Behavioral genetics and taste

This review focuses on behavioral genetic studies of sweet, umami, bitter and salt taste responses in mammals. Studies involving mouse inbred strain comparisons and genetic analyses, and their impact on elucidation of taste receptors and transduction mechanisms are discussed. Finally, the effect of genetic variation in taste responsiveness on complex traits such as drug intake is considered. Recent advances in development of genomic resources make behavioral genetics a powerful approach for understanding mechanisms of taste

Computer assisted assignment of ICD codes for primary admission diagnostic in ICUs

The intensive care units (ICUs) provide a constant monitoring and specialized support to patients with acute critical conditions, assuring timely interventions to rapid changes. A major determinant of the patient care in ICUs is the primary admission diagnosis. A typical diagnosis includes a nosological entity or syndrome name, with the possibility to describe the clinical condition and the patient health state. This diagnosis is the starting point to establish intervention plans and to devise epidemiological studies. In the ICU physicians are in charge to define this diagnosis. Diagnoses in ICUs are commonly described in natural language. However, a common practice is to assign a normalized code from the international classification of diseases and related health problems (ICD). Unfortunately, this codification task is time expensive and requires highly specialized medical knowledge. In this work, we introduce a text mining system to automatically recover ICD codes for diagnosis of admission in ICUs. The system is based on a novel hierarchical recovery approach which is well suited to representation used in the ICD code. The proposed approach was evaluated by using a set of 1206 codified descriptions written in Spanish language corresponding to diagnoses in an real ICU. The results suggest that this approach may account for a considerable percentage of the diagnoses codified by the expert in the ICU. In particular, the F1 measure was 0.21±0.06 with a mean precision average of 0.3

Associations between usual school lunch attendance and eating habits and sedentary behaviour in French children and adolescents

Background/Objective: Our objective was to investigate whether school lunch attendance was associated with overall eating habits and sedentary behaviour in a French sample of children and adolescents.Subjects/Methods: Data for the study were taken from the second French cross-sectional dietary survey (INCA2-2006-07). In total, 1413 school children aged 3&ndash;17 years old were classified according to their school type and their usual school lunch attendance. Eating habits included meal regularity, dietary diversity, purchase in vending machine, snacking habits and frequency of eating in fast-foods. Two composite indices of eating habits were derived from multiple correspondence analyses. Sedentary behaviour was assessed by the average daily screen times for TV and computer. The association between school lunch attendance and each variable was tested. Multivariate association between school lunch attendance and the composite indices of eating habits and sedentary behaviours was studied.Results: In all, 69.0% (CI95%: 64.2&ndash;73.9) of secondary school children and 63.0% (CI95%: 58.5&ndash;67.5) of pre- and elementary school children usually attended school lunch at least once a week. Pre- and elementary school children attending school lunches showed a higher dietary diversity score (P=0.02) and ate morning snacks more frequently (P=0.02). In secondary school children, attending school canteen was related to a lower rate of skipping breakfast (P=0.04) and main meals (P=0.01). In all school children, school lunch attendance was simultaneously associated with healthier overall eating habits and less sedentary behaviour.Conclusion: In France, children attending school canteens seem to have healthier eating habits and display less sedentary behaviour, independently of their socio-economic and demographic background.<br /