Nutrition-risk pregnancies and its association with birth outcomes: findings from a community-based intervention in India

Background: The intervention is a part of a maternal and child nutrition project, operational in three districts of West Bengal, India. The current paper focuses on the identification of “nutrition risk pregnancies” at the community level and to determine the associations of the risk factors with birth outcomes like low-birth weight and pre-term birth.Methods: A cohort of 468 pregnant women attending antenatal clinics in their 1st trimester were identified from 74 sub-health centers from 3 diversified blocks of West Bengal, India. Five key intervention strategies were followed in order to achieve desired pregnancy weight gain birth outcomes, like low-birth weight, pre-term birth was analyzed in relation to “nutrition risk pregnancies”.Results: About 22.2% of the pregnant women in severe thin body mass index (BMI) categories gave birth to low-birth weight children and about 33.3% had pre-term deliveries compared to pregnant women with normal BMI with 16.8% and 18.8% low-birth and pre-term deliveries respectively. Among the nutrition risk factors, 1st weight at the time of pregnancy registration (95% CI, p=0.04), gestational weight gain (95% CI, p=0.002), were significantly associated with low-birth weight children. Gestational weight gain was also significantly associated with pre-term births (95% CI, p=0.009).Conclusions: Gestational weight gain beyond or less than recommended range may pre-dispose to low-birth weight and pre-term births. Since this factor could be managed through the existing, public health service delivery systems and family-based inputs, efforts should be geared towards identifying the risk factors and working towards appropriate weight gain.

Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (4th edition)

In 2008, we published the first set of guidelines for standardizing research in autophagy. Since then, this topic has received increasing attention, and many scientists have entered the field. Our knowledge base and relevant new technologies have also been expanding. Thus, it is important to formulate on a regular basis updated guidelines for monitoring autophagy in different organisms. Despite numerous reviews, there continues to be confusion regarding acceptable methods to evaluate autophagy, especially in multicellular eukaryotes. Here, we present a set of guidelines for investigators to select and interpret methods to examine autophagy and related processes, and for reviewers to provide realistic and reasonable critiques of reports that are focused on these processes. These guidelines are not meant to be a dogmatic set of rules, because the appropriateness of any assay largely depends on the question being asked and the system being used. Moreover, no individual assay is perfect for every situation, calling for the use of multiple techniques to properly monitor autophagy in each experimental setting. Finally, several core components of the autophagy machinery have been implicated in distinct autophagic processes (canonical and noncanonical autophagy), implying that genetic approaches to block autophagy should rely on targeting two or more autophagy-related genes that ideally participate in distinct steps of the pathway. Along similar lines, because multiple proteins involved in autophagy also regulate other cellular pathways including apoptosis, not all of them can be used as a specific marker for bona fide autophagic responses. Here, we critically discuss current methods of assessing autophagy and the information they can, or cannot, provide. Our ultimate goal is to encourage intellectual and technical innovation in the field