The contribution of diet upon the ability to reach extreme ages remains unclear, in part, because centenarians (people over the age of 100) may have markedly changed dietary patterns at the end of life. Studying centenarian offspring, who are predisposed to longer and healthier lives, allows for the investigation of diet earlier in the life course when it is more likely to have an effect on longevity. The primary objective of the study was to assess the difference in nutrient intake between centenarian offspring and a referent cohort in the New England Centenarian Study. Semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire data were collected on 280 centenarian offspring and 129 referent participants without familial longevity (mean age 72.6 years). The data were converted to 103 nutrient measurements. Wilcoxon rank sum test and generalized linear regression were used to evaluate the association between each nutrient measurement and cohort (offspring vs. referent). Principal component analysis identified eight components thus a corrected p-value of < 0.00625 was considered to be statistically significant. After adjustment of age, sex, and total caloric intake, centenarian offspring had higher intakes of dietary sources (i.e., not including supplements) of iron (p = 0.0060), niacin (p = 0.0016), riboflavin (p = 0.0016) and zinc (p = 0.0026) than referents. In conclusion, centenarian offspring have a higher reported intake of some vitamins and minerals, particularly those associated with energy metabolism and oxidant levels, in comparison with individuals without familial longevity. In addition to the genetic contributions to achieving extreme ages, intake of iron, niacin, riboflavin, and zinc may contribute to the longer life and health spans of offspring of centenarians. Future research should investigate how intake levels of these nutrients by centenarian offspring compare with nationally representative data and recommended daily allowances as well as metabolite measurements from blood.
Mississippi State University Extension Office of Nutrition Education (ONE) is utilizing geographic information systems (GIS) technology to determine site location eligibility for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education (SNAP-Ed) programming among low-resource audiences.Methods to determine eligibility for SNAP-Ed include counties determined by the USDA to be StrikeForce, in persistent poverty, or child persistent poverty. Any county that meet one of these criteria received approval for programming at all locations within the county. Counties that do not meet any of the three criteria could use approved schools (public schools whose enrollment was 50% or more free/reduced lunch) and locations allowed by SNAP-Ed guidance (SNAP offices, WIC offices, food banks/pantries, county health departments, etc.) for programming.It was proposed to use GIS technology (GIS Online) to determine eligibility for sites that did not meet any of the above criteria. Shapefiles were created based on the following: areas within a one-mile radius of an approved school and areas within a one-mile radius of a census tract where 50% or more of the population’s income was below 185% of the federal poverty level. The two shapefiles were added to an existing map layer of Mississippi counties. Sites that intersect with either of these areas are considered eligible for SNAP-Ed programming.Site locations can be validated in two ways: using a search engine for a single site or uploading addresses to be geocoded for multiple sites. Using these additional criteria to determine eligibility has increased the number of sites where ONE employees can conduct SNAP-Ed.Using GIS technology can help ONE identify eligible sites that are not currently being served.Future plans include adding additional criteria for eligibility and creating an interactive mapping tool ONE employees can use to determine eligibility without having to submit requests to the state office.
Suicide is the tenth leading cause of death in the US, over 48,000 Americans died by suicide in the year 2018. The number might still be underreported, since identifying the intent of death is difficult in the absence of a suicide note. Identifying intent becomes problematic specifically for opioid overdose cases given the drug’s abilities to cause respiratory depression. The ability to accurately identify and report on the prevalence of suicide has important implications for policy development in suicide prevention. The NVDRS is a state-based surveillance system funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to collect data on violent deaths from participating states. Currently CDC allows use of restricted access data to researchers for a preapproved analysis. In this study, we analyzed ~330,000 violent death data from 37 participating US states for 15 years (2003-2017). Using NVDRS data, we aim to identify and validate predictors of suicide in the opioid overdose cases through a combination of qualitative and quantitative analyses. The quantitative analysis begins with results from contingency tables examining the association between opiates and the manner of death coded by CDC staff. Next, we will perform a logit model predicting the probability of suicides and homicides resulting from opiates indicated as a causal factor controlling for socio-demographic factors. The qualitative method relies on the narratives generated from law enforcement and medical examiner reports. We identified a list of word/themes that might be distinctly present in suicide compared to homicide. This pattern/theme can later be used to develop a methodology for natural language processing and statistical text analysis to investigate the differential use of language (e.g., thematic content, syntax, sentiment, etc.) across death narratives and construct a measure of descriptive similarity between narratives within and across groups of decedents.
Marijuana legalization efforts have been increasingly successful in the United States. There are 33 states (plus the District of Columbia) that have approved medical marijuana in recent years. With the rising popularity of medical marijuana in a variety of conditions, we aimed to perform a systematic review of clinical studies on biological indicators of cannabis dosing and administration in pain management and opioid withdrawal. A comprehensive systematic search strategy was applied to identify relevant studies from medical literature databases. All identified documents were screened through a three-stage process. Starting with 338 papers, we ended up with 32 relevant studies. Due to a limited number of scientific publications in this specific field, we optimized and implemented an automated data extraction of clinical trial data from clinicaltrials.gov. After multiple iterations of filtering due to irrelevant conditions and interventions, 35 trials were finalized for the analysis. Among the 35 trials, 7 are opioid sparing trials and 28 trials use cannabis in pain management. Analysis of the scientific literature and clinical trials indicated that common uses of cannabis products in a variety of indications do not match with experimentally-validated supporting evidence, leading us to compile social media content relevant to cannabis use in pain management and opioid withdrawal. We are currently performing ontology analysis to discover the origin of the most prevailing themes in common uses of cannabis products. The end goal is to identify sources of social perception on use of cannabis in a variety of indications – ultimately culminating in a comparative analysis between scientific evidence and experience-based evidence in pain management by cannabis.
As the referendum-mandated departure of the United Kingdom (“Brexit”) from the European Union (EU) continues to unfold, international discourse surrounds the tradeoffs of EU membership, and whether European citizens perceive the benefits to be worth the costs. The preamble to the 1957 Treaty of Rome calls for “constant improvement of the living and working conditions” of member state citizens as well as collective action to reduce “differences existing between the various regions and the backwardness of the less favored regions.” This project will employ survey responses from all four European Quality of Life Survey (EQLS) iterations (2003, 2008, 2012, and 2016) in order to examine the extent to which enlargement helps meet the EU objective of improving living standards and the overall quality of life across the continent, with particular reference to the post-Communist New Member States (NMS) that joined the EU since 2004. The data set includes forty response variables across nine dimensions for twenty-eight EU member states, along with eight non-member states. Insights are captured through the systematic comparison of self-reported perceptions pooled at the country level before and after accession, as well as between member states and non-member states.
