Search results for " EPIDEMIOLOGY"
showing 10 items of 704 documents
Adherence to the Mediterranean diet is associated with better quality of life: data from the Osteoarthritis Initiative
2016
BACKGROUND The Mediterranean diet has positively influenced various medical conditions, but only a paucity of studies has considered the relation between the Mediterranean diet and quality of life (QOL) among people living in North America. OBJECTIVE We investigated whether a higher adherence to the Mediterranean diet (aMED) was associated with better QOL and decreased pain, stiffness, disability, and depression in a large cohort of North Americans from the Osteoarthritis Initiative. DESIGN aMED was evaluated through a validated Mediterranean diet score categorized into quintiles. Outcomes of interest were QOL [assessed with the 12-Item Short-Form Health Outcome Survey (SF-12)]; disability,…
Microevolution of bank voles (Myodes glareolus) at neutral and immune-related genes during multiannual dynamic cycles: consequences for Puumala hanta…
2017
ABSTRACTUnderstanding how host dynamics, including variations of population size and dispersal, may affect the epidemiology of infectious diseases through ecological and evolutionary processes is an active research area. Here we focus on a bank vole (Myodes glareolus) metapopulation surveyed in Finland between 2005 and 2009. Bank vole is the reservoir of Puumala hantavirus (PUUV), the agent of nephropathia epidemica (NE, a mild form of hemorrhagic fever with renal symptom) in humans.M glareoluspopulations experience multiannual density fluctuations that may influence the level of genetic diversity maintained in bank voles, PUUV prevalence and NE occurrence. We examine bank vole metapopulati…
The burden and epidemiology of community-acquired central nervous system infections: a multinational study
2017
Ghaydaa, Shehata/0000-0002-3631-893X; Radic, Ljiljana Betica/0000-0002-8778-106X; Silva-Pinto, Andre/0000-0002-2077-3356; Cascio, Antonio/0000-0002-1992-1796; Bossi, Paolo/0000-0003-0135-0224; Stebel, Roman/0000-0001-6922-4465; Namani, Sadie/0000-0002-2411-8623; Chan, Phillip/0000-0002-4071-4409; Hargreaves, Sally/0000-0003-2974-4348; Artuk, Cumhur/0000-0003-0827-990X; Harxhi, Arjan/0000-0001-8518-7377; Larsen, Lykke/0000-0002-4113-4182; Uysal, Serhat/0000-0002-4294-5999 WOS: 000407582200010 PubMed: 28397100 Risk assessment of central nervous system (CNS) infection patients is of key importance in predicting likely pathogens. However, data are lacking on the epidemiology globally. We perfor…
Trends in Food Habits and Their Relation to Socioeconomic Status among Nordic Adolescents 2001/2002-2009/2010
2016
BACKGROUND: In the Nordic countries, substantial policy and intervention efforts have been made to increase adolescents' consumption of fruit and vegetables and to reduce their intake of sweets and soft drinks. Some initiatives have been formulated in a Nordic collaboration and implemented at national level. In recent years, social inequalities in food habits have been attracted particular governmental interest and several initiatives addressing the socioeconomic gradient in food habits have been highlighted. However, few internationally published studies have evaluated how trends in adolescents' food habits develop in the context of Nordic nutrition policy, or have compared differences bet…
Self-Reported Non-Celiac Wheat Sensitivity in High School Students: Demographic and Clinical Characteristics
2017
Background: Non-Celiac Wheat Sensitivity (NCWS) has recently been included among the gluten-related disorders. As no biomarkers of this disease exist, its frequency has been estimated based on self-reported symptoms, but to date no data are available about self-reported NCWS in teenagers. Aim: To explore the prevalence of self-reported NCWS in a group of high school students and to study their demographic and clinical characteristics. Methods: The study was performed between April 2015 and January 2016 in two high schools of a coastal town in the south of Sicily (Italy). A total of 555 students (mean age 17 years, 191 male, 364 female) completed a modified validated questionnaire for self-r…
Case-based surveillance of measles in Sicily during 2012-2017: The changing molecular epidemiology and implications for vaccine strategies.
2018
Following the indication of the World Health Organization, a national plan for the elimination of measles was approved in Italy and this included the improvement of the molecular surveil- lance of measles viruses and the interruption of indigenous transmission of the disease. Nevertheless, large outbreaks continue to occur in almost all regions of the country, includ- ing Sicily. Here we describe the epidemiology and molecular dynamics of measles viruses as a result of the measles surveillance activity carried out by the “Reference Laboratory for Measles and Rubella” in Sicily over a 5-year period. Biological samples of 259 suspected measles cases were tested for viral RNA detection and a t…
Associations between food consumption patterns and saliva composition: Specificities of eating difficulties children
2017
Identifying objective markers of dietwould be beneficial to research fields such as nutritional epidemiology. As a preliminary study on the validity of using saliva for this purpose, and in order to explore the relationship between saliva and diet, we focused on clearly contrasted groups of children: children with eating difficulties (ED) receiving at least 50% of their energy intake through artificial nutrition vs healthy controls (C). Saliva of ED and C children was analyzed by various methods (targeted biochemical analyses, 2-D electrophoresis coupled to MS, 1H NMR) and their diet was characterized using food frequency questionnaires, considering 148 food items grouped into 13 categories…
Genetic epidemiology of autosomal recessive hypercholesterolemia in Sicily: Identification by next-generation sequencing of a new kindred.
2017
Background Autosomal recessive hypercholesterolemia (ARH) is a rare inherited lipid disorder. In Sardinia, differently from other world regions, the mutated allele frequency is high. It is caused by mutations in the low-density lipoprotein receptor adaptor protein 1 gene. Fourteen different mutations have been reported so far; in Sardinia, 2 alleles (ARH1 and ARH2) explain most of the cases. Four ARH patients, all carriers of the ARH1 mutation, have been identified in mainland Italy and 2 in Sicily. Objective The objectives of the study were to improve the molecular diagnosis of familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) and to estimate the frequency of the ARH1 allele in 2 free-living Sicilian pop…
Hyperuricemia and Risk of Cardiovascular Outcomes: The Experience of the URRAH (Uric Acid Right for Heart Health) Project
2020
The latest European Guidelines of Arterial Hypertension have officially introduced uric acid evaluation among the cardiovascular risk factors that should be evaluated in order to stratify patient's risk. In fact, it has been extensively evaluated and demonstrated to be an independent predictor not only of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality, but also of myocardial infraction, stroke and heart failure. Despite the large number of studies on this topic, an important open question that still need to be answered is the identification of a cardiovascular uric acid cut-off value. The actual hyperuricemia cut-off (> 6 mg/dL in women and 7 mg/dL in men) is principally based on the saturation …
Clinical Determinants of Thrombin Generation Measured in Presence and Absence of Platelets-Results from the Gutenberg Health Study.
2018
AbstractThe tendency of a plasma sample to generate thrombin, a central enzyme in blood coagulation, might be an important indicator of prothrombotic risk linked to cardiovascular disease (CVD), but the presence of platelets may be a critical determinant. Clinical data, laboratory markers and thrombin generation (TG), investigated in both platelet-rich plasma (PRP) and platelet-free plasma (PFP) at 1 pM TF, were available in 407 individuals from the Gutenberg Health Study. Given the well-known effect of anticoagulants on TG, subjects taking anticoagulants (n = 15) have been excluded resulting in 392 subjects for further analysis. Lag time, endogenous thrombin potential (ETP) and peak height…