The effect of dietary counselling on food intakes in pregnant women at risk for gestational diabetes: a secondary analysis of a randomised controlled trial RADIEL.

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: The prevalence of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is increasing worldwide. GDM may be prevented by improving the diets of pregnant women. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of dietary counselling on the diets of pregnant women at GDM risk. SUBJECTS/METHODS: This study was a secondary analysis of a randomised controlled trial the Finnish gestational diabetes prevention study (RADIEL) in which pre-pregnant and pregnant women with previous GDM or BMI ⩾30 kg/m(2) were allocated into two groups, namely the control and the intervention groups. The control group received standard antenatal dietary counselling according to the Finnish Nutrition Recommendations. The intervention group participated in one individual dietary counselling session and one group dietary counselling session in addition to the standard counselling. This study included women who were recruited during pregnancy. To assess changes in food intake, food-intake questionnaires were collected during the first and the second trimester of pregnancy. Bootstrap type analysis of covariance was used, and 242 participants were included in the final analysis to study changes in food intake. RESULTS: The intakes of low-fat cheese (baseline adjusted mean 0.09 times/day; 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.07, 0.24; P=0.040) and fish (baseline adjusted mean 0.28 times per week; 95% CI 0.08, 0.49; P=0.011) showed a significant increase in the intervention group compared with the control group. CONCLUSIONS: This study showed that dietary counselling in early pregnancy can lead to modest dietary improvements in pregnant women at GDM risk.

Selective interference reveals dissociation between auditory memory for location and pitch.

Effects of interfering task-irrelevant tones varying in location or pitch on auditory location and pitch n-back tasks were investigated to study whether there is segregation of spatial and non-spatial information processing in the auditory working memory. The subjects performed spatial and non-spatial auditory 1- and 2-back tasks with and without location or pitch interference. In the 1-back tasks, location but not pitch interference significantly impaired location task performance whereas pitch but not location interference disrupted pitch task performance. In the 2-back tasks, neither the location nor the pitch task performance was differentially disrupted by the distractors, suggesting that there is memory load-dependent segregation in the handling of location and pitch information in the neuronal networks engaged in auditory working memory.