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Objective: The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends a daily intake of at least 400 g of vegetables and fruit. The aim of this paper was to evaluate the public health benefit of meeting this WHO recommendation by applying a statistical method that combines estimated intake distributions and simulated intake changes. Design and setting: The benefit of an increased consumption of vegetables and fruit was quantified by the preventable proportion of diseases. This proportion was estimated by a general formula derived in the paper that incorporates individual relative risks. Three different strategies of increasing usual intake were simulated and compared. The first strategy assumes that all individuals increase their intake by the same amount, the second assumes a constant increase among low consumers, and the third simulates individual increments necessary to meet the WHO recommendation. Calculations were made for three different scenarios with varying relative risks. Results: The third simulation strategy turned out to be the most appropriate one to quantify the potential health gain of the current dietary recommendation. Applying this strategy to prevent cancer, the proportion of preventable cases was country-specific. Estimates for France and Sweden were 21.9% and 19.3%, respectively, which are somewhat lower than the non-specific figure published by the World Cancer Research Fund. Conclusions: To improve estimates of the preventable proportion of diseases, the estimation formula presented here can be applied. Its application requires intake data to estimate the initial intake distribution in the population and to simulate adequate dietary changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An incidence rate ratio (IRR) is a meaningful effect measure in epidemiology if it is adjusted for all important confounders. For evaluation of the impact of adjustment, adjusted IRRs should be compared with crude IRRs. The aim of this methodological study was to present a statistical approach for testing the equality of adjusted and crude IRRs and to derive a confidence interval for the ratio of the two IRRs. The method can be extended to compare two differently adjusted IRRs and, thus, to evaluate the effect of additional adjustment. The method runs immediately on existing software. To illustrate the application of this approach, the authors studied adjusted IRRs for two risk factors of type 2 diabetes using data from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition-Potsdam Study from 2005. The statistical method described may be helpful as an additional tool for analyzing epidemiologic cohort data and for interpreting results obtained from Cox regression models with adjustment for different covariates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although commercialized inhibitors of active site serine β-lactamases are currently used in coadministration with antibiotic therapy, no clinically useful inhibitors of metallo-β-lactamases (MBLs) have yet been discovered. In this paper, we investigated the inhibitory effect of mercaptophosphonate derivatives against the three subclasses of MBLs (B1, B2, and B3). All 14 tested mercaptophosphonates, with the exception of 1a, behaved as competitive inhibitors for the three subclasses. Apart from 13and 21, all the mercaptophosphonates tested exhibit a good inhibitory effect on the subclass B2 MBL CphA with low inhibition constants (Ki< 15 μM). Interestingly, compound 18turned out to be a potent broad spectrum MBL inhibitor. The crystallographic structures of the CphA−10aand CphA−18complexes indicated that the sulfur atom of 10aand the phosphonato group of 18interact with the Zn2誉, respectively. Molecular modeling studies of the interactions between compounds 10aand 18and the VIM-4 (B1), CphA (B2), and FEZ-1 (B3) enzymes brought to light different binding modes depending on the enzyme and the inhibitor, consistent with the crystallographic structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractObjectiveTo investigate the association of a posterioridietary patterns with overall survival of older Europeans.Design and settingThis is a multi-centre cohort study. Cox regression analysis was used to investigate the association of the prevailing, a posteriori-derived, plant-based dietary pattern with all-cause mortality in a population of subjects who were 60 years or older at recruitment to the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC-Elderly cohort). Analyses controlled for all known potential risk factors.SubjectsIn total, 74?607 men and women, 60 years or older at enrolment and without previous coronary heart disease, stroke or cancer, with complete information about dietary intakes and potentially confounding variables, and with known survival status as of December 2003, were included in the analysis.ResultsAn increase in the score which measures the adherence to the plant-based diet was associated with a lower overall mortality, a one standard deviation increment corresponding to a statistically significant reduction of 14% (95% confidence interval 5?23%). In country-specific analyses the apparent association was stronger in Greece, Spain, Denmark and The Netherlands, and absent in the UK and Germany.ConclusionsGreater adherence to the plant-based diet that was defined a posterioriin this population of European elders is associated with lower all-cause mortality. This dietary score is moderately positively correlated with the Modified Mediterranean Diet Score that has been constructed a prioriand was also shown to be beneficial for the survival of the same EPIC-Elderly cohort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background International multicentre studies on diet and cancer are relatively new in epidemiological research. They offer a series of challenging methodological issues for the evaluation of the association between dietary exposure and disease outcomes, which can both be quite heterogeneous across different geographical regions. This requires considerable work to standardize dietary measurements at the food and the nutrient levels. Methods Within the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC), a calibration study was set up to express individual dietary intakes according to the same reference scale. A linear regression calibration model was used to correct the association between diet and disease for measurement errors in dietary exposures. In the present work, we describe an approach for analysing the EPIC data, using as an example the evaluation of the association between fish intake and colorectal cancer incidence. Results Sex- and country-specific attenuation factors ranged from 0.083 to 0.784, with values overall higher for men compared with women. Hazard ratio estimates of colorectal cancer for a 10 g/day increase in fish intake were 0.97 [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.95–0.99] and 0.93 (0.88–0.98), before and after calibration, respectively. Conclusions In a multicentre study, the diet/disease association can be evaluated by exploiting the whole variability of intake over the entire study. Calibration may reduce between-centre heterogeneity in the diet–disease relationship caused by differential impact of measurement errors across cohorts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]