The relationship between vitamin K and T2DM: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Background: Previous studies have shown the potential role of vitamin K supplementation in the prevention and treatment of many diseases. However, the effect of vitamin K supplementation on blood glucose remains controversial. The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of vitamin K supplementation on glycemia-related indicators, including Fasting Blood Sugar (FBS), Fasting Insulin (FINS) and Homeostasis Model Assessment of Insulin Resistance (HOMA-IR). The potential association between vitamin K and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) risk was also evaluated. Methods: Up to April 2023, Cochrane, PubMed, Web of Science, Medline and EMBASE databases were searched to assess the effects of vitamin K on blood glucose and the risk of developing T2DM. Results: A meta-analysis of seven studies (813 participants) found vitamin K supplementation significantly reduced FBS (SMD = -0.150 mg dl-1, 95% CI = -0.290, -0.010 mg dl-1) and HOMA-IR (SMD = -0.200, 95% CI = -0.330, -0.060), but not FINS. Five studies with a total of 105 798 participants were included in the meta-analysis of the association between vitamin K and T2DM. The results showed that vitamin K was associated with the reduced risk of developing T2DM (HR = 0.79, 95% CI [0.71-0.88], P < 0.001). Conclusion: The meta-analysis demonstrated that vitamin K supplementation had a significant effect on the regulation of FBS and HOMA-IR in the population. Moreover, vitamin K was associated with the reduced risk of developing T2DM. Considering some limitations found in this study, additional data from large clinical trials are needed.

YouTube as a source of information on preventing the use of valproic acid in women during pregnancy.

BACKGROUND: YouTube™ ( http://www.youtube.com ), as a very popular video site worldwide, is increasingly being used as a platform to disseminate health information. The purposes of this review were to assess the overall usefulness of the information on the prevention of valproic acid use in women during pregnancy on YouTube™ for patients. METHODS: The YouTube™ website was systematically using 8 keywords. One hundred and fifty four videos meet the selection criteria. The researcher evaluated the video duration, days since upload, views and the likes. These videos are categorized as Education, News & Politics and People & Blogs. We designed a usefulness scoring scheme to assess videos quality and classified them as "slightly useful", "useful" and "very useful". The Kruskal-Wallis test was used to determine whether differences existed between total usefulness scores and categories and Pearson chi-square test for categorical variables. RESULTS: The majority of videos were educational (62.8%). The "People & Blogs" and "News & Politics" videos scored significantly higher, but had no significant difference in days since upload, views, views/day or likes. More than half of the videos (91/154) were categorized as "useful". The mean posted days (p = 0.045) was significantly different in the useful group compared with the slightly useful group. There were no correlation between usefulness and the number of days since upload, duration, views, views/day, or likes. CONCLUSION: YouTube™ is a promising source of information regarding the use of valproic acid during pregnancy. "News & Politics" videos are the most usefulness. Considering the presence of more slightly useful information, publishers need to improve more comprehensive video content that includes replacement medications, diagnoses and treatments. In the healthcare information space, consumers need to be directed to reliable video.

Utilizing the Relationship Between Unconstrained and Constrained Pareto Fronts for Constrained Multiobjective Optimization.

Constrained multiobjective optimization problems (CMOPs) involve multiple objectives to be optimized and various constraints to be satisfied, which challenges the evolutionary algorithms in balancing the objectives and constraints. This article attempts to explore and utilize the relationship between constrained Pareto front (CPF) and unconstrained Pareto front (UPF) to solve CMOPs. Especially, for a given CMOP, the evolutionary process is divided into the learning stage and the evolving stage. The purpose of the learning stage is to measure the relationship between CPF and UPF. To this end, we first create two populations and evolve them by specific learning strategies to approach the CPF and UPF, respectively. Then, the feasibility information and dominance relationship of the two populations are used to determine the relationship. Based on the learned relationship, specific evolving strategies are designed in the evolving stage to improve the utilization efficiency of objective information, so as to better solve this CMOP. By the above process, a new constrained multiobjective evolutionary algorithm (CMOEA) is presented. Comprehensive experimental results on 65 benchmark functions and ten real-world CMOPs show that the proposed method has a better or very competitive performance in comparison with several state-of-the-art CMOEAs. Moreover, this article demonstrates that using the relationship between CPF and UPF to guide the utilization of objective information is promising in solving CMOPs.

The Drosophila apterous 56f mutation impairs circadian locomotor activity.

We investigated effects of apterous mutation ap56f on circadian locomotor activity, eclosion rhythms, and transcript levels of period and timeless in Drosophila. We investigated circadian locomotor activity and eclosion rhythms in ap 56fand wild-type flies, their F1 and F2 offspring, and wingless vestigial mutants and show that ap 56f disrupts circadian locomotor rhythms in a genetically recessive manner, that is not caused by the absence of wings. The ap blt strain also showed impaired circadian activity rhythms, providing independent evidence for a significant role of apterous in circadian locomotor rhythm expression. The ap 56f mutation did not disrupt a circadian eclosion rhythm or rhythmic expression of the period and timeless clock genes, indicating that apterous is not essential for circadian clock function, but is necessary for coupling locomotor activity to a circadian clock. Timeless transcription was reduced in ap 56f flies in 12:12 LD, suggesting that apterous may modulate core clock gene expression.