Rising rural body-mass index is the main driver of the global obesity epidemic in adults

Body-mass index (BMI) has increased steadily in most countries in parallel with a rise in the proportion of the population who live in cities 1,2 . This has led to a widely reported view that urbanization is one of the most important drivers of the global rise in obesity 3�6 . Here we use 2,009 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight in more than 112 million adults, to report national, regional and global trends in mean BMI segregated by place of residence (a rural or urban area) from 1985 to 2017. We show that, contrary to the dominant paradigm, more than 55 of the global rise in mean BMI from 1985 to 2017�and more than 80 in some low- and middle-income regions�was due to increases in BMI in rural areas. This large contribution stems from the fact that, with the exception of women in sub-Saharan Africa, BMI is increasing at the same rate or faster in rural areas than in cities in low- and middle-income regions. These trends have in turn resulted in a closing�and in some countries reversal�of the gap in BMI between urban and rural areas in low- and middle-income countries, especially for women. In high-income and industrialized countries, we noted a persistently higher rural BMI, especially for women. There is an urgent need for an integrated approach to rural nutrition that enhances financial and physical access to healthy foods, to avoid replacing the rural undernutrition disadvantage in poor countries with a more general malnutrition disadvantage that entails excessive consumption of low-quality calories. © 2019, The Author(s)

Curcumin potentiates the function of human ? 7 -nicotinic acetylcholine receptors expressed in SH-EP1 cells

Effects of curcumin, a biologically active ingredient of turmeric, were tested on the Ca 2+ transients induced by the activation of ? 7 subunit of the human nicotinic acetylcholine (? 7 nACh) receptor expressed in SH-EP1 cells. Curcumin caused a significant potentiation of choline (1 mM)-induced Ca 2+ transients with an EC 50 value of 133 nM. The potentiating effect of curcumin was not observed in Ca 2+ transients induced by high K + (60 mM) containing solutions or activation of ? 4 ? 2 nACh receptors and the extent of curcumin potentiation was not altered in the presence of Ca 2+ channel antagonists nifedipine (1 ?M), verapamil (1 ?M), ?-conotoxin (1 ?M), and bepridil (10 ?M). Noticeably the effect of curcumin was not observed when curcumin and choline were co-applied without curcumin pre-incubation. The effect of curcumin on choline-induced Ca 2+ transients was not reversed by pre-incubation with inhibitors of protein C, A, and CaM kinases. Metabolites of curcumin such as tetrahydrocurcumin, demethylcurcumin, and didemethylcurcumin also caused potentiation of choline-induced Ca 2+ transients. Notably, specific binding of [ 125 I]-bungarotoxin was not altered in the presence of curcumin. Collectively, our results indicate that curcumin allosterically potentiate the function of the ?7-nACh receptor expressed in SH-EP1 cells. - 2018 Elsevier LtdThe research in this study was supported by grants from CMHS, UAE University and Qatar University . The authors gratefully acknowledge Dr. R Lukas (Barrow Neurological Institute, Phoenix, AZ, USA) for SH-EP1 cells stably expressing the human ? 7 nACh and human ? 4 ? 2 nACh receptor and cordially thank to Dr. Suhail Doi for his valuable help in statistical analysis of the data

An Illustration of the Consequences of Meta-Analysis Model Choice

Fixed- and random-effects models represent two different approaches to analyzing and understanding data with meta-analysis. The current article describes the results of a two-part study to illustrate the effect of choice of meta-analytic model on study conclusions. Part 1 illustrates the effect of model choice by analyzing data simulated to conform to either fixed- or random-effects scenarios with both fixed- and random-effects methods of data analysis. Part 2 uses two published meta-analyses to show that methodological choices, in this case mainly the choice of fixed- or random-effects models, affect estimates both of mean effect size and of the random-effects variance component (REVC). Overall, results suggest that random-effects procedures represent the best initial choice when conducting a meta-analysis