Dietary intake of advanced glycation end products (AGEs) and changes in body weight in European adults.

PURPOSE: Advanced glycation end products (AGEs) can be formed in foods by the reaction of reducing sugars with proteins, and have been shown to induce insulin resistance and obesity in experimental studies. We examined the association between dietary AGEs intake and changes in body weight in adults over an average of 5 years of follow-up. METHODS: A total of 255,170 participants aged 25-70 years were recruited in ten European countries (1992-2000) in the PANACEA study (Physical Activity, Nutrition, Alcohol, Cessation of smoking, Eating out of home in relation to Anthropometry), a sub-cohort of the EPIC (European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition). Body weight was measured at recruitment and self-reported between 2 and 11 years later depending on the study center. A reference database for AGEs was used containing UPLC-MS/MS-measured Nε-(carboxymethyl)-lysine (CML), Nε-(1-carboxyethyl)-lysine (CEL), and Nδ-(5-hydro-5-methyl-4-imidazolon-2-yl)-ornithine (MG-H1) in 200 common European foods. This reference database was matched to foods and decomposed recipes obtained from country-specific validated dietary questionnaires in EPIC and intake levels of CEL, CML, and MG-H1 were estimated. Associations between dietary AGEs intake and body weight change were estimated separately for each of the three AGEs using multilevel mixed linear regression models with center as random effect and dietary AGEs intake and relevant confounders as fixed effects. RESULTS: A one-SD increment in CEL intake was associated with 0.111 kg (95% CI 0.087-0.135) additional weight gain over 5 years. The corresponding additional weight gain for CML and MG-H1 was 0.065 kg (0.041-0.089) and 0.034 kg (0.012, 0.057), respectively. The top six food groups contributing to AGEs intake, with varying proportions across the AGEs, were cereals/cereal products, meat/processed meat, cakes/biscuits, dairy, sugar and confectionary, and fish/shellfish. CONCLUSION: In this study of European adults, higher intakes of AGEs were associated with marginally greater weight gain over an average of 5 years of follow-up.

Interest in a new test for caries risk in adolescents undergoing orthodontic treatment.

It has been reported that patients undergoing orthodontic treatment present a high risk of caries. Recently, an immediate chair-side test was proposed, displaying the intra-oral lactic acid production of cariogenic bacteria. The aim of this 12-month follow-up prospective cohort study was to evaluate the association between having a high score on this test and caries occurrence in 110 young patients scheduled for orthodontic treatment. Caries occurrence was studied by Kaplan-Meier curves and Multivariate Cox models allowed the examination of its association with covariates. Fifty four patients developed at least one carious lesion during the follow-up period. At baseline, approximately 70% of the patients presented a high risk of caries according to the test and this number came close to 80% by the study's completion. According to the Kaplan-Meier estimator, 51% (CI(95%) 0.40, 0.60) of the sample would have developed at least one carious lesion during the follow-up. The test score was then associated with age, DMFT, and caries occurrence. This study showed that a high test score at baseline associated with a high DMFT predicted a high risk of caries (RR = 2.6). Taking the patient's age into consideration, an increase of 1 year resulted in a 10% decrease of the risk of caries occurrence (RR = 0.89). Within the limits of this longitudinal study, it may be concluded that this test is useful to evaluate the risk for dental caries in adolescents with orthodontic treatment. Furthermore, the distribution of the lesions in our sample suggests specific clinical approaches for this group of patients.

[Diffusion-weighted MR imaging of the normal fetal brain: marker of fetal brain maturation]. / Diffusion du cerveau foetal normal: limites et espoirs.

PURPOSE: To determine the reliability and variations of apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) values in normal fetuses. Materials and methods. Retrospective study (2007-2008) on 22 normal fetal MR examinations, performed between 30 and 34 of gestation, using a routine protocol (T1W and T2W images in 3 planes, b=1,000 diffusion-weighted imaging) without sedation. ADC values were measured by placing 3 adjacent regions of interest (ROI) including a centrally located ROI over the right frontal and occipital white matter (6 ROI). STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: reproducibility of adjacent ADC values (intraclass correlation coefficient: ICC) and comparison between frontal and occipital ADC values (Wilcoxon). RESULTS: The mean ADC value was 1.78 mm(2)/s for the frontal white matter (+ or - 0.10) and 1.66 mm(2)/s for the occipital white matter (+ or - 0.12) with excellent reproducibility (ICC=0.91 in the frontal lobe) and good reproducibility for adjacent measurements (ICC=0.7). A linear inverse correlation existed between ADC values and gestational age in the occipital lobes, and a significant fronto-occipital gradient existed after 32 weeks of gestational age. CONCLUSION: ADC value measurements are reliable and inversely correlated with gestational age due to fetal brain maturation. The existence of a fronto-occipital gradient after 32 weeks of gestational age could be a marker of normal maturation used in clinical practice.

Association of leukocyte DNA methylation changes with dietary folate and alcohol intake in the EPIC study.

BACKGROUND: There is increasing evidence that folate, an important component of one-carbon metabolism, modulates the epigenome. Alcohol, which can disrupt folate absorption, is also known to affect the epigenome. We investigated the association of dietary folate and alcohol intake on leukocyte DNA methylation levels in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) study. Leukocyte genome-wide DNA methylation profiles on approximately 450,000 CpG sites were acquired with Illumina HumanMethylation 450K BeadChip measured among 450 women control participants of a case-control study on breast cancer nested within the EPIC cohort. After data preprocessing using surrogate variable analysis to reduce systematic variation, associations of DNA methylation with dietary folate and alcohol intake, assessed with dietary questionnaires, were investigated using CpG site-specific linear models. Specific regions of the methylome were explored using differentially methylated region (DMR) analysis and fused lasso (FL) regressions. The DMR analysis combined results from the feature-specific analysis for a specific chromosome and using distances between features as weights whereas FL regression combined two penalties to encourage sparsity of single features and the difference between two consecutive features. RESULTS: After correction for multiple testing, intake of dietary folate was not associated with methylation level at any DNA methylation site, while weak associations were observed between alcohol intake and methylation level at CpG sites cg03199996 and cg07382687, with qval = 0.029 and qval = 0.048, respectively. Interestingly, the DMR analysis revealed a total of 24 and 90 regions associated with dietary folate and alcohol, respectively. For alcohol intake, 6 of the 15 most significant DMRs were identified through FL. CONCLUSIONS: Alcohol intake was associated with methylation levels at two CpG sites. Evidence from DMR and FL analyses indicated that dietary folate and alcohol intake may be associated with genomic regions with tumor suppressor activity such as the GSDMD and HOXA5 genes. These results were in line with the hypothesis that epigenetic mechanisms play a role in the association between folate and alcohol, although further studies are warranted to clarify the importance of these mechanisms in cancer.

Fecal expression of human ß-defensin-2 following birth.

BACKGROUND: Newborns display high intestinal permeability and a naive adaptive immune system, but infections are rare, indicating strong innate defense mechanisms. OBJECTIVE: To measure the kinetics of fecal ß-defensin-2 (HBD2), an inducible endogenous antimicrobial peptide produced by intestinal epithelial cells, in full-term and preterm infants. METHODS: As a first step of this bicentric study, we enrolled 30 healthy full-term infants and 20 healthy preterm infants, with fecal samples collected at days 3, 7, 12 and 30 in full-term infants and at days 15, 30 and 60 in preterm infants. As a second step, we enrolled 10 preterm infants with intestinal distress, either necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) Bell's stage III (n = 3) or isolated rectal bleeding (n = 7) and 20 controls, cross-matched for gestational age and age at sampling. RESULTS: HBD2 decreased significantly from day 3 to day 7 (227 ng/g; 14-440 vs. 117 ng/g; 30-470, p = 0.01) then moderately until day 30 (84 ng/g; 10-500) in healthy full-term infants. Healthy preterm infants showed similar high levels between days 15 and 60 (82 ng/g; 30-154 and 85 ng/g; 26-390, respectively). No significant variation of fecal HBD2 levels was observed between infants with clinical features of intestinal distress (77 ng/g, 2-1,271) and cross-matched controls (56 ng/g, 31-164). However, 2/3 infants with NEC and 1/7 infants with isolated rectal bleeding had HBD2 levels above the maximal level observed in controls. CONCLUSIONS: The kinetics of fecal HBD2 in the neonatal period indicate that this inducible defensin can be detected at high level in the feces of full-term and preterm infants, independently of gestational age or mode of feeding. The potential role of fecal HBD2 in detecting NEC is suggested.