The Mediterranean diet and risk of colorectal cancer in the UK women's cohort study

Background: Evidence from epidemiological studies investigating associations between adherence to the Mediterranean diet and colorectal cancer is inconsistent. The aim of this study is to assess whether adherence to the Mediterranean dietary pattern is associated with reduced incidence of cancers of the colon and rectum in the UK Women’s Cohort Study. Method: A total of 35 372 women were followed for a median of 17.4 years. A 10-component score indicating adherence to the Mediterranean diet was generated for each cohort participant using a 217-item food frequency questionnaire. The Mediterranean diet score ranged from 0 for minimal adherence to 10 for maximal adherence. Cox proportional hazards regression was used to provide adjusted hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for colon and rectal cancer risk. Results: A total of 465 incident colorectal cancer cases were documented. In the multivariable-adjusted model, the test for trend was positive (HR=0.88, 95% CI: 0.78 to 0.99; Ptrend = 0.03) for a 2-point increment in the Mediterranean diet score. For rectal cancer, a 2-point increment in the Mediterranean diet score resulted in an HR (95% CI) of 0.69 (0.56 to 0.86) whilst a 62% linear reduced risk (HR 0.38; 95% CI: 0.20 to 0.74; Ptrend < 0.001) was observed for women within the highest vs. the lowest category of the MD score. Estimates for an association with colon cancer were weak (Ptrend = 0.41). Conclusion: Findings suggest women adhering to a Mediterranean dietary pattern may have a lower risk of colorectal cancer, especially rectal cancer

Measuring diet in primary school children aged 8-11 years: validation of the Child and Diet Evaluation Tool (CADET) with an emphasis on fruit and vegetable intake.

Background/Objectives:The Child And Diet Evaluation Tool (CADET) is a 24-h food diary that measures the nutrition intake of children aged 3-7 years, with a focus on fruit and vegetable consumption. Until now CADET has not been used to measure nutrient intake of children aged 8-11 years. To ensure that newly assigned portion sizes for this older age group were valid, participants were asked to complete the CADET diary (the school and home food diary) concurrently with a 1-day weighed record. Subjects/Methods:A total of 67 children with a mean age of 9.3 years (s.d.: ± 1.4, 51% girls) participated in the study. Total fruit and vegetable intake in grams and other nutrients were extracted to compare the mean intakes from the CADET diary and Weighed record using t-tests and Pearson's r correlations. Bland-Altman analysis was also conducted to assess the agreement between the two methods. Results: Correlations comparing the CADET diary to the weighed record were high for fruit, vegetables and combined fruit and vegetables (r=0.7). The results from the Bland-Altman plots revealed a mean difference of 54 g (95% confidence interval: -88, 152) for combined fruit and vegetables intake. CADET is the only tool recommended by the National Obesity Observatory that has been validated in a UK population and provides nutrient level data on children's diets. Conclusions:The results from this study conclude that CADET can provide high-quality nutrient data suitable for evaluating intervention studies now for children aged 3-11 years with a focus on fruit and vegetable intake

Restricting promotions of ‘less healthy’ foods and beverages by price and location: a big data application of UK Nutrient Profiling Models to a retail product dataset

The UK government plans to limit price-based and location-based promotions for products high in saturated fat, salt and sugars. The 2004/5 UK nutrient profile model (NPM) is the proposed legislative basis, but may be superseded by the draft 2018 NPM. This study develops an algorithm to apply both NPMs to a large food composition database (FCDB), and assesses implementation challenges. UK NPMs were applied algorithmically to the myfood24 FCDB, representing ~45,000 retail products. Pass-rates - indicating free or restricted promotions - and micronutrient compositions were compared. Challenges were assessed and recommendations addressed the legislation’s public consultation questions. For products in scope (75% of total), 6% fewer passed the 2018 NPM (36%, p<0.001) compared with the 2004/5 NPM (42%). Beverages showed the greatest reduction in pass-rate (75%). Under both models, micronutrient contents (per 100 g of product) were generally lower for products which passed; except folate, vitamin C and vitamin D that were no different for passed and failed products. Compared with products passing the 2004/5 NPM, products passing the 2018 NPM on average had marginally higher amounts of iron (0.05 mg, 95% CI: 0.02, 0.08, p<0.001) and magnesium (1.00 mg, 95% CI: 0.00, 1.17, p=0.029), but marginally lower levels of calcium (-0.42 mg, 95% CI: -2.00, -0.40, p=0.025). Missing ingredient information and heterogeneous product categories were challenges for both NPMs. Free sugar calculation further complicated 2018 NPM application. To balance feasibility and public health benefit, the proposed legislative basis may not be appropriate

Is metal theft committed by organized crime groups, and why does it matter?

Using the example of metal theft in the United Kingdom, this study used mixed methods to evaluate the accuracy of police estimates of the involvement of organised crime groups (OCGs) in crime. Police estimate that 20-30% of metal theft is committed by OCGs, but this study found that only 0.5% of metal thieves had previous convictions for offences related to OCGs, that only 1.3% were linked to OCGs by intelligence information, that metal thieves typically offended close to their homes and that almost no metal thefts involved sophisticated offence methods. It appears that police may over-estimate the involvement of OCGs in some types of crime. The reasons for and consequences of this over-estimation are discussed

PACE - The first placebo controlled trial of paracetamol for acute low back pain: design of a randomised controlled trial

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Clinical practice guidelines recommend that the initial treatment of acute low back pain (LBP) should consist of advice to stay active and regular simple analgesics such as paracetamol 4 g daily. Despite this recommendation in all international LBP guidelines there are no placebo controlled trials assessing the efficacy of paracetamol for LBP at any dose or dose regimen. This study aims to determine whether 4 g of paracetamol daily (in divided doses) results in a more rapid recovery from acute LBP than placebo. A secondary aim is to determine if ingesting paracetamol in a time-contingent manner is more effective than paracetamol taken when required (PRN) for recovery from acute LBP.</p> <p>Methods/Design</p> <p>The study is a randomised double dummy placebo controlled trial. 1650 care seeking people with significant acute LBP will be recruited. All participants will receive advice to stay active and will be randomised to 1 of 3 treatment groups: time-contingent paracetamol dose regimen (plus placebo PRN paracetamol), PRN paracetamol (plus placebo time-contingent paracetamol) or a double placebo study arm. The primary outcome will be time (days) to recovery from pain recorded in a daily pain diary. Other outcomes will be pain intensity, disability, function, global perceived effect and sleep quality, captured at baseline and at weeks 1, 2, 4 and 12 by an assessor blind to treatment allocation. An economic analysis will be conducted to determine the cost-effectiveness of treatment from the health sector and societal perspectives.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>The successful completion of the trial will provide the first high quality evidence on the effectiveness of the use of paracetamol, a guideline endorsed treatment for acute LBP.</p> <p>Trail registration</p> <p>ACTRN12609000966291.</p

Agreement between an online dietary assessment tool (myfood24) and an interviewer-administered 24-h dietary recall in British adolescents aged 11–18 years

myfood24 Is an online 24-h dietary assessment tool developed for use among British adolescents and adults. Limited information is available regarding the validity of using new technology in assessing nutritional intake among adolescents. Thus, a relative validation of myfood24 against a face-to-face interviewer-administered 24-h multiple-pass recall (MPR) was conducted among seventy-five British adolescents aged 11–18 years. Participants were asked to complete myfood24 and an interviewer-administered MPR on the same day for 2 non-consecutive days at school. Total energy intake (EI) and nutrients recorded by the two methods were compared using intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC), Bland–Altman plots (using between and within-individual information) and weighted κ to assess the agreement. Energy, macronutrients and other reported nutrients from myfood24 demonstrated strong agreement with the interview MPR data, and ICC ranged from 0·46 for Na to 0·88 for EI. There was no significant bias between the two methods for EI, macronutrients and most reported nutrients. The mean difference between myfood24 and the interviewer-administered MPR for EI was −230 kJ (−55 kcal) (95 % CI −490, 30 kJ (−117, 7 kcal); P=0·4) with limits of agreement ranging between 39 % (3336 kJ (−797 kcal)) lower and 34 % (2874 kJ (687 kcal)) higher than the interviewer-administered MPR. There was good agreement in terms of classifying adolescents into tertiles of EI (κ w =0·64). The agreement between day 1 and day 2 was as good for myfood24 as for the interviewer-administered MPR, reflecting the reliability of myfood24. myfood24 Has the potential to collect dietary data of comparable quality with that of an interviewer-administered MPR

Breakdown of the adiabatic limit in low dimensional gapless systems

It is generally believed that a generic system can be reversibly transformed from one state into another by sufficiently slow change of parameters. A standard argument favoring this assertion is based on a possibility to expand the energy or the entropy of the system into the Taylor series in the ramp speed. Here we show that this argumentation is only valid in high enough dimensions and can break down in low-dimensional gapless systems. We identify three generic regimes of a system response to a slow ramp: (A) mean-field, (B) non-analytic, and (C) non-adiabatic. In the last regime the limits of the ramp speed going to zero and the system size going to infinity do not commute and the adiabatic process does not exist in the thermodynamic limit. We support our results by numerical simulations. Our findings can be relevant to condensed-matter, atomic physics, quantum computing, quantum optics, cosmology and others.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, to appear in Nature Physics (originally submitted version

Evaluation of the impact of a school gardening intervention on children's fruit and vegetable intake: a randomised controlled trial.

Background: Current academic literature suggests that school gardening programmes can provide an interactive environment with the potential to change children’s fruit and vegetable intake. This is the first cluster randomised controlled trial (RCT) designed to evaluate whether a school gardening programme can have an effect on children’s fruit and vegetable intake. Methods: The trial included children from 23 schools; these schools were randomised into two groups, one to receive the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS)-led intervention and the other to receive the less involved Teacher-led intervention. A 24-hour food diary (CADET) was used to collect baseline and follow-up dietary intake 18 months apart. Questionnaires were also administered to evaluate the intervention implementation. Results: A total of 641 children completed the trial with a mean age of 8.1 years (95% CI: 8.0, 8.4). The unadjusted results from multilevel regression analysis revealed that for combined daily fruit and vegetable intake the Teacher-led group had a higher daily mean change of 8 g (95% CI: −19, 36) compared to the RHS-led group -32 g (95% CI: −60, −3). However, after adjusting for possible confounders this difference was not significant (intervention effect: −40 g, 95% CI: −88, 1; p = 0.06). The adjusted analysis of process measures identified that if schools improved their gardening score by 3 levels (a measure of school gardening involvement - the scale has 6 levels from 0 ‘no garden’ to 5 ‘community involvement’), irrespective of group allocation, children had, on average, a daily increase of 81 g of fruit and vegetable intake (95% CI: 0, 163; p = 0.05) compared to schools that had no change in gardening score. Conclusions: This study is the first cluster randomised controlled trial designed to evaluate a school gardening intervention. The results have found very little evidence to support the claims that school gardening alone can improve children’s daily fruit and vegetable intake. However, when a gardening intervention is implemented at a high level within the school it may improve children’s daily fruit and vegetable intake by a portion. Improving children’s fruit and vegetable intake remains a challenging task