Changing behaviour

Individual change in behaviour has the potential to decrease the burden of chronic disease due to smoking, diet and low physical activity. Smoking quit rates can be increased by simple advice from a physician or trained counsellor, overall and in people at high risk of smoking related disease, with low intensity advice as effective as high intensity advice. Advice from a nurse, telephone counselling, individualised self help materials and taking exercise may also be beneficial. Training health professionals increases the frequency of offering antismoking interventions but may not increase their effectiveness. Nicotine replacement therapy, bupropion and nortriptyline may improve short term quit rates as part of smoking cessation strategies. Moclobemide, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, anxiolytics and acupuncture have not been shown to be beneficial. Smoking cessation programmes increase quit rates in pregnant women, but nicotine patches may not be beneficial compared with placebo. Physical activity in sedentary people may be increased by counselling, with input from exercise specialists possibly being more effective than physicians, in women over 80 years and in younger adults. Advice on eating a low cholesterol diet leads to a mean 0.2 to 0.3 mmol/L decrease in blood cholesterol concentration in the long term, but no consistent effect of this on morbidity or mortality has been shown. Intensive interventions to reduce sodium intake lead to small decreases in blood pressure, but may not reduce morbidity or mortality. Advice to lose weight leads to greater weight loss than no advice, and cognitive behavioural therapy may be more effective than dietary advice

Dark septate root endophytic fungi increase growth of Scots pine seedlings under elevated CO2 through enhanced nitrogen use efficiency.

Although increasing concentrations of atmospheric CO2 are predicted to have substantial impacts on plant growth and functioning of ecosystems, there is insufficient understanding of the responses of belowground processes to such increases. We investigated the effects of different dark septate root endophytic (DSE) fungi on growth and nutrient acquisition by Pinus sylvestris seedlings under conditions of N limitation and at ambient and elevated CO2 (350 or 700 µ1 CO2 l-1). Each seedling was inoculated with one of the following species: Phialocephala fortinii (two strains), Cadophora finlandica, Chloridium paucisporum, Scytalidium vaccinii, Meliniomyces variabilis and M. vraolstadiae. The trial lasted 125 days. During the final 27 days, the seedlings were labeled with 14CO2 and 15NH4+. We measured extraradical hyphal length, internal colonization, plant biomass, 14C allocation, and plant N and 15N content. Under elevated CO2, the biomass of seedlings inoculated with DSE fungi was on average 17% higher than in control seedlings. Simultaneously, below-ground respiration doubled or trebled, and as a consequence carbon use efficiency by the DSE fungi significantly decreased. Shoot N concentration decreased on average by 57% under elevated CO2 and was lowest in seedlings inoculated with S. vaccinii. Carbon gain by the seedlings despite reduced shoot N concentration indicates that DSE fungi increase plant nutrient use efficiency and are therefore more beneficial to the plant under elevated CO

The prevention and treatment of childhood obesity.

The effectiveness of interventions used in the prevention and treatment of childhood obesity published in a recent issue of Effective Heath Care is reviewed

Children's eating behaviours: The importance of the family setting

Childhood obesity has become a major public health challenge. Whilst it is accepted that the aetiology of obesity is complex, there is very little that targets the home environment and specifically looks at the family setting and how this influences children's eating behaviours. This research aimed to redress the balance by alerting people to the importance of the family environment as a contributory factor for childhood obesity. Using a grounded theory approach, 'Ordering of eating' highlights the importance of the family setting and demonstrates how micro and macro order influences the development of children's eating behaviours. © Journal compilation © 2008 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)

From Lamarckian fertilizers to fungal castles: recapturing the pre-1985 literature on endophytic and saprotrophic fungi associated with ectomycorrhizal root systems

AbstractThe endophytic, mantle-inhabiting and rhizosphere-inhabiting microorganisms associated with ectomycorrhizal roots have been studied for over 100 years, but a surprising amount of the information obtained prior to the mid-1980's is difficult to access and understand. In large part, this is because research investigating local ecosystems and silvicultural practices was often considered regional in nature. It tended to be written up in many different languages and to be published in journals that were not widely distributed. After 1985, this scientific isolationism was broken up by the ubiquitous trend towards impact factor measurement and international publishing. The goal of the present review is to make still-relevant information from the pre-1985 ectomycorrhizosphere literature, especially its more strongly obscured elements, readily accessible to modern researchers. Also, some publications that fell into relative obscurity for historical reasons – in particular, studies seeming to reflect the brief association of Soviet mycorrhizal research of the early 1950's with the Lamarckian plant improvement ideas of T. D. Lysenko – are re-examined from current perspectives. The scattered data reveal considerable coherence despite the high ecological diversity they reflect. Endophytes such as members of the Mycelium radicis atrovirens complex – most prominently the species now known as Phialocephala fortinii – feature especially prominently in this area of study, and they received considerable attention beginning in the very early years of the 20th century. They were variously interpreted as potential symbionts or weak pathogens, an ambiguity that continues to the present day for many of these taxa despite the recent molecular clarification of species and population boundaries. The predominance of P. fortinii and other (normally) non-mycorrhizal “dark (or hyaline) sterile endophyte” fungi from stringently washed or surface-disinfected ectomycorrhizae in most ecosystems was shown repeatedly beginning with the studies of Elias Melin in the early 1920's. The adjacent rhizosphere soil typically contained sporulating fungi dominated by Penicillium, Umbelopsis and Mortierella species, sometimes accompanied by Trichoderma spp., Cylindrocarpon destructans, and various other microfungi. Microbiological investigations into whether ectomycorrhizae exerted a positive “rhizosphere effect” on numbers of fungal propagules in the surrounding soil showed that such effects were often less prominent in natural forests than in planted forests. Several studies showed a general reduction in microbial activity in the zone of ectomycorrhizal influence, and a particularly strong inhibition of soil organisms was shown in the symbiorhizosphere of Tricholoma matsutake and members of the genus Tuber. In relation to such cases, the adoption by mycologists of M. Ogawa's term “shiro”, (castle, fortress) for the delimited, three-dimensional analogue of a fairy ring formed in soil by many ectomycorrhizal mycobionts is advocated. As relatively highly co-adapted communities, ectomycorrhizosphere organisms appeared to aid in root disease control, in part by harmlessly stimulating roots to produce defensive tannic materials. The production of these materials then appeared to favour the predominance of tannin-degrading Penicillium species in the rhizosphere. Rhizosphere inhabitants were shown to be involved in many types of nutrient and growth factor exchanges, but perhaps to be most important as solubilizers of refractory nutrients like inorganic phosphorus compounds and complex proteinaceous materials. Some potential pathogens like Fusarium spp. tended to be excluded from established forest soils, while Cylindrocarpon destructans, if present, tended to be confined to lower soil regions by microbial acidification of the upper soil zones. The complexity of microfungal communities and their known and potential interactions was high, and seemingly contradictory results often needed to be rationalized, e.g., Trichoderma spp. appeared to be favoured in the root zone in some ecosystems and partially excluded in others, and seemed to abet mycorrhiza formation and tree growth in some habitats but to cause damage to seedlings and mycorrhizal inoculum both in vitro and in the nursery. Modern techniques and bioinformatics methodologies will be needed to make progress towards understanding this complexity, but the multilingual and sometimes overlooked pre-1985 studies provide a very strong initial basis supporting further development

Could parental rules play a role in the association between short sleep and obesity in young children?

Short sleep duration is associated with obesity in young children. This study develops the hypothesis that parental rules play a role in this association. Participants were 3-year-old children and their parents, recruited at nursery schools in socioeconomically deprived and non-deprived areas of a North-East England town. Parents were interviewed to assess their use of sleep, television-viewing and dietary rules, and given diaries to document their child's sleep for 4 days/5 nights. Children were measured for height, weight, waist circumference and triceps and subscapular skinfold thicknesses. One-hundred and eight families participated (84 with complete sleep data and 96 with complete body composition data). Parental rules were significantly associated together, were associated with longer night-time sleep and were more prevalent in the non-deprived-area compared with the deprived-area group. Television-viewing and dietary rules were associated with leaner body composition. Parental rules may in part confound the association between night-time sleep duration and obesity in young children, as rules cluster together across behavioural domains and are associated with both sleep duration and body composition. This hypothesis should be tested rigorously in large representative samples

The contact drag of towed demersal fishing gear components

This study was funded in part by Fisheries Innovation Scotland, project FIS02, and by the FP7 project BENTHIS (312088). It does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission and does not anticipate the Commission's future policy in this area.Peer reviewedPostprin

Tackling inequalities in obesity: a protocol for a systematic review of the effectiveness of public health interventions at reducing socioeconomic inequalities in obesity among adults

Background: Socioeconomic inequalities in obesity and associated risk factors for obesity are widening throughout developed countries worldwide. Tackling obesity is high on the public health agenda both in the United Kingdom and internationally. However, what works in terms of interventions that are able to reduce inequalities in obesity is lacking. Methods/Design: The review will examine public health interventions at the individual, community and societal level that might reduce inequalities in obesity among adults aged 18 years and over, in any setting and in any country. The following electronic databases will be searched: MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Social Science Citation Index, ASSIA, IBSS, Sociological Abstracts, and the NHS Economic Evaluation Database. Database searches will be supplemented with website and gray literature searches. No studies will be excluded based on language, country or publication date. Randomized and non-randomized controlled trials, prospective and retrospective cohort studies (with/without control groups) and prospective repeat cross-sectional studies (with/without control groups) that have a primary outcome that is a proxy for body fatness and have examined differential effects with regard to socioeconomic status (education, income, occupation, social class, deprivation, poverty) or where the intervention has been targeted specifically at disadvantaged groups or deprived areas will be included. Study inclusion, data extraction and quality appraisal will be conducted by two reviewers. Meta-analysis and narrative synthesis will be conducted. The main analysis will examine the effects of 1) individual, 2) community and 3) societal level public health interventions on socioeconomic inequalities in adult obesity. Interventions will be characterized by their level of action and their approach to tackling inequalities. Contextual information on how such public health interventions are organized, implemented and delivered will also be examined. Discussion: The review will provide evidence, and reveal any gaps in the evidence base, of public health strategies which reduce and prevent inequalities in the prevalence of obesity in adults and provide information on the organization, implementation and delivery of such interventions. Systematic review registration: PROSPERO registration number: CRD4201300361