Abdominal obesity in adolescents: Development of age-specific waist circumference cut-offs linked to adult IDF criteria

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to develop age- and sex-specific waist cir-cumference (WC) cut-off points, linked to older adolescent and adult criteria forabdominal obesity, to be applied to children in the clinical setting.Methods: A total of 16,788 adolescents aged 10 to 16 years were assessed for WC.Smoothed age and sex-specific WC curves were obtained using Cole’s LMS method.Results: Percentiles that corresponded to the International Diabetes Federation (IDF)recommendations used for older adolescents and adults (161 years old) were the97thpercentile for boys and the 87thpercentile for girls. Using these cutoffs, a total of368 boys and 1138 girls were categorized as abdominally obese, in contrast to 1654boys and 987 girls that were identified using the current IDF pediatric criteria (90thpercentile).Conclusions: We provide age- and sex-specific cut-off points that can be used toidentify abdominal obesity in adolescents. The present findings provide a tool thatcan be used in the clinical setting for the early detection and prevention of adult obe-sity. Population-specific cutoffs may be required for pediatric ages to diagnosechildren at risk

Para repensar o ensino de genética : levantamento e análise da produção acadêmica da área do ensino de ciências e Biologia no Brasil

Buscou-se analisar a produção científica envolvendo a temática Ensino de Genética e Afins, provindas dos três principais eventos acadêmicos da Área de Ensino de Biologia e Ciências (EPEB, ENPEC, EREBIO/ENEBIO), entre 2001 e 2007. Foram identificados 152 trabalhos, em 13 anais, os quais foram categorizados em duas modalidades (Pesquisa acadêmica e Proposição de atividades-práticas), e em diversos focos e estratégias. Realizou-se, adicionalmente, um levantamento de dissertação e teses sobre a temática (52 títulos), a partir de bancos digitalizados presentes na Internet e sítios de Programas de Pós-Graduação em Ensino de Ciências e em Educação. Sob a luz deste trabalho, apontam-se considerações finais sobre os desafios presentes na renovação da genética escolar, ao se reconhecer a necessidade de superação do ensino fragmentado, desatualizado e descontextualizado

Results from Portugal’s 2018 Report Card on Physical Activity for Children and Youth

Available evidence indicates that there are still a large proportion of Portuguese children and adolescents that are not sufficiently active and that exceed the recommended levels of screen-time. In Portugal, virtually all students, enrolled in formal education, attain regular Physical Education classes, which is of significance

What Has Changed During the COVID-19 Pandemic? - The Effect on an Academic Breast Department in Portugal

Introduction: One year ago, Portugal entered its first lockdown because of the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The impact of this on delays in cancer diagnosis and treatment is a major concern, which may negatively affect the outcomes of these patients. Materials and methods: This retrospective, single-center analysis compared the clinical and pathological characteristics of breast cancer (BC) patients referred to a medical oncology first appointment between March 2020 and 2021, with the same period in the previous year. Results: Strikingly, there was a 40% reduction in the number of BC patients during lockdown. However, there was a statistically significant increase in the proportion of metastatic BC patients admitted for the first time for systemic therapy (13.6% vs. 28.9%, p = 0.003). Additionally, a statistically significant increase in the number of patients with bilateral early BC at diagnosis after March 2020 was found (7.2% vs. 1.9%, p = 0.043). Conclusion: These findings support international recommendations for an accelerated restoration of BC screening, to reduce incidence of advanced breast cancer at diagnosis and mitigate the expected impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on patients with cancer. Further work is needed to examine in detail the impact of measures to manage the COVID-19 pandemic on breast cancer outcomes.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Application of hyaluronic acid in non-surgical treatment of periodontitis

Poster apresentado no 2º Congresso Internacional do CiiEM: Translational Research and Innovation in Human in health Sciences. 11-13 Junho 2017, Campus Egas Moniz, Caparica, PortugalN/

Domestic violence and mental health: a cross-sectional survey of women seeking help from domestic violence support services

Background : Domestic violence and abuse (DVA) are associated with an increased risk of mental illness, but we know little about the mental health of female DVA survivors seeking support from domestic violence services. Objective : To characterize the demography and mental health of women who access specialist DVA services in the United Kingdom and to investigate associations between severity of abuse and measures of mental health and health state utility, accounting for important confounders and moderators. Design : Baseline data on 260 women enrolled in a randomized controlled trial of a psychological intervention for DVA survivors was analyzed. We report prevalence of and associations between mental health status and severity of abuse at the time of recruitment. We used logistic and normal regression models for binary and continuous outcomes, respectively. Mental health measures used were: Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation–Outcome Measure (CORE-OM), Patient Health Questionnaire, Generalized Anxiety Disorder Assessment, and the Posttraumatic Diagnostic Scale (PDS) to measure posttraumatic stress disorder. The Composite Abuse Scale (CAS) measured abuse. Results : Exposure to DVA was high, with a mean CAS score of 56 (SD 34). The mean CORE-OM score was 18 (SD 8) with 76% above the clinical threshold (95% confidence interval: 70–81%). Depression and anxiety levels were high, with means close to clinical thresholds, and all respondents recorded PTSD scores above the clinical threshold. Symptoms of mental illness increased stepwise with increasing severity of DVA. Conclusions : Women DVA survivors who seek support from DVA services have recently experienced high levels of abuse, depression, anxiety, and especially PTSD. Clinicians need to be aware that patients presenting with mental health conditions or symptoms of depression or anxiety may be experiencing or may have experienced DVA. The high psychological morbidity in this population means that trauma-informed psychological support is needed for survivors who seek support from DVA services. Keywords : domestic violence and abuse; intimate partner violence; mental health; posttraumatic stress disorder; anxiety; CORE-OM; depression; women; advocacy (Published: 15 October 2014) Citation : Glob Health Action 2014,  7 : 25519 -  http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/gha.v7.25519 SPECIAL ISSUE : This paper is part of the Special Issue:  Intimate Partner Violence and Mental Health . More papers from this issue can be found at  http://www.globalhealthaction.net SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL : To access the supplementary material for this article, please see  Supplementary files  under Article Tool

L2F/INESC-ID at SemEval-2019 Task 2: unsupervised lexical semantic frame induction using contextualized word representations

Building large datasets annotated with semantic information, such as FrameNet, is an expensive process. Consequently, such resources are unavailable for many languages and specific domains. This problem can be alleviated by using unsupervised approaches to induce the frames evoked by a collection of documents. That is the objective of the second task of SemEval 2019, which comprises three subtasks: clustering of verbs that evoke the same frame and clustering of arguments into both frame-specific slots and semantic roles. We approach all the subtasks by applying a graph clustering algorithm on contextualized embedding representations of the verbs and arguments. Using such representations is appropriate in the context of this task, since they provide cues for word-sense disambiguation. Thus, they can be used to identify different frames evoked by the same words. Using this approach we were able to outperform all of the baselines reported for the task on the test set in terms of Purity F1, as well as in terms of BCubed F1 in most cases.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A framework to model global, regional, and national estimates of intimate partner violence

BACKGROUND: Accurate and reliable estimates of violence against women form the backbone of global and regional monitoring efforts to eliminate this human right violation and public health problem. Estimating the prevalence of intimate partner violence (IPV) is challenging due to variations in case definition and recall period, surveyed populations, partner definition, level of age disaggregation, and survey representativeness, among others. In this paper, we aim to develop a sound and flexible statistical modeling framework for global, regional, and national IPV statistics. METHODS: We modeled IPV within a Bayesian multilevel modeling framework, accounting for heterogeneity of age groups using age-standardization, and age patterns and time trends using splines functions. Survey comparability is achieved using adjustment factors which are estimated using exact matching and their uncertainty accounted for. Both in-sample and out-of-sample comparisons are used for model validation, including posterior predictive checks. Post-processing of models’ outputs is performed to aggregate estimates at different geographic levels and age groups. RESULTS: A total of 307 unique studies conducted between 2000–2018, from 154 countries/areas, and totaling nearly 1.8 million unique women responses informed lifetime IPV. Past year IPV had a similar number of studies (n = 332), countries/areas represented (n = 159), and individual responses (n = 1.8 million). Roughly half of IPV observations required some adjustments. Posterior predictive checks suggest good model fit to data and out-of-sample comparisons provided reassuring results with small median prediction errors and appropriate coverage of predictions’ intervals. CONCLUSIONS: The proposed modeling framework can pool both national and sub-national surveys, account for heterogeneous age groups and age trends, accommodate different surveyed populations, adjust for differences in survey instruments, and efficiently propagate uncertainty to model outputs. Describing this model to reproducible levels of detail enables the accurate interpretation and responsible use of estimates to inform effective violence against women prevention policy and programs, and global monitoring of elimination efforts as part of the Sustainable Development Goals. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12874-022-01634-5

Validity of air-displacement plethysmography in the assessment of body composition changes in a 16-month weight loss program

OBJECTIVE: To compare the accuracy of air displacement plethysmography (ADP) and dual energy x-ray absorptionmetry (DXA) in tracking changes in body composition after a 16 month weight loss intervention in overweight and obese females. METHODS: 93 healthy female subjects (38.9 ± 5.7 yr, 159.8 ± 5.6 cm, 76.7 ± 9.9 kg, 30.0 ± 3.4 kg/m(2)) completed a 16 month weight loss intervention. Eligible subjects attended 15 treatment sessions occurring over the course of 4 months with educational content including topics relating to physical activity and exercise, diet and eating behavior, and behavior modification. In the remaining 12 months, subjects underwent a lifestyle program designed to increase physical activity and improve eating habits. Before and after the intervention, subjects had their percent body fat (%fat), fat mass (FM), and fat-free mass (FFM)) assessed by DXA and ADP. RESULTS: Significant differences (p ≤ 0.001) were found between DXA and ADP at baseline %fat (46.0 % fat vs. 42.0 % fat), FM (35.3 kg vs. 32.5 kg) and FFM (40.8 kg vs. 44.2 kg) as well as at post intervention for %fat (42.1% fat vs. 38.3 % fat), FM (30.9 kg vs. 28.4 kg) and FFM (41.7 kg vs. 44.7 kg). At each time point, ADP %fat and total FM was significantly lower (p ≤ 0.001) than DXA while FFM was significantly higher (p ≤ 0.001). However, both techniques tracked %fat changes similarly considering that there were no differences between the two means. Furthermore, a Bland-Altman analysis was performed and no significant bias was observed, thus demonstrating the ability of ADP to measure body fat across a wide range of fatness. CONCLUSION: At baseline and post weight loss, a significant difference was found between ADP and DXA. However, the results indicate both methods are highly related and track changes in %fat similarly after a weight loss program in overweight and obese females. Additionally, the mean changes in %fat were similar between the two techniques, suggesting that ADP can be translated to its use in clinical practice and research studies as DXA currently is used