Effect of increasing fruit and vegetable intake by dietary intervention on nutritional biomarkers and attitudes to dietary change : a randomised trial

This work was funded by The Scottish Government Rural and Environmental Science and Analytical Sciences Division (RESAS) and supported by the Rank Prize Funds.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The developmental state, speculative urbanisation and the politics of displacement in gentrifying Seoul

What does gentrification mean under speculative urbanisation led by a strong developmental state? This paper analyses the contemporary history of Seoul’s urban redevelopment, arguing that new-build gentrification is an endogenous process embedded in Korea’s highly speculative urban development processes from the 1980s. Property owners, construction firms and local/central governments coalesce, facilitating the extraction of exchange value by closing the rent gap. Displacement of poorer owner-occupiers and tenants was requisite for the success of speculative accumulation. Furthermore, the paper also contends that Korea’s speculative urbanisation under the strong developmental (and later (neo-)liberalising) state has rendered popular resistance to displacement ineffective despite its initial success in securing state concessions. Examining the experience of Seoul in times of condensed industrialisation and speculative urbanisation helps inform the existing literature on gentrification by resorting to non-Western empirics

Body mass index as a predictor of healthy and disease-free life expectancy between ages 50 and 75 : a multicohort study

BACKGROUND: While many studies have shown associations between obesity and increased risk of morbidity and mortality, little comparable information is available on how body mass index (BMI) impacts health expectancy. We examined associations of BMI with healthy and chronic disease-free life expectancy in four European cohort studies. METHODS: Data were drawn from repeated waves of cohort studies in England, Finland, France and Sweden. BMI was categorized into four groups from normal weight (18.5-24.9 kg m(-2)) to obesity class II (>= 35 kg m(-2)). Health expectancy was estimated with two health indicators: sub-optimal self-rated health and having a chronic disease (cardiovascular disease, cancer, respiratory disease and diabetes). Multistate life table models were used to estimate sex-specific healthy life expectancy and chronic disease-free life expectancy from ages 50 to 75 years for each BMI category. RESULTS: The proportion of life spent in good perceived health between ages 50 and 75 progressively decreased with increasing BMI from 81% in normal weight men and women to 53% in men and women with class II obesity which corresponds to an average 7-year difference in absolute terms. The proportion of life between ages 50 and 75 years without chronic diseases decreased from 62 and 65% in normal weight men and women and to 29 and 36% in men and women with class II obesity, respectively. This corresponds to an average 9 more years without chronic diseases in normal weight men and 7 more years in normal weight women between ages 50 and 75 years compared to class II obese men and women. No consistent differences were observed between cohorts. CONCLUSIONS: Excess BMI is associated with substantially shorter healthy and chronic disease-free life expectancy, suggesting that tackling obesity would increase years lived in good health in populations.Peer reviewe

Ethnic Integration and Development in China

This paper pursues an inquiry into the relationship between ethnicity and development in the largest authoritarian country in the contemporary world, the People’s Republic of China. It engages the theoretical literature on ethnic diversity and development in general, but also pays special attention to political economy logics unique to authoritarian systems. Focusing on the western part of China over a decade since the launch of China’s Western Development Program (xibu da kaifa) in 2000, this paper utilizes the data from two censuses (2000 and 2010) together with nighttime streetlight imagery data to analyze the overall relationship between ethnicity and development provision. It also analyzes changes in such a relationship during this period. The paper finds that ethnic minority concentration negatively correlates with economic development in both the years 2000 and 2010 across the western provinces. It also finds that counties in non-autonomous provinces, which are historically more integrated with the rest of China than autonomous provinces, have a positive and systematic correlation between changes in ethnic minority concentration and changes in development during the 10-year period. The counties in autonomous provinces, on the other hand, show the opposite trend. Using three case studies of Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and Xinjiang, the paper concludes that although there is in general a tendency for ethnic minority concentrated areas to be less developed, ultimately which groups prosper more or less depends upon specific economic development and which political control logics the Chinese state implements

Investigation of Exomic Variants Associated with Overall Survival in Ovarian Cancer

BACKGROUND: While numerous susceptibility loci for epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) have been identified, few associations have been reported with overall survival. In the absence of common prognostic genetic markers, we hypothesize that rare coding variants may be associated with overall EOC survival and assessed their contribution in two exome-based genotyping projects of the Ovarian Cancer Association Consortium (OCAC). METHODS: The primary patient set (Set 1) included 14 independent EOC studies (4,293 patients) and 227,892 variants, and a secondary patient set (Set 2) included six additional EOC studies (1,744 patients) and 114,620 variants. Because power to detect rare variants individually is reduced, gene-level tests were conducted. Sets were analyzed separately at individual variants and by gene, and then combined with meta-analyses (73,203 variants and 13,163 genes overlapped). RESULTS: No individual variant reached genome-wide statistical significance. A SNP previously implicated to be associated with EOC risk and, to a lesser extent, survival, rs8170, showed the strongest evidence of association with survival and similar effect size estimates across sets (Pmeta = 1.1E-6, HRSet1 = 1.17, HRSet2 = 1.14). Rare variants in ATG2B, an autophagy gene important for apoptosis, were significantly associated with survival after multiple testing correction (Pmeta = 1.1E-6; Pcorrected = 0.01). CONCLUSIONS: Common variant rs8170 and rare variants in ATG2B may be associated with EOC overall survival, although further study is needed. IMPACT: This study represents the first exome-wide association study of EOC survival to include rare variant analyses, and suggests that complementary single variant and gene-level analyses in large studies are needed to identify rare variants that warrant follow-up study

Continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion therapy in type 1 diabetes: 2013 clinical guidelines and recommendations from the Association of Clinical Endocrinologists of South Africa (ACE-SA)

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Rare coding variants and X-linked loci associated with age at menarche

More than 100 loci have been identified for age at menarche by genome-wide association studies; however, collectively these explain only similar to 3% of the trait variance. Here we test two overlooked sources of variation in 192,974 European ancestry women: low-frequency proteincoding variants and X-chromosome variants. Five missense/nonsense variants (in ALMS1/LAMB2/TNRC6A/TACR3/PRKAG1) are associated with age at menarche (minor allele frequencies 0.08-4.6%; effect sizes 0.08-1.25 years per allele; P<5 x 10(-8)). In addition, we identify common X-chromosome loci at IGSF1 (rs762080, P = 9.4 x 10(-13)) and FAAH2 (rs5914101, P = 4.9 x 10(-10)). Highlighted genes implicate cellular energy homeostasis, post-transcriptional gene silencing and fatty-acid amide signalling. A frequently reported mutation in TACR3 for idiopathic hypogonatrophic hypogonadism (p.W275X) is associated with 1.25-year-later menarche (P = 2.8 x 10(-11)), illustrating the utility of population studies to estimate the penetrance of reportedly pathogenic mutations. Collectively, these novel variants explain similar to 0.5% variance, indicating that these overlooked sources of variation do not substantially explain the 'missing heritability' of this complex trait

Rare coding variants and X-linked loci associated with age at menarche.

More than 100 loci have been identified for age at menarche by genome-wide association studies; however, collectively these explain only ∼3% of the trait variance. Here we test two overlooked sources of variation in 192,974 European ancestry women: low-frequency protein-coding variants and X-chromosome variants. Five missense/nonsense variants (in ALMS1/LAMB2/TNRC6A/TACR3/PRKAG1) are associated with age at menarche (minor allele frequencies 0.08-4.6%; effect sizes 0.08-1.25 years per allele; P<5 × 10(-8)). In addition, we identify common X-chromosome loci at IGSF1 (rs762080, P=9.4 × 10(-13)) and FAAH2 (rs5914101, P=4.9 × 10(-10)). Highlighted genes implicate cellular energy homeostasis, post-transcriptional gene silencing and fatty-acid amide signalling. A frequently reported mutation in TACR3 for idiopathic hypogonatrophic hypogonadism (p.W275X) is associated with 1.25-year-later menarche (P=2.8 × 10(-11)), illustrating the utility of population studies to estimate the penetrance of reportedly pathogenic mutations. Collectively, these novel variants explain ∼0.5% variance, indicating that these overlooked sources of variation do not substantially explain the 'missing heritability' of this complex trait.UK sponsors (see article for overseas ones): This work made use of data and samples generated by the 1958 Birth Cohort (NCDS). Access to these resources was enabled via the 58READIE Project funded by Wellcome Trust and Medical Research Council (grant numbers WT095219MA and G1001799). A full list of the financial, institutional and personal contributions to the development of the 1958 Birth Cohort Biomedical resource is available at http://www2.le.ac.uk/projects/birthcohort. Genotyping was undertaken as part of the Wellcome Trust Case-Control Consortium (WTCCC) under Wellcome Trust award 076113, and a full list of the investigators who contributed to the generation of the data is available at www.wtccc.org.uk ... The Fenland Study is funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council, as well as by the Support for Science Funding programme and CamStrad. ... SIBS - CRUK ref: C1287/A8459 SEARCH - CRUK ref: A490/A10124 EMBRACE is supported by Cancer Research UK Grants C1287/A10118, C1287/A16563 and C1287/A17523. Genotyping was supported by Cancer Research - UK grant C12292/A11174D and C8197/A16565. Gareth Evans and Fiona Lalloo are supported by an NIHR grant to the Biomedical Research Centre, Manchester. The Investigators at The Institute of Cancer Research and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust are supported by an NIHR grant to the Biomedical Research Centre at The Institute of Cancer Research and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust. Ros Eeles and Elizabeth Bancroft are supported by Cancer Research UK Grant C5047/A8385. ... Generation Scotland - Scottish Executive Health Department, Chief Scientist Office, grant number CZD/16/6. Exome array genotyping for GS:SFHS was funded by the Medical Research Council UK. 23andMe - This work was supported in part by NIH Award 2R44HG006981-02 from the National Human Genome Research Institute.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from NPG via http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms875

Exome genotyping arrays to identify rare and low frequency variants associated with epithelial ovarian cancer risk

Rare and low frequency variants are not well covered in most germline genotyping arrays and are understudied in relation to epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) risk. To address this gap, we used genotyping arrays targeting rarer protein-coding variation in 8,165 EOC cases and 11,619 controls from the international Ovarian Cancer Association Consortium (OCAC). Pooled association analyses were conducted at the variant and gene level for 98,543 variants directly genotyped through two exome genotyping projects. Only common variants that represent or are in strong linkage disequilibrium (LD) with previously-identified signals at established loci reached traditional thresholds for exome-wide significance (P ( )P≥5.0 ×10 (-)  (7)) were detected for rare and low-frequency variants at 16 novel loci. Four rare missense variants were identified (ACTBL2 rs73757391 (5q11.2), BTD rs200337373 (3p25.1), KRT13 rs150321809 (17q21.2) and MC2R rs104894658 (18p11.21)), but only MC2R rs104894668 had a large effect size (OR = 9.66). Genes most strongly associated with EOC risk included ACTBL2 (PAML = 3.23 × 10 (-)  (5); PSKAT-o = 9.23 × 10 (-)  (4)) and KRT13 (PAML = 1.67 × 10 (-)  (4); PSKAT-o = 1.07 × 10 (-)  (5)), reaffirming variant-level analysis. In summary, this large study identified several rare and low-frequency variants and genes that may contribute to EOC susceptibility, albeit with possible small effects. Future studies that integrate epidemiology, sequencing, and functional assays are needed to further unravel the unexplained heritability and biology of this disease