Dietary Counseling Aimed at Reducing Sugar Intake Yields the Greatest Improvement in Management of Weight and Metabolic Dysfunction in Children with Obesity.

Pediatric obesity is a significant public health problem, the negative outcomes of which will challenge individual well-being and societal resources for decades to come. The objective of this study was to determine the effects of dietary counseling on weight management and metabolic abnormalities in children with obesity. One hundred and sixty-five patients aged 2−18 years old were studied over a two and a half year period. Data collected included demographic information, anthropometric assessment, laboratory measurements, and self-reported eating behaviors. Dietary counseling was provided at each visit. The data was analyzed from the first and last visits and the subjects were retrospectively divided into responders and non-responders based on a decrease in their BMI. After receiving dietary guidance, BMI decreased in 44% of the children, and these participants were classified as responders (BMI-R; n = 72). However, BMI did not improve in 56% of the participants, and these were classified as non-responders (BMI-NR; n = 93). At the initial visit, anthropometric measurements and dietary habits were similar between the groups. At the time of the last visit, mean change in BMI was −1.47 (SD 1.31) for BMI-R and +2.40 (SD 9.79) for BMI-NR. Analysis of food intake revealed that BMI-R significantly improved their dietary habits (p = 0.002) by reducing the intake of sugar-sweetened beverages (p = 0.019), processed foods (p = 0.002), sweets (p < 0.001), and unhealthy snacks (p = 0.009), as compared with BMI-NR. There was no change in the intake of second helpings, portion sizes, skipping meals, frequency of meals eaten at school, condiment use, intake of fruits and vegetables and consumption of whole grains between the groups. BMI-R also achieved an improvement in fasted glucose (p = 0.021), triglycerides (p < 0.001), and total cholesterol (p = 0.023), as compared to BMI-NR. In conclusion, children with obesity who were able to decrease their BMI implemented a significant reduction in consumption of foods with high sugar content. Focusing on reducing sugar intake may yield the biggest impact in terms of weight management and the improvement of metabolic abnormalities.

Changes in fentanyl demand following naltrexone, morphine, and buprenorphine in male rats.

BACKGROUND: Individuals with opioid use disorder (OUD) exhibit high levels of economic demand for opioids, with high levels of consumption and relative insensitivity to changes in price. Because the medications used to treat OUD in medication-assisted therapy (MAT) act as antagonists or agonists at µ opioid receptors, they may alter the relationship between price and opioid intake. METHODS: This study examined demand for a commonly abused synthetic prescription opioid, fentanyl, in male rats following s.c. pre-treatment with naltrexone (0.1-1.0 mg/kg), morphine (0.3-3.0 mg/kg) or buprenorphine (0.3-3.0 mg/kg). We normalized demand curves to intake at the lowest price and estimated effects on elasticity (sensitivity to changes in price). Rats were first trained to earn fentanyl (5 µg/kg/infusion) on a fixed ratio schedule, then they underwent daily training under a threshold procedure designed to produce within-session demand curve estimates. Rats received 14 threshold sessions before undergoing a series of tests encompassing each drug, at each dose. RESULTS: Elasticity was increased by pretreatment with naltrexone, morphine or buprenorphine. Morphine also decreased initial intake, when the price for fentanyl was lowest. In contrast, initial intake was increased by naltrexone (according to an inverted-U shaped curve). The effects of naltrexone did not persist after the test session, but morphine and buprenorphine continued affecting demand elasticity 24 h or 48 h after the test, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: These results indicate that fentanyl demand is sensitive to blockade or activation of opioid receptors by the drug classes used for MAT in humans.

CURatio: Genome-wide phylogenomic analysis method using ratios of total branch lengths.

Evolutionary hypotheses provide important underpinnings of biological and medical sciences, and comprehensive, genome-wide understanding of evolutionary relationships among organisms are needed to test and refine such hypotheses. Theory and empirical evidence clearly indicate that phylogenies (trees) of different genes (loci) should not display precisely matching topologies. The main reason for such phylogenetic incongruence is reticulated evolutionary history of most species due to meiotic sexual recombination in eukaryotes, or horizontal transfers of genetic material in prokaryotes. Nevertheless, many genes should display topologically related phylogenies, and should group into one or more (for genetic hybrids) clusters in poly-dimensional "tree space". Unusual evolutionary histories or effects of selection may result in "outlier" genes with phylogenies that fall outside the main distribution(s) of trees in tree space. We present a new phylogenomic method, CURatio, which uses ratios of total branch lengths in gene trees to help identify phylogenetic outliers in a given set of ortholog groups from multiple genomes. An advantage of CURatio over other methods is that genes absent from and/or duplicated in some genomes can be included in the analysis. We conducted a simulation study under the coalescent model, and showed that, given sufficient species depth and topological difference, these ratios are significantly higher for the "outlier" gene phylogenies. Also, we applied CURatio to a set of annotated genomes of the fungal family, Clavicipitaceae, and identified alkaloid biosynthesis genes as outliers, probably due to a history of duplication and loss. The source code is available at https://github.com/QiwenKang/CURatio, and the empirical data set on Clavicipitaceae and simulated data set are available at Mendeley https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/mrxts7wjrr/1.