The Effect of Processing and Seasonallity on the Iodine and Selenium Concentration of Cow's Milk Produced in Northern Ireland (NI): Implications for Population Dietary Intake

Cow’s milk is the most important dietary source of iodine in the UK and Ireland, and also contributes to dietary selenium intakes. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of season, milk fat class (whole; semi-skimmed; skimmed) and pasteurisation on iodine and selenium concentrations in Northern Ireland (NI) milk, and to estimate the contribution of this milk to consumer iodine and selenium intakes. Milk samples (unpasteurised, whole, semi-skimmed and skimmed) were collected weekly from two large NI creameries between May 2013 and April 2014 and were analysed by inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). Using milk consumption data from the National Diet and Nutrition Survey (NDNS) Rolling Programme, the contribution of milk (at iodine and selenium concentrations measured in the present study) to UK dietary intakes was estimated. The mean ± standard deviation (SD) iodine concentration of milk was 475.9 ± 63.5 µg/kg and the mean selenium concentration of milk was 17.8 ± 2.7 µg/kg. Season had an important determining effect on the iodine, but not the selenium, content of cow’s milk, where iodine concentrations were highest in milk produced in spring compared to autumn months (534.3 ± 53.7 vs. 433.6 ± 57.8 µg/kg, respectively; p = 0.001). The measured iodine and selenium concentrations of NI milk were higher than those listed in current UK Food Composition Databases (Food Standards Agency (FSA) (2002); FSA (2015)). The dietary modelling analysis confirmed that milk makes an important contribution to iodine and selenium intakes. This contribution may be higher than previously estimated if iodine and selenium (+25.0 and +1.1 µg/day respectively) concentrations measured in the present study were replicable across the UK at the current level of milk consumption. Iodine intakes were theoretically shown to vary by season concurrent with the seasonal variation in NI milk iodine concentrations. Routine monitoring of milk iodine concentrations is required and efforts should be made to understand reasons for fluctuations in milk iodine concentrations, in order to realise the nutritional impact to consumers

Cow's milk consumption increases iodine status in women of childbearing age in a randomized controlled trial

Background: Recent evidence has highlighted the prevalence of mild-to-moderate iodine deficiency in women of childbearing age and pregnant women, with important public health ramifications owing to the role of iodine, required for thyroid hormone production, in neurodevelopment. Cow’s milk contributes the greatest amount to iodine intakes in several countries. Objective: The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of increased cow’s milk consumption on iodine status, thyroid hormone concentrations and selenium status. Methods: A 12 week, randomized-controlled trial was conducted in 78 low-moderate milk consuming (<250ml/d) healthy women (18-45 years). The intervention group were asked to consume 3L of semi49 skimmed milk per week, while the control group continued their usual milk consumption (baseline median (IQR): 140 (40-240) mL/d). At baseline, week 6 and week 12 participants provided a spot51 urine sample [urinary iodine concentration (UIC); creatinine] and a fasting blood sample [thyroid hormone concentrations; serum total selenium; selenoprotein P]. This study was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov Study (Ref: NCT02767167). Results: At baseline, the median (IQR) UIC of all participants was 78.5 (39.1-126.1)μg/L. Changes in the median UIC from baseline to week 6 (35.4 vs. 0.6 μg/L; P=0.014) and week 12 (51.6 vs. -3.8 μg/L; P=0.045) were significantly greater in the intervention group compared with the control group. However, despite being higher within the intervention group at weeks 6 and 12, the change in the iodine:creatinine ratio from baseline was not significantly different between groups at either week 6 (P=0.637) or 12 (P=0.178). There were no significant differences in thyroid hormone concentrations or selenium status between groups at any time point. Conclusions: The present study has demonstrated that the consumption of additional cow’s milk can significantly increase UIC in women of childbearing age. These results suggest that cow’s milk is a potentially important dietary source of iodine in this population group

Search Based Software Engineering

This paper was written to accompany the author's keynote talk for the Workshop on Computational Science in Software Engineering held in conjunction with International Conference in Computational Science 2006 in Reading, UK. The paper explains how software engineering activities can be viewed as a search for solutions that balance many competing constraints to achieve an optimal or near optimal result.The aim of Search Based Software Engineering (SBSE) research is to move software engineering problems from human-based search to machine-based search, using a variety of techniques from the metaheuristic search, operations research and evolutionary computation paradigms. As a result, human effort moves up the abstraction chain to focus on guiding the automated search, rather than performing it. The paper briefly describes the search based approach, providing pointers to the literature