Nutrition
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Acute intake of fructooligosaccharide and partially hydrolyzed guar gum on gastrointestinal transit: A randomized crossover clinical trial.
Dietary fibers, such as fructooligosaccharide (FOS) and partially hydrolyzed guar gum (PHGG) have several gastrointestinal functions. The aims of this study were to evaluate the effect of acute ingestion of FOS and PHGG on the percentage of gastric emptying and small intestinal transit and to evaluate the effect of these dietary fibers on the levels of intestinal hormones-active glucagon-like peptide-1, pancreatic polypeptide, and gastric inhibitory peptide-and their effect on feelings of hunger and satiety and the desire to eat. ⋯ The acute intake of FOS increased gastric emptying, whereas both FOS and PHGG reduced small intestine transit without altering the levels of intestinal hormones, hunger feelings and satiety, or the desire to eat.
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Review
Assessment of body composition: Intrinsic methodological limitations and statistical pitfalls.
Evaluation of body composition (BC) is crucial for an adequate assessment of nutritional status and its alterations, to ensure the optimal tailoring of nutritional therapies during several pathologic conditions. The need for feasible and reliable methods for BC measurement, which could be applied either in healthcare across the lifespan as well as in clinical research and epidemiologic studies, has led to the development of various techniques. Unfortunately, they have not always produced equivalent results due to the fact that they are based on completely different principles or suffer intrinsic biases related to specific conditions. ⋯ Finally, the need to compare the data obtained by new techniques to a reference standard has produced a further bias, due to a systematic misinterpretation of the statistical methods in the attempt to correlate the various techniques. In this context, the most used statistical methods for the comparison between different techniques have been Pearson's correlation test, the more recent intraclass correlation coefficient, Lin's concordance correlation coefficient method, and the Bland-Altman analysis. The aim of this review was to offer a summary of the methods that are mostly used in clinical practice to measure BC with the intent to give appropriate suggestions when statistical methods are used to interpret data, and underline pitfalls and limitations.
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Due to the increased prevalence of obesity in the world, bariatric surgeries are on the rise and necessitate life-long surveillance for deficiencies; hence the recommended vitamin supplementation in these patients. However, inadequate multivitamin supplementation may induce vitamin B6 overload. ⋯ Pyridoxin overload is not possible through food-derived pyridoxin; hence, combined with the fact that most vitamin supplements contain vitamin B6, inadequate vitamin supplementation is likely the cause of the observed increase in overdoses. High doses of vitamin B6 can induce polyneuropathy, particularly targeting motor neurons; thus, the increase of overdoses is worrying. In light of the possible risks and the ease with which these could be averted (better formulation of supplements), the precaution principle requires a definition of clear guidelines for vitamin supplementation, especially in patients undergoing bariatric surgery.
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Nutrition labels advise consumers about the nutritional value of packaged foods and their contribution to the overall composition of the diet. They have been proposed as an instrument for the promotion of healthy diets and as a fundamental tool in the prevention of obesity and diet-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs). ⋯ Although nutrition science investigates individual foods or nutrients, when communicating to the public most of the significant evidence of the favorable health effect largely depends on dietary patterns and not on a single food component or individual nutrient. Therefore, we suggest that a new tool based on positive communication should be developed and implemented to highlight the importance of the diet as a complex matrix.
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With increasing life expectancy of patients with cystic fibrosis (CF), gastrointestinal manifestations of the disease have been increasingly brought into focus. This was a systematic review of the PubMed database and ongoing phase III clinical trials that aimed to summarize recent (published after June 1 2016) studies reporting the effects of nutritional interventions on anthropometric measures (weight, height, and body mass index) in patients with CF. ⋯ Key results supported the benefits of comprehensive, individualized nutritional plans, high-fat, high-calorie diet including high-quality carbohydrates, and enteric tube feeding (albeit the latter was derived from observational studies only). In contrast, the supplementation of probiotics, lipids, docosahexaenoic, glutathione, or antioxidant-enriched multivitamin appeared to have little effect on anthropometric measures.