Cross-validation of the reduced form of the food craving questionnaire -trait using confirmatory factor analysis

Objective: The Food Craving Questionnaire-Trait (FCQ-T) is commonly used to assess habitual food cravings among individuals. Previous studies have shown that a brief version of this instrument (FCQ-T-r) has good reliability and validity. This article is the first to use Confirmatory factor analysis to examine the psychometric properties of the FCQ-T-r in a cross-validation study. Method: Habitual food cravings, as well as emotion regulation strategies, affective states, and disordered eating behaviors, were investigated in two independent samples of non-clinical adult volunteers (Sample 1: N = 368; Sample 2: N = 246). Confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to simultaneously test model fit statistics and dimensionality of the instrument. FCQ-T-r reliability was assessed by computing the composite reliability coefficient. Results: Analysis supported the unidimensional structure of the scale and fit indices were acceptable for both samples. The FCQ-T-r showed excellent reliability and moderate to high correlations with negative affect and disordered eating. Conclusion: Our results indicate that the FCQ-T-r scores can be reliably used to assess habitual cravings in an Italian non-clinical sample of adults. The robustness of these results is tested by a cross-validation of the model using two independent samples. Further research is required to expand on these findings, particularly in children and adolescents

Distance Estimation of an Unknown Person from a Portrait

We propose the first automated method for estimating distance from frontal pictures of unknown faces. Camera calibration is not necessary, nor is the reconstruction of a 3D representation of the shape of the head. Our method is based on estimating automatically the position of face and head landmarks in the image, and then using a regressor to estimate distance from such measurements. We collected and annotated a dataset of frontal portraits of 53 individuals spanning a number of attributes (sex, age, race, hair), each photographed from seven distances. We find that our proposed method outperforms humans performing the same task. We observe that different physiognomies will bias systematically the estimate of distance, i.e. some people look closer than others. We expire which landmarks are more important for this task

Peripheral neurological disturbances, autonomic dysfunction, and antineuronal antibodies in adult celiac disease before and after a gluten-free diet

Thirty-two consecutive adult celiac disease (CD) patients (pts), complaining of peripheral neuropathy (12 pts), autonomic dysfunction (17 pts), or both (3 pts), were evaluated to assess the presence of neurological damage (by clinical neurological evaluation and electrophysiological study) and antineuronal antibodies and to assess the effect of a gluten-free diet (GFD) on the course of the neurological symptoms and on antineuronal antibodies. At entry, 12 of 32 (38%) pts showed signs and symptoms of neurological damage: 7 of 12 (58%), peripheral neurological damage; 3 of 12 (25%), autonomic dysfunction; and 2 (17%), both peripheral neurological damage and autonomic dysfunction. The overall TNS score was 105 at entry. Anti-GM1 antibodies were present in 5 of 12 (42%) pts: 3 showed peripheral neurological damage and 2 showed both peripheral neurological damage and autonomic dysfunction. One year after the GFD was started, histological lesions were still present in only 10 of 12 (83%) pts. TNS score was 99, 98, 98, and 101 at the 3rd, 6th, 9th, and 12th month after the GFD was started, so it did not improve throughout the follow-up. None of the pts showed disappearance of antineuronal antibodies throughout the follow-up. We conclude that adult CD patients may show neurological damage and presence of antineuronal antibodies. Unfortunately, these findings do not disappear with a GFD

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Sodium valproate in migraine without aura and medication overuse headache: A randomized controlled trial

Objective: To assess the efficacy, safety and tolerability of sodium valproate (800. mg/die) compared with placebo in medication-overuse headache patients with a history of migraine without aura. Methods: This is a multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study enrolled medication-overuse headache patients for a 3-month treatment period with sodium valproate (800. mg/day) or placebo after a 6 day outpatient detoxification regimen, followed by a 3-month follow-up. Primary outcome was defined by the proportion of patients achieving ≥50% reduction in the number of days with headache per month (responders) from the baseline to the last 4 weeks of the 3-month treatment. Multivariate logistic regression models were used on the primary endpoint, adjusting for age, sex, disease duration, comorbidity and surgery. The last-observation-carried-forward method was used to adjust for missing values. Results: Nine sites enrolled 130 patients and, after a 6-day detoxification phase, randomized 88 eligible patients. The 3-month responder rate was higher in the sodium valproate (45.0%) than in the placebo arm (23.8%) with an absolute difference of about 20% (p=0.0431). Sodium valproate had safety and tolerability profiles comparable to placebo. Conclusions: The present study supports the efficacy and safety of sodium valproate in the treatment of medication overuse headache with history of migraine after detoxification