25-hydroxyvitamin D deficiency prior to hospital admission is a significant predictor of sepsis in the critically ill. Additionally, patients with sepsis who are not vitamin D sufficient have an increased risk of mortality following critical care initiation.

No abstract

Higher sugar-sweetened beverage and fructose intake during pregnancy and in early childhood was associated with childhood asthma development independent of adiposity.

Aim:Alcohol consumption during pregnancy is sometimes associated with adverse outcomes in offspring, potentially mediated by epigenetic modifications. We aimed to investigate genome-wide DNA methylation in cord blood of newborns exposed to alcohol in utero.Materials & methods:We meta-analyzed information from six population-based birth cohorts within the Pregnancy and Childhood Epigenetics consortium.Results:We found no strong evidence of association at either individual CpGs or across larger regions of the genome.Conclusion:Our findings suggest no association between maternal alcohol consumption and offspring cord blood DNA methylation. This is in stark contrast to the multiple strong associations previous studies have found for maternal smoking, which is similarly socially patterned. However, it is possible that a combination of a larger sample size, higher doses, different timings of exposure, exploration of a different tissue and a more global assessment of genomic DNA methylation might show evidence of association.

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No abstract

The Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO)-wide Cohort Study (EWC), a collaborative research design comprising 69 cohorts in 31 consortia, was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2016 to improve children’s health in the United States. The EWC harmonizes extant data and collects new data using a standardized protocol, the ECHO-wide Cohort data Collection Protocol (EWCP). EWCP visits occur at least once per life stage, but the frequency and timing of the visits vary across cohorts. As of March 4, 2022, the EWC cohorts contributed data from 60,553 children and consented 29,622 children for new EWCP data and biospecimen collection. The median (interquartile range) age of EWCP-enrolled children was 7.5 years (3.7-11.1). Surveys, interviews, standardized examinations, laboratory analyses, and medical record abstraction are used to obtain information in five main outcome areas: pre-, peri-, and post-natal outcomes; neurodevelopment; obesity; airways; and positive health. Exposures include place- (e.g., air pollution, neighborhood socioeconomic status), family- (e.g., parental mental health), and individual-level (e.g., diet, genomics) factors.

Background-Ozone exposure is known to cause oxidative stress. We investigated the acute effects of ozone (O 3 ) on lung function in the elderly, a suspected risk group. We then investigated whether genetic polymorphisms of antioxidant genes (heme oxygenase-1 [HMOX1] and glutathione S-transferase pi [GSTP1]) modified these associations.