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Mother’s ultra-processed food intake linked to obesity risk in children; Unlikely during peripregnancy

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A mother’s consumption of ultra-processed foods appears to be linked to an increased risk of overweight or obesity in her offspring, irrespective of other lifestyle risk factors, suggests a US study.

Researchers suggest that mothers might benefit from limiting their intake of ultra-processed foods, and that dietary guidelines should be refined and financial and social barriers removed to improve nutrition for women of child bearing age and reduce childhood obesity.

According to the World Health Organization, 39 million children were overweight or obese in 2020, leading to increased risks of heart disease, diabetes, cancers, and early death.

Ultra-processed foods, such as packaged baked goods and snacks, fizzy drinks and sugary cereals, are commonly found in modern Western style diets and are associated with weight gain in adults. But it’s unclear whether there’s a link between a mother’s consumption of ultra-processed foods and her offspring’s body weight.

To explore this further, the researchers drew on data for 19,958 children born to 14,553 mothers (45% boys, aged 7-17 years at study enrollment) from the Nurses’ Health Study II (NHS II) and the Growing Up Today Study (GUTS I and II) in the United States.

pregnant lady

pregnant lady/Commons.wikimedia.org

The NHS II is an ongoing study tracking the health and lifestyles of 116,429 US female registered nurses aged 25-42 in 1989. From 1991, participants reported what they ate and drank, using validated food frequency questionnaires every four years.

The GUTS I study began in 1996 when 16,882 children (aged 8-15 years) of NHS II participants completed an initial health and lifestyle questionnaire and were monitored every year between 1997 and 2001, and every two years thereafter.

In 2004, 10,918 children (aged 7-17 years) of NHS II participants joined the extended GUTS II study and were followed up in 2006, 2008, and 2011, and every two years thereafter.

A range of other potentially influential factors, known to be strongly correlated with childhood obesity, were also taken into account. These included mother’s weight (BMI), physical activity, smoking, living status (with partner or not), and partner’s education, as well as children’s ultra-processed food consumption, physical activity, and sedentary time.

Overall, 2471 (12%) children developed overweight or obesity during an average follow-up period of 4 years.

The results show that a mother’s ultra-processed food consumption was associated with an increased risk of overweight or obesity in her offspring. For example, a 26% higher risk was seen in the group with the highest maternal ultra-processed food consumption (12.1 servings/day) versus the lowest consumption group (3.4 servings/day).

In a separate analysis of 2790 mothers and 2925 children with information on diet from 3 months pre-conception to delivery (peripregnancy), the researchers found that peripregnancy ultra-processed food intake was not significantly associated with an increased risk of offspring overweight or obesity.

This is an observational study, so can’t establish cause and the researchers acknowledge that some of the observed risk may be due to other unmeasured factors, and that self-reported diet and weight measures might be subject to misreporting.

Other important limitations include the fact that some offspring participants were lost to follow-up, which resulted in a few of the analyses being underpowered, particularly those related to peripregnancy intake, and that mothers were predominantly white and from similar social and economic backgrounds, so the results may not apply to other groups.

Nevertheless, the study used data from several large ongoing studies with detailed dietary assessments over a relatively long period, and further analysis produced consistent associations, suggesting that the results are robust.

The researchers suggest no clear mechanism underlying these associations and say the area warrants further investigation.

Nevertheless, these data “support the importance of refining dietary recommendations and the development of programs to improve nutrition for women of reproductive age to promote offspring health,” they conclude.

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Fish oil, vitamin D supplements during pregnancy lower risk of croup in babies

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Babies and children under three years old are less likely to develop croup if their mothers took fish oil and vitamin D supplements during pregnancy, according to new results from a clinical trial.

Croup is a viral chest infection that affects young children. It causes a characteristic ‘barking’ cough, a hoarse voice and difficulty breathing. Croup is common and usually mild, but some children will need hospital treatment and breathing support.

The study was presented by Dr Nicklas Brustad, a clinician and postdoctoral researcher working on the Copenhagen Prospective Studies on Asthma in Childhood (COPSAC) at Copenhagen University Hospital, Denmark.

He told the Congress: “There is currently no vaccine against the pathogen that causes this disease. Therefore, other preventive strategies are needed, and measures initiated during pregnancy might be important since croup occurs in babies and young children. For such purpose, there is evidence that both vitamin D and fish oil could have an influence on the immune system.”

croup-chest infection/photo:en.wikipedia.org

The study included 736 pregnant women being cared for by COPSAC from 2010. The women were divided up into four groups. One group were given a high-dose vitamin D supplement (2800 international units per day) and fish oil containing long-chain n-3-polyunsaturated fatty acids (2.4 grams), the second group were given high-dose vitamin D and olive oil, the third group were given standard-dose vitamin D (400 international units per day) and fish oil, and the final group were given standard-dose vitamin D and olive oil. All the women took the supplements daily from their 24th week of pregnancy until one week after their babies were born. Neither the women nor the researchers knew which supplements they were taking until the end of the study.

Researchers monitored the children until they were three years old and any who were suspected of suffering from croup were diagnosed by a doctor or via their medical records. There was a total of 97 cases of croup amongst the children.

Vitamins-Fish oil supplements/photo:en.wikipedia.org

Overall, children whose mothers took the fish oil had an 11% risk of croup, compared to 17% in the children whose mothers took olive oil (a 38% decrease). Children whose mothers took high-dose vitamin D had an 11% risk of croup, compared to an 18% risk in those whose mothers took the standard-dose vitamin D (a 40% decrease).

Dr Brustad said: “Our findings suggest that vitamin D and fish oil could be beneficial against childhood croup in sufficiently high doses. These are relatively cheap supplements meaning that this could be a very cost-effective approach to improving young children’s health.

Vitamin D and fish oil can stimulate the immune system to help babies and young children clear infections more effectively.”

The research team working at COPSAC have already investigated other potential benefits of vitamin D and fish oil during pregnancy, including its effects on bone development, the central nervous system, body composition and asthma. They will continue to follow the children in the study and plan to investigate why some children are more prone to infections in childhood than others.

Professor Rory Morty from the University of Heidelberg is chair of European Respiratory Society’s lung and airway developmental biology group and was not involved in the research. He said: “We know that lung health in babies and young children can be influenced during pregnancy. For example, babies whose mothers smoke tend to have worse lung health. We are increasingly seeing that elements of a mother’s diet can also help or hinder a baby’s lung development.

“This research suggests that taking vitamin D and fish oil supplements during pregnancy could have benefits for babies and young children. We would like to see further research in this area to support these findings as this could lead to new recommendations for supplementation during pregnancy. Pregnant women should always speak to their doctor before taking supplements.”

 

 

Mobile phone app accurately detects COVID-19 infection in people’s voices

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Artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to detect COVID-19 infection in people’s voices by means of a mobile phone app, according to research to be presented on Monday at the European Respiratory Society International Congress in Barcelona, Spain [1].

The AI model used in this research is more accurate than lateral flow/rapid antigen tests and is cheap, quick and easy to use, which means it can be used in low-income countries where PCR tests are expensive and/or difficult to distribute.

Ms Wafaa Aljbawi, a researcher at the Institute of Data Science, Maastricht University, The Netherlands, told the congress that the AI model was accurate 89% of the time, whereas the accuracy of lateral flow tests varied widely depending on the brand. Also, lateral flow tests were considerably less accurate at detecting COVID infection in people who showed no symptoms.

COVID-19 infection usually affects the upper respiratory track and vocal cords, leading to changes in a person’s voice.

Covid/commons.wikimedia.org

“These promising results suggest that simple voice recordings and fine-tuned AI algorithms can potentially achieve high precision in determining which patients have COVID-19 infection,” she said.Moreover, they enable remote, virtual testing and have a turnaround time of less than a minute. They could be used, for example, at the entry points for large gatherings, enabling rapid screening of the population.”

The app is installed on the user’s mobile phone, the participants report some basic information about demographics, medical history and smoking status, and then are asked to record some respiratory sounds. These include coughing three times, breathing deeply through their mouth three to five times, and reading a short sentence on the screen three times.

The researchers used a voice analysis technique called Mel-spectrogram analysis, which identifies different voice features such as loudness, power and variation over time.

“In this way we can decompose the many properties of the participants’ voices,” said Ms Aljbawi. “In order to distinguish the voice of COVID-19 patients from those who did not have the disease, we built different artificial intelligence models and evaluated which one worked best at classifying the COVID-19 cases.”

Its overall accuracy was 89%, its ability to correctly detect positive cases (the true positive rate or “sensitivity”) was 89%, and its ability to correctly identify negative cases (the true negative rate or “specificity”) was 83%.

“These results show a significant improvement in the accuracy of diagnosing COVID-19 compared to state-of-the-art tests such as the lateral flow test,” said Ms Aljbawi.

The patients were “high engagers”, who had been using the app weekly over months or even years to record their symptoms and other health information, record medication, set reminders, and have access to up-to-date health and lifestyle information. Doctors can assess the data via a clinician dashboard, enabling them to provide oversight, co-management and remote monitoring.

Early COVID-19 pandemic induced cancer survivors to reduce smoking: Study

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Recent study shows that during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the proportion of working-aged UAmerican adults without health insurance did not change despite increases in unemployment, and the prevalence of unhealthy behaviors decreased.

The findings, published by Wiley online in CANCER, studied individuals with and without a history of cancer. While cancer survivors often have high health care needs, they are more vulnerable to the effects of economic and health care disruptions, as happened during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

File Photo of Johns Hopkins Covid-19 map

Xuesong Han of the American Cancer Society, and her colleagues used data from the nationwide, population-based Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System—an annual household telephone survey—to examine changes in multiple health-related measures in 2020 among cancer survivors.

Among adults aged 18–64 years, the uninsured rate did not change significantly in 2020 despite huge job cuts. The prevalence of unhealthy behaviors, including sleeplessness and smoking decreased in 2020, and health improved, regardless of cancer history, showed the analysis.

Declines in smoking were greater among cancer survivors than among adults without a cancer history, it noted. “Our findings suggest that the pandemic may have motivated people to adopt certain healthier behaviors, and national and regional policy responses to the pandemic regarding insurance coverage, unemployment benefits, and financial assistance may have contributed to the observed positive changes,” said Han.

Periodontal disease is associated with higher risk of several cancer types

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Periodontal disease was associated with increased risk of several types of cancer in postmenopausal women, even in women who had never smoked.

Journal in Which the Study was Published: Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Author: Jean Wactawski-Wende, PhD, a professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Environmental Health and dean of the School of Public Health and Health Professions, State University of New York at Buffalo, was senior author. Ngozi Nwizu, BDS, MMSc, PhD, assistant professor of oral and maxillofacial pathology at The University of Texas School of Dentistry, was lead author.

Background: In recent years, research has shown that periodontal disease is a risk factor for certain cancers, including breast cancer, oral, and esophageal cancers. However, few studies have analyzed the overall risk for all types of cancers.

How the Study Was Conducted and Results: The researchers conducted a prospective cohort study of 65,869 women aged 54 to 86 who were enrolled in the Women’s Health Initiative Observational Study. The women self-reported periodontal disease on questionnaires administered between 1999 and 2003. The researchers monitored cancer outcomes through September 2013. Over an average follow-up time of 8.32 years, the researchers identified 7,149 cases of cancer.

The study showed that a history of periodontal disease was associated with a 14 percent higher risk of developing any cancer. The strongest association was for cancer of the esophagus, which was more than three times more likely in women with periodontal disease than women who did not report periodontal disease. Lung cancer, gallbladder cancer, melanoma, and breast cancer were also associated with significantly higher risk.

The researchers noted that certain cancers, such as breast cancer, lung cancer, and gallbladder cancer, were associated with higher risk in women who smoked and had periodontal disease. Others, such as melanoma, were associated with higher risk in the women who had never smoked but did report periodontal disease.

Author Comment: Wactawski-Wende said the biological mechanisms that connect periodontal disease and cancer are not yet fully understood. She said one possible explanation is that oral pathogens could potentially be carried in saliva and dental plaque, or through diseased periodontal tissues into the blood circulation to reach other body sites and contribute to carcinogenesis; this may possibly explain the strong association in esophageal cancer.

“The esophagus is in close proximity to the oral cavity, and so periodontal pathogens may more easily gain access to and infect the esophageal mucosa and promote cancer risk at that site,” Wactawski-Wende said.

“Our study findings serve to provide further evidence that periodontal disease is linked to cancer, and support the need for further investigation into how periodontal disease contributes to increased cancer risk,” said Nwizu.

The authors said the study’s large size adds to the strength of the findings.

“This study is the first national study focused on women, particularly older women,” Wactawski-Wende said. “Our study was sufficiently large and detailed enough to examine not just overall risk of cancer among older women with periodontal disease, but also to provide useful information on a number of cancer-specific sites.”

Limitations: The authors said that because the study used self-reported data, the prevalence of periodontal disease may have been under-reported. They said further research that uses more precise assessments of periodontal disease could be useful in confirming the link between periodontal disease and cancer, they added.