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BACKGROUND: Undernutrition is the outcome of insufficient food intake and recurrent infectious diseases. The baseline levels of undernutrition remain so high that Ethiopia still needs to continue substantial investment in nutrition.Therefore, the aim of this study was to obtain estimates of over-time trends in the prevalence of undernutrition in Ethiopia and to determine risk factors for undernutrition among children of under five years of age.

These results may suggest the favorable effects of the multispecies probiotic supplementation for 6 months on bone health in postmenopausal women due to slowing down the rate of bone turnover.

Preschool children who watch more TV are fatter and are less active, and activity influences TEE. However, despite TV viewing being linked to lower physical activity, the relation between TV viewing and fatness is not mediated by physical activity. The results suggest that a relation between TV viewing and fatness is more likely to be due to an effect on food intake.

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Background/Aims Psychobiotics are probiotics or prebiotics that, upon ingestion in adequate amounts, yield positive influence on mental health via microbiota-gut-brain axis regulation to modulate the circulating cytokines, chemokines, neurotransmitters, or neurotrophins levels. We have recently shown that a psychobiotic combination (Lactobacillus helveticus R0052 and Bifidobacterium longum R0175; CEREBIOME) significantly improved depression symptoms in patients with depression. Recent animal data suggest the influence of the gut microbiota on brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which was shown to correlate with antidepressant response in depressive patients. Therefore, we conducted this exploratory post hoc analysis of BDNF levels to clarify the mechanism of action of this psychobiotic in our cohort. Methods Our study was a double-blind, randomized controlled trial of patients with low-to-moderate depression receiving either a probiotic combination, prebiotic or placebo. From the 110 patients randomized in the trial, 78 were included in this post hoc analysis (probiotic, n = 28; prebiotic and placebo, n = 25). We compared serum BDNF levels from participants at baseline and endpoint, and assessed the Pearson correlation between depression severity and BDNF levels for each intervention. Results We found that post-intervention BDNF levels were significantly different between groups (P < 0.001). Furthermore, BDNF levels increased significantly in the probiotic group compared to both the prebiotic (P < 0.001) and placebo groups (P = 0.021), which inversely correlated with depression severity compared to placebo (ANOVA/ANCOVA, P = 0.012; Pearson, r =-0.79, P < 0.001). In the prebiotic group, BDNF levels reduced but not significantly compared with placebo group (P > 0.05). Conclusion Eight-week supplementation with B. longum and L. helveticus in depressive patients improved depression symptoms, possibly by increasing BDNF levels.

Background: Assortative mating is the nonrandom mating of individuals with respect to phenotype and cultural factors. Previous studies of assortative mating for obesity have indicated that it may have contributed to the obesity epidemic. However, those studies all used body mass index or skinfold thicknesses to measure obesity and did not always account for potential confounding factors. Objective: We aimed to assess the level of assortative mating for obesity by using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry to characterize body composition. Design: This was a cross-sectional study of 42 couples. Results: Raw spousal correlations showed assortative mating for age, weight, body mass index, lean mass, and fat mass. Removing the effect of age on fat mass strengthened the spousal correlation (r ҃ 0.405). Social homogamy did not appear to be important, because in this sample there was no significant effect of area of origin on age-corrected fat and lean tissue masses for either sex. Regional body-composition analysis showed that subjects with disproportionately large arms (both fat and lean) assortatively mated with partners with the same trait. However, both men and women with high lean tissue in their arms assortatively mated with partners that had a disproportionately low fat content in their legs. Conclusions: These data confirm that assortative mating for obesity exists when dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry is used to evaluate adiposity. We hypothesize that assortative mating may have contributed to the obesity epidemic because the time course of obesity development has shifted progressively earlier, allowing singles in their late teens and early twenties to more easily distinguish partners with obese and lean phenotypes.Am J Clin Nutr 2007;86: 316 -23.

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