BackgroundGovernments worldwide recommend daily consumption of fruit and vegetables. We examine whether this benefits health in the general population of England.MethodsCox regression was used to estimate HRs and 95% CI for an association between fruit and vegetable consumption and all-cause, cancer and cardiovascular mortality, adjusting for age, sex, social class, education, BMI, alcohol consumption and physical activity, in 65 226 participants aged 35+ years in the 2001–2008 Health Surveys for England, annual surveys of nationally representative random samples of the non-institutionalised population of England linked to mortality data (median follow-up: 7.7 years).ResultsFruit and vegetable consumption was associated with decreased all-cause mortality (adjusted HR for 7+ portions 0.67 (95% CI 0.58 to 0.78), reference category <1 portion). This association was more pronounced when excluding deaths within a year of baseline (0.58 (0.46 to 0.71)). Fruit and vegetable consumption was associated with reduced cancer (0.75 (0.59–0.96)) and cardiovascular mortality (0.69 (0.53 to 0.88)). Vegetables may have a stronger association with mortality than fruit (HR for 2 to 3 portions 0.81 (0.73 to 0.89) and 0.90 (0.82 to 0.98), respectively). Consumption of vegetables (0.85 (0.81 to 0.89) per portion) or salad (0.87 (0.82 to 0.92) per portion) were most protective, while frozen/canned fruit consumption was apparently associated with increased mortality (1.17 (1.07 to 1.28) per portion).ConclusionsA robust inverse association exists between fruit and vegetable consumption and mortality, with benefits seen in up to 7+ portions daily. Further investigations into the effects of different types of fruit and vegetables are warranted.
Comparing prevalence data from cross-sectional national studies indicates that dental erosion increases between different age cohorts of young people over time. Dietary associations with erosion are present but weak. Similarly, there is an association apparent between erosion, symptoms of gastro-oesophageal reflux and socio-demographic variables such as region of domicile, social class, and receipt of social benefits.
Clones of an isolate of Plasmodium falciparum from Mae Sod (Thailand) were prepared by a dilution procedure. Some of the parasite cultures thus obtained have been typed for the following characters: (i) electrophoretic variants of three enzymes; (ii) susceptibility to chloroquine and pyrimethamine; (iii) antigen diversities recognized by ten strain-specific monoclonal antibodies; (iv) presence or absence of knobs on infected erythrocytes and (v) two-dimensional PAGE variants of seven proteins. Amongst the clones there was variation involving each of these five characters. At least seven different types of clones were found in ten cultures produced by dilution. The amount of phenotypic variation within a single isolate has thus been shown to be surprisingly great. Variations in drug susceptibility and antigens are considered to be particularly important in view of their relevance to anti-malarial treatments.
Abstract. Sixty Plasmodium falciparum isolates, 20 each from Thailand, Zimbabwe, and Brazil, were characterized for 20 variant genetic markers, including the enzymes glucose phosphate isomerase, adenosine deaminase and peptidase, 11 other proteins detected by 2-dimensional electrophoresis (2D-P AGE), 2 merozoite surface antigens (MSA-l and MSA-2), one exported antigen (Exp-l), and sensitivity to the drugs chloroquine, pyrimethamine, and mefloquine. The study examines the extent of diversity betweenindividual isolates and the differences in the frequency of certain variants of the markers between the 3 countries. The principal conclusions to be drawn from the study are that there is extensive polymorphism in many of the genetically determined characters of this parasite, multiple infections with > 1 genetically distinct parasite are common, and there are geographical variations in the frequencies with which variant forms of certain markers occur.
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