P \u3c 0.001). After adjusting for covariates, high-volume HIIT had a significantly greater (P \u3c 0.05) absolute VO2peak increase (0.29 L/min) compared to MICT (0.20 L/min) and low-volume HIIT/SIT (0.18 L/min). Adjusted relative VO2peak increase was also significantly greater (P \u3c 0.01) in high-volume HIIT (3.3 ml/kg/min) than MICT (2.4 ml/kg/min) and insignificantly greater (P = 0.09) than low-volume HIIT/SIT (2.5 mL/kg/min). Based on a high threshold for a likely response (technical error of measurement plus the minimal clinically important difference), high-volume HIIT had significantly more (P \u3c 0.01) likely responders (31%) compared to low-volume HIIT/SIT (16%) and MICT (21%). Covariates such as age, sex, the individual study, population group, sessions per week, study duration and the average between pre and post VO2peak explained only 17.3% of the variance in VO2peak trainability. In conclusion, high-volume HIIT had more likely responders to improvements in VO2peak compared to low-volume HIIT/SIT and MICT

Shorter androgen receptor polyQ alleles protect against life-threatening COVID-19 disease in European males

Background: While SARS-CoV-2 similarly infects men and women, COVID-19 outcome is less favorable in men. Variability in COVID-19 severity may be explained by differences in the host genome. Methods: We compared poly-amino acids variability from WES data in severely affected COVID-19 patients versus SARS-CoV-2 PCR-positive oligo-asymptomatic subjects. Findings: Shorter polyQ alleles (≤22) in the androgen receptor (AR) conferred protection against severe outcome in COVID-19 in the first tested cohort (both males and females) of 638 Italian subjects. The association between long polyQ alleles (≥23) and severe clinical outcome (p = 0.024) was also validated in an independent cohort of Spanish men <60 years of age (p = 0.014). Testosterone was higher in subjects with AR long-polyQ, possibly indicating receptor resistance (p = 0.042 Mann-Whitney U test). Inappropriately low serum testosterone level among carriers of the long-polyQ alleles (p = 0.0004 Mann-Whitney U test) predicted the need for intensive care in COVID-19 infected men. In agreement with the known anti-inflammatory action of testosterone, patients with long-polyQ and age ≥60 years had increased levels of CRP (p = 0.018, not accounting for multiple testing). Interpretation: We identify the first genetic polymorphism that appears to predispose some men to develop more severe disease. Failure of the endocrine feedback to overcome AR signaling defects by increasing testosterone levels during the infection leads to the polyQ tract becoming dominant to serum testosterone levels for the clinical outcome. These results may contribute to designing reliable clinical and public health measures and provide a rationale to test testosterone as adjuvant therapy in men with COVID-19 expressing long AR polyQ repeats. Funding: MIUR project "Dipartimenti di Eccellenza 2018-2020" to Department of Medical Biotechnologies University of Siena, Italy (Italian D.L. n.18 March 17, 2020) and "Bando Ricerca COVID-19 Toscana" project to Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria Senese. Private donors for COVID-19 research and charity funds from Intesa San Paolo

An explainable model of host genetic interactions linked to COVID-19 severity

We employed a multifaceted computational strategy to identify the genetic factors contributing to increased risk of severe COVID-19 infection from a Whole Exome Sequencing (WES) dataset of a cohort of 2000 Italian patients. We coupled a stratified k-fold screening, to rank variants more associated with severity, with the training of multiple supervised classifiers, to predict severity based on screened features. Feature importance analysis from tree-based models allowed us to identify 16 variants with the highest support which, together with age and gender covariates, were found to be most predictive of COVID-19 severity. When tested on a follow-up cohort, our ensemble of models predicted severity with high accuracy (ACC = 81.88%; AUCROC = 96%; MCC = 61.55%). Our model recapitulated a vast literature of emerging molecular mechanisms and genetic factors linked to COVID-19 response and extends previous landmark Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS). It revealed a network of interplaying genetic signatures converging on established immune system and inflammatory processes linked to viral infection response. It also identified additional processes cross-talking with immune pathways, such as GPCR signaling, which might offer additional opportunities for therapeutic intervention and patient stratification. Publicly available PheWAS datasets revealed that several variants were significantly associated with phenotypic traits such as "Respiratory or thoracic disease", supporting their link with COVID-19 severity outcome.A multifaceted computational strategy identifies 16 genetic variants contributing to increased risk of severe COVID-19 infection from a Whole Exome Sequencing dataset of a cohort of Italian patients