A systematic review, meta-analysis, and meta-regression of the impact of diurnal intermittent fasting during Ramadan on body weight in healthy subjects aged 16 years and above

PURPOSE: Studies on the effect of Ramadan diurnal intermittent fasting (RDIF) on body weight have yielded conflicting results. Therefore, we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to estimate the effect size of body weight changes in healthy, non-athletic Muslims practicing Ramadan fasting, and to assess the effect of covariates such as age, sex, fasting time duration, season, and country, using subgroup analysis, and meta-regression. Covariate adjustments were performed to explain the variability of weight change in response to Ramadan fasting.METHODS: CINAHL, Cochrane, EBSCOhost, EMBASE, Google Scholar, ProQuest Medical, PubMed/MEDLINE, ScienceDirect, Scopus, and Web of Science databases were searched from date of inception in 1950 to the end of August 2019.RESULTS: Eighty-five studies, conducted in 25 countries during 1982-2019, were identified. RDIF yielded a significant, but small reduction in body weight (K = 85, number of subjects, N = 4176 (aged 16-80 years), Hedges' g =- 0.360, 95% confidence interval (CI) - 0.405 to - 0.315, I2 = 45.6%), this effect size translates into difference in means of - 1.022 kg (95% CI - 1.164 kg to - 0.880 kg). Regression analysis for moderator covariates revealed that fasting time (min/day) is a significant (P &lt; 0.05) moderator for weight change at the end of Ramadan, while age and sex are not. Variable effects for the season and country were found.CONCLUSION: RDIF may confer a significant small reduction in body weight in non-athletic healthy people aged 16 years and above, directly associated with fasting time and variably correlated with the season, and country.</p

Prevalence, years lived with disability, and trends in anaemia burden by severity and cause, 1990-2021: findings from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021

Background Anaemia is a major health problem worldwide. Global estimates of anaemia burden are crucial for developing appropriate interventions to meet current international targets for disease mitigation. We describe the prevalence, years lived with disability, and trends of anaemia and its underlying causes in 204 countries and territories. Methods We estimated population-level distributions of haemoglobin concentration by age and sex for each location from 1990 to 2021. We then calculated anaemia burden by severity and associated years lived with disability (YLDs). With data on prevalence of the causes of anaemia and associated cause-specific shifts in haemoglobin concentrations, we modelled the proportion of anaemia attributed to 37 underlying causes for all locations, years, and demographics in the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021. Findings In 2021, the global prevalence of anaemia across all ages was 24·3% (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 23·9–24·7), corresponding to 1·92 billion (1·89–1·95) prevalent cases, compared with a prevalence of 28·2% (27·8–28·5) and 1·50 billion (1·48–1·52) prevalent cases in 1990. Large variations were observed in anaemia burden by age, sex, and geography, with children younger than 5 years, women, and countries in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia being particularly affected. Anaemia caused 52·0 million (35·1–75·1) YLDs in 2021, and the YLD rate due to anaemia declined with increasing Socio-demographic Index. The most common causes of anaemia YLDs in 2021 were dietary iron deficiency (cause-specific anaemia YLD rate per 100 000 population: 422·4 [95% UI 286·1–612·9]), haemoglobinopathies and haemolytic anaemias (89·0 [58·2–123·7]), and other neglected tropical diseases (36·3 [24·4–52·8]), collectively accounting for 84·7% (84·1–85·2) of anaemia YLDs. Interpretation Anaemia remains a substantial global health challenge, with persistent disparities according to age, sex, and geography. Estimates of cause-specific anaemia burden can be used to design locally relevant health interventions aimed at improving anaemia management and prevention. Funding Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Plasma-derived extracellular vesicles from Plasmodium vivax patients signal spleen fibroblasts via NF-kB facilitating parasite cytoadherence

Plasmodium vivax is the most widely distributed human malaria parasite. Previous studies have shown that circulating microparticles during P. vivax acute attacks are indirectly associated with severity. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are therefore major components of circulating plasma holding insights into pathological processes. Here, we demonstrate that plasma-derived EVs from Plasmodium vivax patients (PvEVs) are preferentially uptaken by human spleen fibroblasts (hSFs) as compared to the uptake of EVs from healthy individuals. Moreover, this uptake induces specific upregulation of ICAM-1 associated with the translocation of NF-kB to the nucleus. After this uptake, P. vivax-infected reticulocytes obtained from patients show specific adhesion properties to hSFs, reversed by inhibiting NF-kB translocation to the nucleus. Together, these data provide physiological EV-based insights into the mechanisms of human malaria pathology and support the existence of P. vivax-adherent parasite subpopulations in the microvasculature of the human spleen.We also thank the Advanced Light Microscopy Unit at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG, Barcelona, Spain) for access to the Leica STED microscope. H.T. (2017FI_B1_00202) and M.D.V. (2017FI_B2_00029) are predoctoral fellows supported by Secretaria d’Universitats i Recerca del Departament d’Economia iCreixement, Generalitat de Catalunya. M.G.L. is a postdoctoral fellow supported by the Plan Estratégico (PERIS) of the Generalitat de Catalunya. I.A.H. is a predoctoral fellow supported by the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (FPI BES-2017081657). J.C. is supported by European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 793830. MSP3 and PHIST antibodies were generated with funding from NIH to M.R.G. (RO1A124710 and RO1AI0555994). The CRG/UPF Proteomics Unit is part of the Spanish Infrastructure for Omics Technologies (ICTS OmicsTech) and it is a member of the ProteoRed PRB3 consortium which is supported by grant PT17/0019 of the PE I+D+i 2013–2016 from the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII) and ERDF. We acknowledge support from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, “Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa 2013–2017”, SEV-2012-0208, and “Secretaria d’Universitats i Recerca del Departament d’Economia i Coneixement de la Generalitat de Catalunya” (2017SGR595). This research is part of ISGlobal’s Programme on the Molecular Mechanisms of Malaria which is partially supported by the Fundación Ramón Areces. Work in the laboratory of Carmen Fernandez-Becerra and Hernando A del Portillo is funded by the Ministerio Español de Economía y Competitividad (SAF2016-80655-R)

Development of an expressed sequence tag (EST) resource for wheat (Triticum aestivum L.): EST generation, unigene analysis, probe selection and bioinformatics for a 16,000-locus bin-delineated map.

This report describes the rationale, approaches, organization, and resource development leading to a large-scale deletion bin map of the hexaploid (2n = 6x = 42) wheat genome (Triticum aestivum L.). Accompanying reports in this issue detail results from chromosome bin-mapping of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) representing genes onto the seven homoeologous chromosome groups and a global analysis of the entire mapped wheat EST data set. Among the resources developed were the first extensive public wheat EST collection (113,220 ESTs). Described are protocols for sequencing, sequence processing, EST nomenclature, and the assembly of ESTs into contigs. These contigs plus singletons (unassembled ESTs) were used for selection of distinct sequence motif unigenes. Selected ESTs were rearrayed, validated by 5' and 3' sequencing, and amplified for probing a series of wheat aneuploid and deletion stocks. Images and data for all Southern hybridizations were deposited in databases and were used by the coordinators for each of the seven homoeologous chromosome groups to validate the mapping results. Results from this project have established the foundation for future developments in wheat genomics