What is in a food store name? Leveraging large language models to enhance food environment data.

Introduction: It is not uncommon to repurpose administrative food data to create food environment datasets in the health department and research settings; however, the available administrative data are rarely categorized in a way that supports meaningful insight or action, and ground-truthing or manually reviewing an entire city or neighborhood is rate-limiting to essential operations and analysis. We show that such categorizations should be viewed as a classification problem well addressed by recent advances in natural language processing and deep learning-with the advent of large language models (LLMs).

Methods: To demonstrate how to automate the process of categorizing food stores, we use the foundation model BERT to give a first approximation to such categorizations: a best guess by store name.

Concepts, Characterizations, and Cautions: A Public Health Guide and Glossary for Planning Food Environment Measurement.

Background: There is no singular approach to measuring the food environment suitable for all studies. Understanding terminology, methodology, and common issues is crucial to choosing the best approach.

Objective: This review is designed to support a shared understanding so diverse multi-institutional teams engaged in food environment measurement can justify their measurement choices and have informed discussions about reasons for measurement strategies to vary across projects.

Hemoglobin and hepcidin have good validity and utility for diagnosing iron deficiency anemia among pregnant women.

Background/objectives: Screening and diagnosis of iron deficiency anemia (IDA) is cumbersome as it may require testing for hemoglobin, ferritin, and an inflammatory biomarker. The aim of this study was to compare the diagnostic capacity of hematologic biomarkers to detect IDA among pregnant women in Tanzania.

Subjects/methods: We pooled data from an iron supplementation trial of 1500 iron-replete pregnant woman and a prospective cohort of 600 iron-deficient pregnant women.

Nutritional, Socioeconomic, and Delivery Characteristics Are Associated with Neurodevelopment in Tanzanian Children.

Objectives: To evaluate the hypothesis that various maternal, socioeconomic, delivery, and infant nutritional characteristics are associated with early childhood development in young Tanzanian children.

Study Design: We performed a prospective cohort study among 206 HIV-exposed, uninfected and 247 HIV-unexposed Tanzanian infants who had been enrolled in 2 separate micronutrient trials (NCT00197730 and NCT00421668). Trained nurses administered culturally modified Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development, 3rd edition (BSID-III), to evaluate cognitive, motor, and language development at 15 months of age.

Markers of Environmental Enteric Dysfunction Are Associated With Neurodevelopmental Outcomes in Tanzanian Children.

Background: Chronic exposure to enteropathogens may result in environmental enteric dysfunction (EED), a subclinical condition associated with poor child growth. Growth faltering is strongly associated with poor neurodevelopment, and occurs during sensitive periods of postnatal brain development. We investigated the role of novel EED biomarkers, systemic inflammation, and micronutrient status on neurodevelopment in Tanzanian children.

Vitamin A and Zinc Supplementation Among Pregnant Women to Prevent Placental Malaria: A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Trial in Tanzania.

AbstractVitamin A and zinc are important for immune function and may improve host defense against malaria and reduce the risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes. Our objective was to determine whether daily oral supplementation with either or both nutrients starting in the first trimester reduces the risk of placental malaria and adverse pregnancy outcomes. We undertook a randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled trial with a factorial design among 2,500 human immunodeficiency virus-negative primigravid or secundigravid pregnant women in their first trimester of pregnancy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Iron Supplementation Affects Hematologic Biomarker Concentrations and Pregnancy Outcomes among Iron-Deficient Tanzanian Women.

Background: Iron deficiency is a highly prevalent micronutrient abnormality and the most common cause of anemia globally, worsening the burden of adverse pregnancy and child outcomes.

Objective: We sought to evaluate the response of hematologic biomarkers to iron supplementation and to examine the predictors of the response to iron supplementation among iron-deficient pregnant women.

Methods: We identified 600 iron-deficient (serum ferritin ≤12 μg/L) pregnant women, aged 18-45 y, presenting to 2 antenatal clinics in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania using rapid ferritin screening tests, and prospectively followed them through delivery and postpartum.

Maternal and infant gene-folate interactions and the risk of neural tube defects.

Neural tube defects (NTDs) are common, serious malformations with a complex etiology that suggests involvement of both genetic and environmental factors. The authors evaluated maternal or offspring folate-related gene variants and interactions between the gene variants and maternal intake of folates on the risk of NTDs in their offspring. A case-control study was conducted on mothers and/or their fetuses and infants who were born in California from 1999 to 2003 with an NTD (cases n = 222, including 24 mother-infant pairs) or without a major malformation (controls n = 454, including 186 mother-infant pairs).

Gene variants in the folate-mediated one-carbon metabolism (FOCM) pathway as risk factors for conotruncal heart defects.

We evaluated 35 variants among four folate-mediated one-carbon metabolism pathway genes, MTHFD1, SHMT1, MTHFR, and DHFR as risk factors for conotruncal heart defects. Cases with a diagnosis of single gene disorders or chromosomal aneusomies were excluded. Controls were randomly selected from area hospitals in proportion to their contribution to the total population of live-born infants.

Evaluation of two methods for assessing gene-environment interactions using data from the Danish case-control study of facial clefts.

Background: Epidemiological investigations have begun to consider gene-environment (GE) interactions as potential risk factors for many diseases, including several different birth defects. However, traditional methodological approaches for the analysis of case-control data tend to have low power for detection of interaction effects. A log-linear approach that can impose the assumption that the genotype and exposure of interest occur independently in the population has been proposed as a potentially more powerful method for assessing GE interactions but has not been widely applied in the published literature.

Investigations into the etiology of neural tube defects.

Neural tube defects (NTDs) are serious malformations affecting approximately 1 per 1000 births, yet the mechanisms by which they arise are unknown. There have been consistent efforts in many fields of research to elucidate the etiology of this multifactorial condition. While no single gene has been identified as a major independent risk factor for NTDs, candidate genes have been proposed that may modify the effects of maternal and/or embryonic exposures.