Association between television viewing and the risk of metabolic syndrome in a community-based population

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>As a result of metabolic syndrome becoming an important issue during recent decades, many studies have explored the risk factors contributing to its development. However, less attention has been paid to the risk associated with sedentary behavior, especially television viewing. This study examined the association between television viewing time and the risk of having metabolic syndrome in a population of Taiwanese subjects.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>This community-based cross-sectional study included 2,353 subjects (1,144 men and 1,209 women) aged 40 and over from October, 2004 to September, 2005. Information about the time spent watching TV was obtained using a self-administered questionnaire. The definition of metabolic syndrome was according to the Third Report of the National Cholesterol Education Program's Adult Treatment Panel modified for Asians.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Compared to subjects who viewed TV < 14 hr/week, those who viewed TV > 20 hr/week had a 1.50-fold (95% confidence intervals (CI): 1.10, 2.03) risk for men and a 1.93-fold (95% CI: 1.37, 2.71) risk for women of having metabolic syndrome, after adjusting for physical activity and other covariates. Stratifying by the three categories of total activity levels, TV viewing time > 20 hr/week was found to still hold a significant risk for having metabolic syndrome in the lowest of the three categories of total activity level for men and in all three categories of total activity level for women.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The findings suggest that TV viewing is an independent risk factor associated with metabolic syndrome in Taiwanese people.</p

Metabolic syndrome is associated with change in subclinical arterial stiffness - A community-based Taichung Community Health Study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of MetS on arterial stiffness in a longitudinal study.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Brachial-ankle pulse wave velocity (baPWV), a measurement interpreted as arterial stiffness, was measured in 1518 community-dwelling persons at baseline and re-examined within a mean follow-up period of 3 years. Multivariate linear regression with generalized estimating equations (GEE) were used to examine the longitudinal relationship between MetS and its individual components and baPWV, while multivariate logistic regression with GEE was used to examine the longitudinal relationship between MetS and its individual components and the high risk group with arterial stiffness.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Subjects with MetS showed significantly greater baPWV at the end point than those without MetS, after adjusting for age, gender, education, hypertension medication and mean arterial pressure (MAP). MetS was associated with the top quartile of baPWV (the high-risk group of arterial stiffness, adjusted odds ratio [95% confidence interval] 1.52 [1.21-1.90]), and a significant linear trend of risk for the number of components of MetS was found (p for trend < 0.05). In further considering the individual MetS component, elevated blood pressure and fasting glucose significantly predicted a high risk of arterial stiffness (adjusted OR [95% CI] 3.72 [2.81-4.93] and 1.35 [1.08-1.68], respectively).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>MetS affects the subject's progression to arterial stiffness. Arterial stiffness increased as the number of MetS components increased. Management of MetS is important for preventing the progression to advanced arterial stiffness.</p

Metabolic syndrome in a Taiwanese metropolitan adult population

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Metabolic syndrome (MS) is a combination of medical disorders that increase one's risk for cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Little information exists on the prevalence of MS in a general adult population in Taiwan.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We did a cross-sectional survey in a representative sample of 2,359 Chinese adults aged 40 years and over who lived in a metropolitan city, Taiwan in 2004–05. MS was defined by Adult Treatment Panel III criteria modified for Asians.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The prevalence of MetS was 35.32% and 43.23% in men aged 40–64 years and 65 years and over, respectively, and 24.19% and 51.82% in women aged 40–64 years and 65 years and over. Older age, postmenopausal status, higher body mass index, current smoking, low education attainment, low household income, no alcohol consumption, lower level of occupation physical activity, and a family history of diabetes were associated with increased odds of MetS.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>MetS was present in more than 30% of the Taiwan adult population aged 40 years and over in a metropolitan area; there were substantial variations by age and body mass index groups.</p

Prescriptions of Traditional Chinese Medicine Are Specific to Cancer Types and Adjustable to Temperature Changes

Targeted cancer therapies, with specific molecular targets, ameliorate the side effect issue of radiation and chemotherapy and also point to the development of personalized medicine. Combination of drugs targeting multiple pathways of carcinogenesis is potentially more fruitful. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been tailoring herbal mixtures for individualized healthcare for two thousand years. A systematic study of the patterns of TCM formulas and herbs prescribed to cancers is valuable. We analysed a total of 187,230 TCM prescriptions to 30 types of cancer in Taiwan in 2007, a year's worth of collection from the National Health Insurance reimbursement database (Taiwan). We found that a TCM cancer prescription consists on average of two formulas and four herbs. We show that the percentage weights of TCM formulas and herbs in a TCM prescription follow Zipf's law with an exponent around 0.6. TCM prescriptions to benign neoplasms have a larger Zipf's exponent than those to malignant cancers. Furthermore, we show that TCM prescriptions, via weighted combination of formulas and herbs, are specific to not only the malignancy of neoplasms but also the sites of origins of malignant cancers. From the effects of formulas and natures of herbs that were heavily prescribed to cancers, that cancers are a ‘warm and stagnant’ syndrome in TCM can be proposed, suggesting anti-inflammatory regimens for better prevention and treatment of cancers. We show that TCM incorporated relevant formulas to the prescriptions to cancer patients with a secondary morbidity. We compared TCM prescriptions made in different seasons and identified temperatures as the environmental factor that correlates with changes in TCM prescriptions in Taiwan. Lung cancer patients were among the patients whose prescriptions were adjusted when temperatures drop. The findings of our study provide insight to TCM cancer treatment, helping dialogue between modern western medicine and TCM for better cancer care

Sociodemographic differences in linkage error: An examination of four large-scale datasets

© 2018 The Author(s). Background: Record linkage is an important tool for epidemiologists and health planners. Record linkage studies will generally contain some level of residual record linkage error, where individual records are either incorrectly marked as belonging to the same individual, or incorrectly marked as belonging to separate individuals. A key question is whether errors in linkage quality are distributed evenly throughout the population, or whether certain subgroups will exhibit higher rates of error. Previous investigations of this issue have typically compared linked and un-linked records, which can conflate bias caused by record linkage error, with bias caused by missing records (data capture errors). Methods: Four large administrative datasets were individually de-duplicated, with results compared to an available 'gold-standard' benchmark, allowing us to avoid methodological issues with comparing linked and un-linked records. Results were compared by gender, age, geographic remoteness (major cities, regional or remote) and socioeconomic status. Results: Results varied between datasets, and by sociodemographic characteristic. The most consistent findings were worse linkage quality for younger individuals (seen in all four datasets) and worse linkage quality for those living in remote areas (seen in three of four datasets). The linkage quality within sociodemographic categories varied between datasets, with the associations with linkage error reversed across different datasets due to quirks of the specific data collection mechanisms and data sharing practices. Conclusions: These results suggest caution should be taken both when linking younger individuals and those in remote areas, and when analysing linked data from these subgroups. Further research is required to determine the ramifications of worse linkage quality in these subpopulations on research outcomes

Socio-demographic and health-related factors associated with cognitive impairment in the elderly in Taiwan

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Cognitive impairment is an age-related condition as the rate of cognitive decline rapidly increases with aging. It is especially important to better understand factors involving in cognitive decline for the countries where the older population is growing rapidly. The aim of this study was to examine the association between socio-demographic and health-related factors and cognitive impairment in the elderly in Taiwan.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We analysed data from 2119 persons aged 65 years and over who participated in the 2005 National Health Interview Survey. Cognitive impairment was defined as having the score of the Mini Mental State Examination lower than 24. The χ²test and multiple logistic regression models were used to evaluate the association between cognitive impairment and variables of socio-demography, chronic diseases, geriatric conditions, lifestyle, and dietary factors.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The prevalence of cognitive impairment was 22.2%. Results of multivariate analysis indicated that low education, being single, low social support, lower lipid level, history of stroke, physical inactivity, non-coffee drinking and poor physical function were associated with a higher risk of cognitive impairment.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Most of the characteristics in relation to cognitive impairment identified in our analysis are potentially modifiable. These results suggest that improving lifestyle behaviours such as regular exercise and increased social participation could help prevent or decrease the risk of cognitive impairment. Further investigations using longitudinal data are needed to clarify our findings.</p

Search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum in pp collisions at √ s = 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Results of a search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum are reported. The search uses 20.3 fb−1 of √ s = 8 TeV data collected in 2012 with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Events are required to have at least one jet with pT > 120 GeV and no leptons. Nine signal regions are considered with increasing missing transverse momentum requirements between Emiss T > 150 GeV and Emiss T > 700 GeV. Good agreement is observed between the number of events in data and Standard Model expectations. The results are translated into exclusion limits on models with either large extra spatial dimensions, pair production of weakly interacting dark matter candidates, or production of very light gravitinos in a gauge-mediated supersymmetric model. In addition, limits on the production of an invisibly decaying Higgs-like boson leading to similar topologies in the final state are presente

The FAT10- and ubiquitin-dependent degradation machineries exhibit common and distinct requirements for MHC class I antigen presentation

Like ubiquitin (Ub), the ubiquitin-like protein FAT10 can serve as a signal for proteasome-dependent protein degradation. Here, we investigated the contribution of FAT10 substrate modification to MHC class I antigen presentation. We show that N-terminal modification of the human cytomegalovirus-derived pp65 antigen to FAT10 facilitates direct presentation and dendritic cell-mediated cross-presentation of the HLA-A2 restricted pp65495–503 epitope. Interestingly, our data indicate that the pp65 presentation initiated by either FAT10 or Ub partially relied on the 19S proteasome subunit Rpn10 (S5a). However, FAT10 distinguished itself from Ub in that it promoted a pp65 response which was not influenced by immunoproteasomes or PA28. Further divergence occurred at the level of Ub-binding proteins with NUB1 supporting the pp65 presentation arising from FAT10, while it exerted no effect on that initiated by Ub. Collectively, our data establish FAT10 modification as a distinct and alternative signal for facilitated MHC class I antigen presentation