Application of weight-height ratios and body indices to juvenile populations--the national health examination survey data

Properties of four weight-height ratios were studed in data from the U.S. Health Examination Survey (Cycles II and III) of a national probability sample of youths aged 6-17 yr (N = 13,867). These ratios (weight/height, weight/height2, weight/height3, weight/body surface area) were examined for their correlation with adiposity (infrascapular skinfold thickness) and muscle mass (estimated muscle circumference) and for their relationship to selected physiologic and biochemical measurements. Weight/height2 (Quetelet's index) correlates best with skinfold thickness for all age-race-sex groups. However, weight-height ratios may be a better indicator of muscle mass than of adiposity because the ratios generally show higher correlations with muscle circumference than with skinfold thickness. Weight/body surface area (BSA index) is the ratio which shows the highest overall correlation with muscle circumference. The relationships of the ratios are different for various biochemical and physiologic parameters, and these data can be used for selection of an index appropriate to the investigative aims of the study.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/22752/1/0000307.pd

Response variability in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: a neuronal and glial energetics hypothesis

BACKGROUND: Current concepts of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) emphasize the role of higher-order cognitive functions and reinforcement processes attributed to structural and biochemical anomalies in cortical and limbic neural networks innervated by the monoamines, dopamine, noradrenaline and serotonin. However, these explanations do not account for the ubiquitous findings in ADHD of intra-individual performance variability, particularly on tasks that require continual responses to rapid, externally-paced stimuli. Nor do they consider attention as a temporal process dependent upon a continuous energy supply for efficient and consistent function. A consideration of this feature of intra-individual response variability, which is not unique to ADHD but is also found in other disorders, leads to a new perspective on the causes and potential remedies of specific aspects of ADHD. THE HYPOTHESIS: We propose that in ADHD, astrocyte function is insufficient, particularly in terms of its formation and supply of lactate. This insufficiency has implications both for performance and development: H1) In rapidly firing neurons there is deficient ATP production, slow restoration of ionic gradients across neuronal membranes and delayed neuronal firing; H2) In oligodendrocytes insufficient lactate supply impairs fatty acid synthesis and myelination of axons during development. These effects occur over vastly different time scales: those due to deficient ATP (H1) occur over milliseconds, whereas those due to deficient myelination (H2) occur over months and years. Collectively the neural outcomes of impaired astrocytic release of lactate manifest behaviourally as inefficient and inconsistent performance (variable response times across the lifespan, especially during activities that require sustained speeded responses and complex information processing). TESTING THE HYPOTHESIS: Multi-level and multi-method approaches are required. These include: 1) Use of dynamic strategies to evaluate cognitive performance under conditions that vary in duration, complexity, speed, and reinforcement; 2) Use of sensitive neuroimaging techniques such as diffusion tensor imaging, magnetic resonance spectroscopy, electroencephalography or magnetoencephalopathy to quantify developmental changes in myelination in ADHD as a potential basis for the delayed maturation of brain function and coordination, and 3) Investigation of the prevalence of genetic markers for factors that regulate energy metabolism (lactate, glutamate, glucose transporters, glycogen synthase, glycogen phosphorylase, glycolytic enzymes), release of glutamate from synaptic terminals and glutamate-stimulated lactate production (SNAP25, glutamate receptors, adenosine receptors, neurexins, intracellular Ca(2+)), as well as astrocyte function (α(1), α(2 )and β-adrenoceptors, dopamine D1 receptors) and myelin synthesis (lactate transporter, Lingo-1, Quaking homolog, leukemia inhibitory factor, and Transferrin). IMPLICATIONS OF THE HYPOTHESIS: The hypothesis extends existing theories of ADHD by proposing a physiological basis for specific aspects of the ADHD phenotype – namely frequent, transient and impairing fluctuations in functioning, particularly during performance of speeded, effortful tasks. The immediate effects of deficient ATP production and slow restoration of ionic gradients across membranes of rapidly firing neurons have implications for daily functioning: For individuals with ADHD, performance efficacy would be enhanced if repetitive and lengthy effortful tasks were segmented to reduce concurrent demands for speed and accuracy of response (introduction of breaks into lengthy/effortful activities such as examinations, motorway driving, assembly-line production). Also, variations in task or modality and the use of self- rather than system-paced schedules would be helpful. This would enable energetic demands to be distributed to alternate neural resources, and energy reserves to be re-established. Longer-term effects may manifest as reduction in regional brain volumes since brain areas with the highest energy demand will be most affected by a restricted energy supply and may be reduced in size. Novel forms of therapeutic agent and delivery system could be based on factors that regulate energy production and myelin synthesis. Since the phenomena and our proposed basis for it are not unique to ADHD but also manifests in other disorders, the implications of our hypotheses may be relevant to understanding and remediating these other conditions as well

New York Communities 2008: A Year of CaRDI Publications

CaRDI Reports Issue 7. Compilation of CaRDI Rural New York Minute and the Research & Policy Brief Series from 200

Prevention of noncommunicable diseases by interventions in the preconception period: A FIGO position paper for action by healthcare practitioners

With the increase in obesity prevalence among women of reproductive age globally, the risks of type 2 diabetes, gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia, and other conditions are rising, with detrimental effects on maternal and newborn health. The period before pregnancy is increasingly recognized as crucial for addressing weight management and reducing malnutrition (both under- and overnutrition) in both parents to reduce the risk of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) in the mother as well as the passage of risk to her offspring. Healthcare practitioners, including obstetricians, gynecologists, midwives, and general practitioners, have an important role to play in supporting women in planning a pregnancy and achieving healthy nutrition and weight before pregnancy. In this position paper, the FIGO Pregnancy Obesity and Nutrition Initiative provides an overview of the evidence for preconception clinical guidelines to reduce the risk of NCDs in mothers and their offspring. It encourages healthcare practitioners to initiate a dialogue on women’s health, nutrition, and weight management before conception. While acknowledging the fundamental importance of the wider social and environmental determinants of health, this paper focuses on a simple set of recommendations for clinical practice that can be used even in short consultations. The recommendations can be contextualized based on local cultural and dietary practices as part of a system-wide public health approach to influence the wider determinants as well as individual factors influencing preconception health

The Transformed Beast : Penny Dreadful, Adaptation, and the Gothic

After only one eight-part series, the Showtime/Sky Atlantic co-production Penny Dreadful (2014 -) has become an international success with an active and vocal fanbase. Yet the relationship of the show (which was created and written by John Logan) to the Victorian serial fiction genre, ‘penny dreadfuls’, is an oblique one, and worth unpicking. Penny Dreadful is set in a late-Victorian Gothic world in which Dorian Gray and Victor Frankenstein join central figures Vanessa Ives and Sir Malcom Murray in attempting to rescue Sir Malcolm’s daughter Mina, who is under the power of Dracula. In its embrace of anachronism and rewriting of canonical Gothic texts, the series concept seems to owe more to pastiches and fan fiction practices like crossover fiction and ‘shipping’, than to the ‘reformed’ adventure fiction published by Edward J. Brett, W.L. Emmett, and Charles Fox in the later nineteenth century. However, I argue that there are other Victorian popular fictions to which the series has a more direct bloodline, including the penny dreadfuls’ forerunner, the ‘penny blood’, and the Gothic drama of the period. In its use of both penny blood archetypes (the werewolf, the vampire) and literary sources that were either bastardised for popular fiction and drama (Frankenstein) or which were criticised as being too ‘vulgar’ or ‘noxious’ to be read (The Picture of Dorian Gray) the series stages a clash of high and low cultures, of what is now considered ‘classic’ literature, and pulp. Paradoxically, Logan’s Penny Dreadful does all this not in the name of crude commercialism, but as the flagship of a Sky Atlantic campaign to raise the profile of its productions and to achieve the critical kudos routinely awarded to the American subscription channel Home Box Office (HBO). So the invoking of Victorian low-brow fiction serves to facilitate the middlebrow trajectory of a 21st-century television channel (in stark contrast to Victorian penny-blood authors like G.W.M. Reynolds, who, on moving into the more ‘respectable’ world of newspapers, sought to deny their roots in the business). In addition to exploring the rhetorical, structural and and semantic resonances of Penny Dreadful as a title and organising concept for the series, I will consider its broad appeal as an example of what Victoria Nelson, Catherine Spooner and Kohlke and Gutleben have classified in different ways as the ‘global Gothic’, the ubiquity of commercialised Gothic tropes in contemporary culture. Finally, the article seeks to place Penny Dreadful in the context of broadcasters’ difficulties, over the last decade, in representing the Victorian period in ways that win both critical and commercial acclaim. Seen in such a light, the show can be read as a conscious ‘liberation’ (in Logan’s words) from the historical weight of twentieth-century adaptations of Victorian fiction; but it is also a liberation which relies on audiences’ cultural capital to parse the meaning of its textual infidelities