PLoS medicine
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Thomas Platts-Mills and Matthew Perzanowski provide their expert Perspective on a translational study from Custovic and colleagues that identifies pairings of IgE that show value in estimating risk of concurrent asthma.
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In their Perspective, Ara Darzi and Hutan Ashrafian give us a tour of the future policymaker's machine learning toolkit.
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Comparative Study
Reducing chronic disease through changes in food aid: A microsimulation of nutrition and cardiometabolic disease among Palestinian refugees in the Middle East.
Type 2 diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular disease and have become leading causes of morbidity and mortality among Palestinian refugees in the Middle East, many of whom live in long-term settlements and receive grain-based food aid. The objective of this study was to estimate changes in type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease morbidity and mortality attributable to a transition from traditional food aid to either (i) a debit card restricted to food purchases, (ii) cash, or (iii) an alternative food parcel with less grain and more fruits and vegetables, each valued at $30/person/month. ⋯ Contrary to the supposition in the literature, our findings do not robustly support the theory that transitioning from traditional food aid to either debit card or cash delivery alone would necessarily reduce chronic disease outcomes. Rather, an alternative food parcel would be more effective, even after matching current budget ceilings. But compensatory increases in consumption of less healthy foods may neutralize the improvements from an alternative food parcel unless total aid funding were increased substantially. Our analysis is limited by uncertainty in estimates of modeling long-term outcomes from shorter-term trials, focusing on diabetes and cardiovascular outcomes for which validated equations are available instead of all nutrition-associated health outcomes, and using data from food frequency questionnaires in the absence of 24-hour dietary recall data.