Eating behavior can change during aging due to physiological, psychological, and social changes. Modifications can occur at different levels: (1) in food choice, (2) in eating habits, and (3) in ...dietary intake. A good dietary behavior, like the Mediterranean dietary pattern, can be a protective factor for some aging related pathologies, such as dementia, while a worse eating behavior can lead to pathological conditions such as malnutrition. Changes in eating behavior can also be linked to the onset of dementia: for some types of dementia, such as frontotemporal dementia, dietary changes are one of the key clinical diagnostic feature, for others, like Alzheimer's disease, weight loss is a clinical reported feature. For these reasons, it is important to be able to assess eating behavior in a proper way, considering that there are normal age-related changes. An adequate assessment of dietary behavior can help to plan preventive intervention strategies for heathy aging or can help to identify abnormal behaviors that underline aging related-diseases. In this review, we have analyzed normal age-related and dementia-related changes and the tools that can be used to assess eating behavior. Thus, we make recommendations to screening and monitoring eating behavior in aging and dementia, and to adopt these tools in clinical practice.
Abstract
Background
As the coronavirus pandemic spreads, more and more people are infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. The short- and medium-term effects of the infection ...have been described, but the description of the long-term sequelae is lacking in the literature.
Methods
Patients healed from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) from February 2020 to May 2020 were considered for inclusion in this study, regardless of the severity of the disease during the acute phase. Eligible patients were consecutively contacted and a semistructured interview was administered between February and March 2021 by trained medical staff.
Results
Three hundred three patients were eligible and accepted to participate in the study and were enrolled. Of those surveyed, most patients (81%) reported at least 1 symptom, and the most prevalent symptoms were fatigue (52%), pain (48%), and sleep disorders (47%). Sensory alterations were present in 28% of surveyed patients, but in most of these cases (74% of those affected by sensory alterations or 20% of the overall sample) symptoms reported were either anosmia or dysgeusia. Higher prevalence was generally observed with increasing age, although the most relevant differences were observed when comparing young versus middle-aged adults.
Conclusions
At 12 months after acute infection, COVID-19 survivors were still suffering from symptoms identified at shorter follow-up, and the most frequent symptoms included fatigue, pain, and sleep disorders. A more severe impairment in the acute phase did not seem to predict more severe complications.
One year after SARS-CoV-2 infection, most patients (81%) presented at least 1 symptom with the most prevalent being fatigue and weakness (52%), muscle and joint pain (48%), sleep disorders (47%), neurological and cognitive impairment (36%), and respiratory disorders (36%).
Glucose Transporter 1 Deficiency Syndrome (GLUT1-DS; OMIM #606777) is a rare disease caused by dominant mutations in SLC2A1 encoding GLUT1, which is a ubiquitous transporter of glucose across plasma ...membranes, particularly across the blood-brain barrier. Hypoglycorrhachia symptoms are the cornerstones of GLUT1-DS, but delayed growth has also been suggested. This led us to investigate, at diagnosis, the relationship between the glycemia/glycorrhachia ratio and the nutritional and growth pattern phenotype of 30 GLUT-DS patients.
An assessment was made of body weight (BW), body length/height (BL, BH) and body composition by anthropometry and DEXA, and the results put with BL and BW at birth, genetic target, glycemia, insulinemia, and glycorrhachia values.
At birth, 21% of patients had a BW below -1.645 z-score, whereas no patients had BL below the reference values. At diagnosis 23% of the patients had an impaired nutritional status, 19.2% and 3.8% being respectively underweight and overweight/obese; 10%, all under 10 years old, had BL/BH below -1.645 z-score, with no specific features related to body composition. Finally, there was no association between glycemia, glycorrhachia, and growth phenotype.
GLUT1-DS is associated with impaired BW but not BL intrauterine growth, with a slower than normal pattern of growth rather than growth failure. These data could be useful for the interpretation of any long-term effects of the ketogenic diet, e.g. nutritional and growth pattern decline.
Background: Men are more likely than women to have subthreshold overeating disorders. Lifestyle plays a role as a determinant, while chronotype is an emerging factor. Chronotype explains the natural ...preferences of wakefulness and activity throughout the day: evening chronotypes (E-Types), those most productive in the evening, have been linked with unhealthy dietary patterns and a higher propensity to substance addiction than morning types (M-Types). Methods: We carried out a cross-sectional study on 750 overweight or obese adults (70% females, 48 ± 10 years, BMI 31.7 ± 5.8 kg/m2). The Binge-Eating Scale, the Yale Food Addiction Scale 2.0 (YFAS 2.0), the reduced Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire (rMEQ), and the MEDAS questionnaire were used to assess binge eating, food addiction, chronotype, and adherence to the Mediterranean diet, respectively. Results: No differences in BES binge-eating and FA food-addiction scores occurred between chronotypes, but we found significant interactions between sex × rMEQ score. While women showed the same prevalence for binge eating and food addiction across all chronotypes, binge eating and food addiction risk increased with reducing rMEQ score in men, indicating that being male and E-Type increases the risk association of binge eating and/or food addiction prevalence. Conclusions: chronotype is associated with binge eating and food addiction in men, emphasizing the link between chronobiology and sex differences as determinants in appetite and eating behaviour dysregulation and in overweight and obesity.
Introduction
The study of taste functionality and its relation to human health is receiving growing attention. Obesity has been reported to cause alterations in sensory perception regarding system ...functionality and preferences. However, a small body of research addresses tastes perception and its modification with the achievement of body mass reduction through surgical intervention. Much fewer efforts have been made to evaluate the impact of mild restrictive nutritional intervention on gustatory functions. Thus, the objectives of this study were to determine if a dietary intervention of 4 weeks following a restricted balanced Mediterranean diet would affect the sweet and salty taste thresholds of subjects with severe obesity and could influence their anthropometric and blood parameters.
Methods
Fifty-one patients with severe obesity (
F
: 31; age: 43.7 ± 12.5; BMI = 47.6 ± 1.0) were enrolled in the study. The recognition threshold for sweet and salty taste and anthropometric and blood parameters were assessed before and after the 4-week weight loss program.
Results and Discussion
The Mediterranean diet has proven to be an effective treatment, significantly improving all anthropometric and blood parameters (
p
< 0.05) after 4 weeks of intervention. Moreover, the hypo-sodium treatment associated with the diet significantly improved the salty threshold (
p
< 0.001). No changes were detected for the sweet threshold. Collectively, these data highlight that dietary treatment might impact taste perception differently. Therefore, a taste-oriented nutritional intervention could represent a novel approach to developing more individualized, taste-oriented follow-up interventions to maintain sustainable and long-term weight loss.
Abstract Objective The only known treatment of glucose transporter 1 deficiency syndrome (GLUT-1 DS) is a ketogenic diet (KD), which provides the brain with an alternative fuel. Studies in children ...with intractable epilepsy have shown that a prolonged KD can induce a progressive loss of bone mineral content associated with poor bone health status, probably as a consequence of a chronic acidic environment. The aim of this study is to determine the long-term effects of a KD on body composition and bone mineral status of patients with GLUT-1 DS, is currently unknown. Methods In this case series, we report the changes in body composition and bone mineral status observed in three adult patients with GLUT-1 DS who have been treated with a KD for more than 5 y. Results A long-term KD did not produce appreciable changes in weight and body composition of adults with GLUT-1 DS. Moreover, we found no evidence of potential adverse effects of a KD on bone health. In summary, this case series contributes to a small but growing body of literature that investigated the potential long-term effects of a KD on bone health. Conclusions Our data suggest that maintaining a KD for more than 5 y does not pose any major negative effects on body composition, bone mineral content, and bone mineral density in adults with GLUT-1 DS, a finding that is at variance with previous reports focusing on children with intractable epilepsy. Further studies with larger sizes are needed to confirm and expand our findings.
Obesity is a major risk factor for a large number of secondary diseases, including cancer. Specific insights into the role of gender differences and secondary comorbidities, such as type 2 diabetes ...(T2D) and cancer risk, are yet to be fully identified. The aim of this study is thus to find a correlation between the transcriptional deregulation present in the subcutaneous adipose tissue of obese patients and the oncogenic signature present in multiple cancers, in the presence of T2D, and considering gender differences. The subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) of five healthy, normal-weight women, five obese women, five obese women with T2D and five obese men were subjected to RNA-sequencing, leading to the identification of deregulated coding and non-coding RNAs, classified for their oncogenic score. A panel of DE RNAs was validated via Real-Time PCR and oncogene expression levels correlated the oncogenes with anthropometrical parameters, highlighting significant trends. For each analyzed condition, we identified the deregulated pathways associated with cancer, the prediction of possible prognosis for different cancer types and the lncRNAs involved in oncogenic networks and tissues. Our results provided a comprehensive characterization of oncogenesis correlation in SAT, providing specific insights into the possible molecular targets implicated in this process. Indeed, the identification of deregulated oncogenes also in SAT highlights hypothetical targets implicated in the increased oncogenic risk in highly obese subjects. These results could shed light on new molecular targets to be specifically modulated in obesity and highlight which cancers should receive the most attention in terms of better prevention in obesity-affected patients.
Pyroptosis, an inflammatory form of programmed cell death, has been implicated in the pathogenesis and progression of several cancers. However, the significance of pyroptosis-related genes (PRGs) in ...papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) remains unclear.
Transcriptome and clinical data of PTC patients were obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas. The expression patterns of PRGs were identified by consensus clustering. A prognostic model for predicting the thyroid cancer-free interval (TCFi) employed five machine learning methods. Enrichment and immune-related analyses were performed to elucidate the role of pyroptosis. The responses to radioactive iodine (RAI), immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), molecular targeted therapy (MTT), and chemotherapy (CTx) were predicted based on pyroptosis-derived features. Additionally, the expression of prognostic PRGs was validated via six external datasets, 16 cell lines, and 20 pairs of clinical samples.
PTC patients were classified into three PyroClusters, C1 exhibited BRFA-like tumors with the highest invasiveness and the worst prognosis, C2 presented RAS-like tumors, and C3 was characterized by gene fusion. Nine PRGs (CXCL8, GJA1, H2BC8, IFI27, PRDM1, PYCARD, SEZ6L2, SIGLEC15, TRAF6) were filtered out to construct a PyroScore prognostic model. A derived nomogram demonstrated superior predictive performance than four clinical staging systems. A strong correlation between pyroptosis and tumor immune microenvironment (TIME) remodeling was observed in mechanistic analyses. Patients with a high PyroScore exhibited "hot" tumor immunophenotypes and had a poorer prognosis but could benefit more from ICIs and CTx (such as paclitaxel). Patients with a low PyroScore were more sensitive to RAI and MTT (such as pazopanib and sorafenib).
PyroScore model can effectively predict TCFi in patients with PTC. Dysregulated expression of PRGs is associated with the TIME modeling. Pyroptosis features have potential significance for developing novel therapeutic strategies for PTC patients.
The classical ketogenic diet (cKD) is an isocaloric, high fat, very low-carbohydrate diet that induces ketosis, strongly influencing leptin and ghrelin regulation. However, not enough is known about ...the impact of a long-term cKD. This study evaluated the effects of a 12-month cKD on ghrelin and leptin concentrations in children, adolescents and adults affected by the GLUT1-Deficiency Syndrome or drug resistant epilepsy (DRE). We also investigated the relationship between the nutritional status, body composition and ghrelin and leptin variations. We carried out a longitudinal study on 30 patients: Twenty-five children and adolescents (15 females, 8 ± 4 years), and five adults (two females, 34 ± 16 years). After 12-monoths cKD, there were no significant changes in ghrelin and leptin, or in the nutritional status, body fat, glucose and lipid profiles. However, a slight height z-score reduction (from -0.603 ± 1.178 to -0.953 ± 1.354,
≤ 0.001) and a drop in fasting insulin occurred. We found no correlations between ghrelin changes and nutritional status and body composition, whereas leptin changes correlated positively with variations in the weight z-score and body fat (
0.4534,
0.0341;
0.5901,
0.0135; respectively). These results suggest that a long-term cKD does not change ghrelin and leptin concentrations independently of age and neurological condition.
The Mediterranean Diet (MedDiet) is significantly associated with anti-inflammatory effects and a favorable health outcome. During pregnancy, both inflammatory changes and oxidative balance are ...essential for a successful outcome, while an unbalanced inflammatory response can be a key mediator of obstetrical syndromes. The aim of this study is to investigate the adherence to MedDiet during pregnancy in the 1st and in the 3rd trimester, and to test whether the adherence was associated with serum adiponectin levels. The study was carried out on 99 normal weight Caucasian women. The adherence to MedDiet was measured by a 13-point Mediterranean scale. The whole sample scored 7.2 ± 1.5, with no difference between first and third trimester (
= 0.7). Critical points were: fruit < 3 servings/day in 77% of the sample, beans < 3 times/week in 89%, fish < 2 times/week in 69%, and nut weekly intake < 30 g in 75%. The serum adiponectin levels significantly decreased from the first to the third trimester (-16% ± 4%,
= 0.008), which confirms a low-grade inflammatory condition associated with advancing gestational age. The women who were in the highest tertile of the adherence to MedDiet had a lower percentage decrease, as compared with those in the lowest tertile (10% ± 11% vs. -34% ± 3%,
= 0.01). Even if in pregnancy the adiponectin levels are strongly influenced by the low-grade inflammation, the adherence to MedDiet may modulate this state.
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