Dietary and plasma carboxymethyl lysine (dCML, pCML) and plasma tumor necrosis factor-α (pTNF-α) may be associated with obesity in affluent society. However, evidence in women from low-middle income countries with predominantly traditional diets is lacking. We investigated the mediator effects of dCML, pCML and pTNF-α on body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC) among Indonesian women. A cross-sectional study was conducted among 235 non-diabetic, non-anemic and non-smoking women aged 19–50 years from selected mountainous and coastal areas of West Sumatra and West Java. Dietary CML, pCML, pTNF-α were obtained from 2 × 24-h recalls, ultra-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, respectively. Between-group differences were analyzed by the Chi-square or Mann-Whitney test and mediator effects by Structural Equation Modeling. The medians and interquartile-ranges of dCML, pCML and pTNF-α were 2.2 (1.7–3.0) mg/day, 22.2 (17.2–28.2) ng/mL and 0.68 (0.52–1.00) IU/mL, respectively, and significantly higher in the WC ≥ 80 cm than in the WC < 80 cm group, but not in BMI ≥ 25 kg/m2 compared to BMI < 25 kg/m2 group. Plasma CML and pTNF-α were positively and directly related to WC (β = 0.21 [95% CI: 0.09, 0.33] and β = 0.23 [95% CI: 0.11, 0.35], respectively). Dietary CML that correlated with dry-heat processing and cereals as the highest contributions was positively related to WC (β = 0.33 [95% CI: 0.12, 0.83]). Ethnicity, level of education, intake of fat, and intake of energy contributed to dCML, pCML and pTNF-α, and subsequently affected WC, while only ethnicity contributed to BMI through dCML, pCML and pTNF-α (β = 0.07 [95% CI: 0.01, 0.14]). A positive direct effect of dCML on pCML and of pCML and pTNF-α on WC was seen among Indonesian women. Dietary CML seems to have several paths that indirectly influence the increases in WC if compared to BMI. Thus, intake of CML-rich foods should be reduced, or the foods consumed in moderate amounts to avoid the risk of central obesity in this population.

The aim of this study was to conduct a bibliometric analysis of the scientific articles on advanced glycation end products (AGEs) and obesity. English-language journal articles about AGEs and obesity were retrieved from the Scopus database. The OpenRefine application was used for data cleaning, the VOSviewer software program for analysis of the trends of year of publication, country, institution, journal, authors, references, and keywords. Microsoft Excel and Tableau Public were applied for the visualizing of the publication trends. Data collection was performed on 3 February 2022, from a total of 1170 documents. The Mann–Whitney test and Spearman test with software SPSS ver.28.0.1.1. were used to assess the relation between open access journal statuses, years of publications, and CiteScore. The results of the study showed that there was an increase in studies on processed foods, including AGEs and obesity. The United States was the country with the largest contribution in this field, with the highest number of citations. The Nutrients journal published the largest number of articles on this topic, particularly in the last two years. The present focus of the studies is on ultra-processed foods. The open access journals have younger medians of the year of publication and higher medians for number of citations than do closed access journals (p < 0.001 and p < 0.05, respectively). A strong negative association was seen between CiteScore and the year of publication (r = −0.64 [95%CI: −0.67, −0.60]), p < 0.001. We present this bibliometric analysis to furnish the most recent data on the description, visualization, and analysis of AGEs and obesity.

Background The prevalence of diabetes mellitus is increasing in Indonesia and the known contributing factors are age, physical activity, smoking, and diet. Education plays a role in increasing knowledge, and might influence one's attitudes and practices. Studies on the role of knowledge, attitude and balanced diet practices are scarce in Indonesia and still remain controversial. The aim of the study was to determine the relationship between education and knowledge and their effects on attitude and balanced diet practices. Method This was a cross sectional study that involved 56 women aged 18 years and above. Questionnaires and modified structured questionnaires were used to assess sociodemographic factors, knowledge, attitudes, and practice. Scores of education, knowledge, attitude, and practice were categorized as low and sufficient. Data were analyzed using SPSS ver.28.0.1.1. Simple and multivariate logistic regression were used to assess the relationship between sufficient scores and sociodemographic factors: age, education, working status, income, and disease history. Results Median age of women in our study was 43 years old with 33.9% of them had minimal education level of graduated Diploma. Around 28.6% and 17.1% of subjects had low knowledge and attitude, respectively, and 81.4% had poor balanced diet practices. Education was positively associated with knowledge levels (adjusted OR = 5.35 [95%CI: 1.05, 27.25], p=0.04). However, knowledge was not found associated with attitude ((OR = 2.16 [95%CI: 0.24, 19.38], p=0.49) and attitude was not found associated with balanced diet practices, even after the adjustment with covariates (adjusted OR = 2.27 [95%CI: 0.25, 20.84], p=0.469). Conclusion Our study showed that the level of education was positively associated with knowledge but we have not found association between knowledge and attitude and between attitudes and balanced diet practice. A program needs to be designed to increase attitude and balanced diet practices, that can be used to control the development of diabetes in this population.

It's been two years since the world faced the Covid-19 pandemic caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Corona Virus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) which is able to affect the human immune system. One strategy in overcoming this pandemic is to pay attention to the intake of nutrients that are suitable to support the activation of the immune system in fighting the virus. Since the pandemic, vitamin D has been widely consumed to boost the body's immunity. This compound is able to improve the function of physical barriers, modulate the immune response, both natural and adaptive, to fight infections, allergies, malignancies and autoimmune. Recently it has been widely revealed that vitamin D deficiency was associated with various diseases. The occurrence of vitamin D deficiency in children may be due to a lack of awareness about the importance of vitamin D for children's health and this condition is certainly related to parental knowledge. The purpose of this outreach was to increase parents' knowledge about the role of vitamin D for children's health, especially during the pandemic. This program carried out online at Primary school and Junior high school of Tarsisius 1, Central Jakarta. Parental knowledge about the role of vitamin D was assessed using a modified questionnaires from Hussein et al. 2018, before and after the outreach. Data collection using Google Form, data cleaning with Open Refine software and analysis with SPSS software version 23. The Mann-Whitney test obtained p<0,001 so it was concluded that knowledge of vitamin D between the two groups differed significantly