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An efficient and robust method to measure vitamin D (25-hydroxy vitamin D3(25(OH)D3) and 25-hydroxy vitamin D2in dried blood spots (DBS) has been developed and applied in the pan-European multi-centre, internet-based, personalised nutrition intervention study Food4Me. The method includes calibration with blood containing endogenous 25(OH)D3, spotted as DBS and corrected for haematocrit content. The methodology was validated following international standards. The performance characteristics did not reach those of the current gold standard liquid chromatography-MS/MS in plasma for all parameters, but were found to be very suitable for status-level determination under field conditions. DBS sample quality was very high, and 3778 measurements of 25(OH)D3were obtained from 1465 participants. The study centre and the season within the study centre were very good predictors of 25(OH)D3levels (P3level on 20 January and a maximum on 21 July. The seasonal amplitude varied from centre to centre. The largest difference between winter and summer levels was found in Germany and the smallest in Poland. The model was cross-validated to determine the consistency of the predictions and the performance of the DBS method. The Pearson’s correlation between the measured values and the predicted values wasr0·65, and thesdof their differences was 21·2 nmol/l. This includes the analytical variation and the biological variation within subjects. Overall, DBS obtained by unsupervised sampling of the participants at home was a viable methodology for obtaining vitamin D status information in a large nutritional study.

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are thought to be a driving force in the aging process. In transgenic Caenorhabditis elegans expressing green fluorescent protein (GFP) under control of the hsp-16.2 promoter (CL2070) 100 muM of the ROS-generator juglone induced GFP-expression. This was associated with translocation of DAF-16 to the nucleus as visualized in a transgenic strain expressing a DAF-16::GFP fusion protein (TJ356) and with increased cellular levels of reduced glutathione. RNA-interference for DAF-16 in CL2070 blocked the juglone-induced HSP-16.2 expression and the increase in glutathione levels. Higher concentrations of juglone did not further increase the adaptive responses but caused premature death, indicating hormetic adaptations unless the stressor exceeds the intrinsic protective capacity. The addition of the ROS-scavenger ascorbic acid finally blocked lifespan reductions and all of the adaptations to juglone stressing that ROS are indeed the molecular species that require protective response.

Improving lifestyle behaviours has considerable potential for reducing the global burden of non-communicable diseases, promoting better health across the life-course and increasing well-being. However, realising this potential will require the development, testing and implementation of much more effective behaviour change interventions than are used conventionally. Therefore, the aim of this study was to conduct a multi-centre, web-based, proof-of-principle study of personalised nutrition (PN) to determine whether providing more personalised dietary advice leads to greater improvements in eating patterns and health outcomes compared to conventional population-based advice. A total of 5,562 volunteers were screened across seven European countries; the first 1,607 participants who fulfilled the inclusion criteria were recruited into the trial. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the following intervention groups for a 6-month period: Level 0-control group-receiving conventional, non-PN advice; Level 1-receiving PN advice based on dietary intake data alone; Level 2-receiving PN advice based on dietary intake and phenotypic data; and Level 3-receiving PN advice based on dietary intake, phenotypic and genotypic data. A total of 1,607 participants had a mean age of 39.8 years (ranging from 18 to 79 years). Of these participants, 60.9 % were women and 96.7 % were from white-European background. The mean BMI for all randomised participants was 25.5 kg m(-2), and 44.8 % of the participants had a BMI >/= 25.0 kg m(-2). Food4Me is the first large multi-centre RCT of web-based PN. The main outcomes from the Food4Me study will be submitted for publication during 2015.

Background: Despite numerous healthy eating campaigns, the prevalence of diets high in saturated fatty acids, sugar, and salt and low in fiber, fruit, and vegetables remains high. With more people than ever accessing the Internet, Web-based dietary assessment instruments have the potential to promote healthier dietary behaviors via personalized dietary advice.Objective: The objectives of this study were to develop a dietary feedback system for the delivery of consistent personalized dietary advice in a multicenter study and to examine the impact of automating the advice system.Methods: The development of the dietary feedback system included 4 components: (1) designing a system for categorizing nutritional intakes; (2) creating a method for prioritizing 3 nutrient-related goals for subsequent targeted dietary advice; (3) constructing decision tree algorithms linking data on nutritional intake to feedback messages; and (4) developing personal feedback reports. The system was used manually by researchers to provide personalized nutrition advice based on dietary assessment to 369 participants during the Food4Me randomized controlled trial, with an automated version developed on completion of the study.Results: Saturated fatty acid, salt, and dietary fiber were most frequently selected as nutrient-related goals across the 7 centers. Average agreement between the manual and automated systems, in selecting 3 nutrient-related goals for personalized dietary advice across the centers, was highest for nutrient-related goals 1 and 2 and lower for goal 3, averaging at 92%, 87%, and 63%, respectively. Complete agreement between the 2 systems for feedback advice message selection averaged at 87% across the centers.Conclusions: The dietary feedback system was used to deliver personalized dietary advice within a multi-country study. Overall, there was good agreement between the manual and automated feedback systems, giving promise to the use of automated systems for personalizing dietary advice.Trial Registration: Clinicaltrials.gov NCT01530139; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01530139 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/6ht5Dgj8I)