125 research outputs found
Fact or fiction:does a relationship exist between free sugars, dental caries and body weight?
Adiposity has differing associations with incident coronary heart disease and mortality in the Scottish population: cross-sectional surveys with follow-up
Objective:
Investigation of the association of excess adiposity with three different outcomes: all-cause mortality, coronary heart disease (CHD) mortality and incident CHD.
Design:
Cross-sectional surveys linked to hospital admissions and death records.
Subjects:
19â329 adults (aged 18â86 years) from a representative sample of the Scottish population.
Measurements:
Gender-stratified Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) for all-cause mortality, CHD mortality and incident CHD. Separate models incorporating the anthropometric measurements body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC) or waistâhip ratio (WHR) were created adjusted for age, year of survey, smoking status and alcohol consumption.
Results:
For both genders, BMI-defined obesity (greater than or equal to30âkgâmâ2) was not associated with either an increased risk of all-cause mortality or CHD mortality. However, there was an increased risk of incident CHD among the obese men (hazard ratio (HR)=1.78; 95% confidence interval=1.37â2.31) and obese women (HR=1.93; 95% confidence interval=1.44â2.59). There was a similar pattern for WC with regard to the three outcomes; for incident CHD, the HR=1.70 (1.35â2.14) for men and 1.71 (1.28â2.29) for women in the highest WC category (men greater than or equal to102âcm, women greater than or equal to88âcm), synonymous with abdominal obesity. For men, the highest category of WHR (greater than or equal to1.0) was associated with an increased risk of all-cause mortality (1.29; 1.04â1.60) and incident CHD (1.55; 1.19â2.01). Among women with a high WHR (greater than or equal to0.85) there was an increased risk of all outcomes: all-cause mortality (1.56; 1.26â1.94), CHD mortality (2.49; 1.36â4.56) and incident CHD (1.76; 1.31â2.38).
Conclusions:
In this study excess adiposity was associated with an increased risk of incident CHD but not necessarily death. One possibility is that modern medical intervention has contributed to improved survival of first CHD events. The future health burden of increased obesity levels may manifest as an increase in the prevalence of individuals living with CHD and its consequences
A decision aid regarding long-term tube feeding targeting substitute decision makers for cognitively impaired older persons in Japan: A small-scale before-and-after study
Clinical Ethics Consultation: Examining how American and Japanese experts analyze an Alzheimer's case
Emotion-based learning: Insights from the Iowa Gambling Task.
Interest in the cognitive and/or emotional basis of complex decision-making, and the related phenomenon of emotion-based learning, has been heavily influenced by the Iowa Gambling Task. A number of psychological variables have been investigated as potentially important in understanding emotion-based learning. This paper reviews the extent to which humans are explicitly aware of how we make such decisions; the biasing influence of pre-existing emotional labels; and the extent to which emotion-based systems are anatomically and functionally independent of episodic memory. Review of literature suggests that (i) an aspect of conscious awareness does appear to be readily achieved during the IGT, but as a relatively unfocused emotion-based âgut-feeling,â akin to intuition; (ii) Several studies have manipulated the affective pre-loading of IGT tasks, and make it clear that such labeling has a substantial influence on performance, an experimental manipulation similar to the phenomenon of prejudice. (iii) Finally, it appears that complex emotion-based learning can remain intact despite profound amnesia, at least in some neurological patients, a finding with a range of potentially important clinical implications: in the management of dementia; in explaining infantile amnesia; and in understanding of the possible mechanisms of psychotherapy
Emergency department visits and hospitalizations by tube-fed nursing home residents with varying degrees of cognitive impairment: a national study
Evidence of causal effect of major depression on alcohol dependence: findings from the psychiatric genomics consortium
BACKGROUND
Despite established clinical associations among major depression (MD), alcohol dependence (AD), and alcohol consumption (AC), the nature of the causal relationship between them is not completely understood. We leveraged genome-wide data from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) and UK Biobank to test for the presence of shared genetic mechanisms and causal relationships among MD, AD, and AC.
METHODS
Linkage disequilibrium score regression and Mendelian randomization (MR) were performed using genome-wide data from the PGC (MD: 135 458 cases and 344 901 controls; AD: 10 206 cases and 28 480 controls) and UK Biobank (AC-frequency: 438 308 individuals; AC-quantity: 307 098 individuals).
RESULTS
Positive genetic correlation was observed between MD and AD (rgMDâAD = + 0.47, P = 6.6 Ă 10â10). AC-quantity showed positive genetic correlation with both AD (rgADâAC quantity = + 0.75, P = 1.8 Ă 10â14) and MD (rgMDâAC quantity = + 0.14, P = 2.9 Ă 10â7), while there was negative correlation of AC-frequency with MD (rgMDâAC frequency = â0.17, P = 1.5 Ă 10â10) and a non-significant result with AD. MR analyses confirmed the presence of pleiotropy among these four traits. However, the MD-AD results reflect a mediated-pleiotropy mechanism (i.e. causal relationship) with an effect of MD on AD (beta = 0.28, P = 1.29 Ă 10â6). There was no evidence for reverse causation.
CONCLUSION
This study supports a causal role for genetic liability of MD on AD based on genetic datasets including thousands of individuals. Understanding mechanisms underlying MD-AD comorbidity addresses important public health concerns and has the potential to facilitate prevention and intervention efforts
Periodontitis induced by bacterial infection exacerbates features of Alzheimer\u27s disease in transgenic mice.
Periodontitis is a localized infectious disease caused by periodontopathic bacteria,such as Porphyromonas gingivalis. Recently, it has been suggested that bacterial infections may contribute to the onset and the progression of Alzheimerâs disease (AD). However, we do not have any evidence about a causative relationship between periodontitis and AD. In this study, we investigated by using a transgenic mouse model of AD whether periodontitis evoked by P. gingivalis modulates the pathological features of AD. Cognitive function was significantly impaired in periodontitis-induced APP-Tg mice, compared to that in control APP-Tg mice. Levels of Amiloid β (Aβ) deposition, Aβ40, and Aβ42 in both the hippocampus and cortex were higher in inoculated APP-Tg mice than in control APP-Tg mice. Furthermore, levels of IL-1β and TNF-Îą in the brain were higher in inoculated mice than in control mice. The levels of LPS were increased in the serum and brain of P. gingivalis-inoculated mice. P. gingivalis LPS-induced production of Aβ40 and Aβ42 in neural cell cultures and strongly enhanced TNF-Îą and IL-1β production in a culture of microglial cells primed with Aβ. Periodontitis evoked by P. gingivalismay exacerbate brain Aβ deposition, leading to enhanced cognitive impairments, by a mechanism that involves triggering brain inflammation
Urothelial cells may indicate underlying bacteriuria in pregnancy at term: a comparative study
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