Gastroesophageal reflux symptoms among Italian university students: epidemiology and dietary correlates using automatically recorded transactions.

BACKGROUND: Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is one of the most common gastrointestinal disorders worldwide, with relevant impact on the quality of life and health care costs.The aim of our study is to assess the prevalence of GERD based on self-reported symptoms among university students in central Italy. The secondary aim is to evaluate lifestyle correlates, particularly eating habits, in GERD students using automatically recorded transactions through cashiers at university canteen. METHODS: A web-survey was created and launched through an app, ad-hoc developed for an interactive exchange of information with students, including anthropometric data and lifestyle habits. Moreover, the web-survey allowed users a self-diagnosis of GERD through a simple questionnaire. As regard eating habits, detailed collection of meals consumed, including number and type of dishes, were automatically recorded through cashiers at the university canteen equipped with an automatic registration system. RESULTS: We collected 3012 questionnaires. A total of 792 students (26.2% of the respondents) reported typical GERD symptoms occurring at least weekly. Female sex was more prevalent than male sex. In the set of students with GERD, the percentage of smokers was higher, and our results showed that when BMI tends to higher values the percentage of students with GERD tends to increase. When evaluating correlates with diet, we found, among all users, a lower frequency of legumes choice in GERD students and, among frequent users, a lower frequency of choice of pasta and rice in GERD students. DISCUSSION: The results of our study are in line with the values reported in the literature. Nowadays, GERD is a common problem in our communities, and can potentially lead to serious medical complications; the economic burden involved in the diagnostic and therapeutic management of the disease has a relevant impact on healthcare costs. CONCLUSIONS: To our knowledge, this is the first study evaluating the prevalence of typical GERD-related symptoms in a young population of University students in Italy. Considering the young age of enrolled subjects, our prevalence rate, relatively high compared to the usual estimates, could represent a further negative factor for the future economic sustainability of the healthcare system.

The long-tail effect of the COVID-19 lockdown on Italians' quality of life, sleep and physical activity.

From March 2020 to May 2021, several lockdown periods caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have limited people's usual activities and mobility in Italy, as well as around the world. These unprecedented confinement measures dramatically modified citizens' daily lifestyles and behaviours. However, with the advent of summer 2021 and thanks to the vaccination campaign that significantly prevents serious illness and death, and reduces the risk of contagion, all the Italian regions finally returned to regular behaviours and routines. Anyhow, it is unclear if there is a long-tail effect on people's quality of life, sleep- and physical activity-related behaviours. Thanks to the dataset described in this paper, it will be possible to obtain accurate insights of the changes induced by the lockdown period in the Italians' health that will permit to provide practical suggestions at local, regional, and state institutions and companies to improve infrastructures and services that could be beneficial to Italians' well being.

Measuring the effectiveness of homeopathic care through objective and shared indicators.

OBJECTIVE: To test a methodology to evaluate, at population level, the effectiveness of homeopathic treatment through standard objective public health indicators. METHODS AND SETTINGS: Indicators of hospitalization and drug use were obtained from the Health Statistical Documentation System of Tuscany for two homeopathic centers in the Local Health Authority of Pisa, Italy. We compared homeopathic users with the general population in the same area and by comparing patients before and after homeopathic treatment. RESULTS: The homeopathic patients used less drugs than the reference population, this effect was more evident for patients with repeated homeopathic consultations. A significant decrease in drug use was found on comparing the same patients before and after homeopathic treatment. Hospitalization indicators tended to favour patients who had received homeopathic treatment but were not always statistically significant. CONCLUSIONS: This paper demonstrates a new methodological approach to assess the effectiveness of a therapeutic modality, without ad-hoc clinical trials. This methodology can be used by public health institutions in which non-conventional medicines are integrated into the public health care system.

Explaining the difference between men's and women's football.

Women's football is gaining supporters and practitioners worldwide, raising questions about what the differences are with men's football. While the two sports are often compared based on the players' physical attributes, we analyze the spatio-temporal events during matches in the last World Cups to compare male and female teams based on their technical performance. We train an artificial intelligence model to recognize if a team is male or female based on variables that describe a match's playing intensity, accuracy, and performance quality. Our model accurately distinguishes between men's and women's football, revealing crucial technical differences, which we investigate through the extraction of explanations from the classifier's decisions. The differences between men's and women's football are rooted in play accuracy, the recovery time of ball possession, and the players' performance quality. Our methodology may help journalists and fans understand what makes women's football a distinct sport and coaches design tactics tailored to female teams.

Understanding eating choices among university students: A study using data from cafeteria cashiers' transactions.

OBJECTIVE: To illustrate the use of automatically collected data from cashier transactions to understand eating habits among university students using cafeteria and to identify individual characteristics associated with the diverse behaviors. METHODS: The study was carried out at a large university located in Pisa, central Italy, using data about meals automatically recorded from cashier transaction meals during the academic year 2015-16 as well as data from the administrative archive of the university. A model-based clustering relying on multivariate beta distribution was used to cluster eating choices while multivariate multinomial logistic regressions were applied to identify variables associated to diverse clusters identified. RESULTS: Considering 4643 students and about 200,000 meals consumed, results suggest that healthy eaters represented a minority (11.2 %) of the study population while the large part of students composed their meals combining grains with processed food or proteins (32.7 %) and limiting the choice of fruit (42.9 %). Male gender and younger age were associated with eating behavior not in line with recommendations for a healthy diet. CONCLUSIONS: Eating choice resulted to be "compromised" in most of students and specific characteristics associated with unhealthy choice were also identified that can help inform and target specific policy. The use of routinely collected data gives the opportunity to both cafeterias and university to take an active role in policy development.