Adiponews

Big data

CONTRIBUTED BY SILVIA GAMUNDI

In 1966 the Statistics Department of North Carolina State University started a research project funded by the National Institute of Health to analyze agricultural data for improving crop yields. They studied variables such as temperature, grain type or fertilizer variety in order to identify patterns that turned out into better harvests. This is one of the stories commonly used to go back to the origins of Big Data, and also the birth of SAS ...

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Benefits of GMOs: Production of human insulin

Benefits of GMOs: Production of human insulin
Contributed by Elena Torres-Perez

Since its discovery, insulin has become one of the most studied molecules in the history of medicine. As we all know, insulin is a protein related to diabetes, a disease that affects a large percentage of the population. The supply of exogenous insulin is needed to regulate glucose levels in patients with type 1 diabetes in all cases, and occasionally in patients with type 2 ...

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The good fat

Contributed by Sergio Perez-Diaz

Obesity is defined as an excess of body fat tissue. Adipose tissue (white adipose tissue) is the organ whose main function is to store the overflow of energy from the diet. The body mass index (BMI) is a quick formula to know when an individual person is obese, being 25 kg/m2 and 30 kg/m2 the overweight and obesity thresholds, respectively..

Anatomically, the white adipose tissue is present in three big ...

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US Burden of disease

The United States spends the most per capita on health care across all countries, yet lacks universal health coverage, and lags behind other high-income countries for life expectancy. and many other health outcome measures.From 1990 to 2010, the US made substantial progress in improving health. Life expectancy increased and all-cause death rates at all ages decreased. However, morbidity and chronic disability now account for nearly half of the US health burden, and improvements in population health in the US are slower than for ...
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Cochrane meta-anaylisis about Diet & Cardiovascular Disease

A meta-analysis is a statistical method in which results of individual studies are mathematically combined in order to improve the reliability of the results. This technique presents enormous advantages over classical literature reviews. Meta-analyses also present weaknesses and they are fundamentally limited by the quality of the underlying studies. The Cochrane Collaboration is an international network that, using the meta-analysis method, analyzes randomized clinical trials (RCT) available on various subjects, and synthesizes them into regularly updated systematic reviews. ...More...

Estimation of Risk for Child or Adolescent Obesity at Birth

By analyzing data from 4,000 children born in Finland in 1986, researchers created a formula that accurately predicts the likelihood of a baby developing obesity during childhood. Importantly, the predictive accuracy of the models did not decline from childhood to adolescence, suggesting that the association between the traditional risk factors and obesity is stable until early adulthood. When the performance of genetics in predicting early obesity phenotypes was explored, with the largest list of obesity-SNPs ever used, it showed only a ...More...

Is the Obesity Paradox an actual paradox ?

Being a paradox an anomaly, and inconsistency, it would be supposed to occur in very rare occasions. I am, however, amazed how often this so-called paradox manifests itself. This phenomenon was described quite a few years ago (1). Yet, the term “obesity paradox” was coined by Gruberg (2)  who found that patients with known coronary artery disease and BMI within the normal range (<25 kg/m2) who undergo percutaneous coronary intervention are at the highest risk for in-hospital complications and for increased ...More...

JAMA>Opportunities to Reduce Childhood Hunger and Obesity Restructuring the Food Stamp Program

Opportunities to Reduce Childhood Hunger and Obesity Restructuring the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (the Food Stamp Program) David S. Ludwig, MD, PhD; Susan J. Blumenthal, MD, MPA; Walter C. Willett, MD, DrPH JAMA. 2012;308(24):2567-2568. doi:10.1001/jama.2012.45420. Childhood is a time of substantial nutritional needs. However, many children in low-income families do not consume adequate amounts of nutritious foods for optimal physical development, cognitive performance, and psychological well-being. The pending reauthorization of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as the Food Stamp Program), ...More...

SATURATED FAT AND CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE

After been hammered with the low fat mantra during 30 years. Every child, adult men and women underwent a massive  experiment. People made a substantial reduction of saturated fat content of their diets in the hope of reducing the prevalence of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Currently, we know that this experiment was based on weak evidences as well as institutional and personal bias.
The saturated fat content of the diet is NOT associated with cardiovascular disease. A systematic review of 146 prospective ...More...

1st post

Being this the first post, you would expect something brilliant,sparkling  or  at least related to the topic of the website. However, this is what you get.
Do not fret, good posts will follow. More...