Publications by authors named "Broek T"

Objectives: Type 2 diabetes is a highly prevalent age-related chronic condition, with complex and heterogeneous pathogenesis. A 5-point oral glucose tolerance test can identify type 2 diabetes subtypes or "diabetypes" based on the degree of insulin resistance in muscle and/or liver, and beta-cell dysfunction. Due to its costly and invasive nature, the oral glucose tolerance test is not scalable.

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Prebiotic dietary fiber (PDF) may reduce feelings of stress or improve mood in healthy individuals. Yet gut intervention studies that focus on mood in daily life are lacking and few studies include extensive biological sample analyses to gain mechanistic insights. As part of a larger randomized placebo-controlled crossover study including healthy individuals, we explored the effects of 12 weeks of PDF (acacia gum and carrot powder) on everyday mood, as measured with ecological momentary assessment (EMA).

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Dietary fiber interventions to modulate the gut microbiota have largely relied on isolated fibers or specific fiber sources. We hypothesized that fibers systematically blended could promote more health-related bacterial groups. Initially, pooled fecal fermentations were used to design dietary fiber mixtures to support complementary microbial groups related to health.

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Increasing evidence exists that the gut microbiome influences toxicity as well as outcomes in a variety of cancers. To investigate the role of the gut microbiome in pediatric neuro-oncology, microbiome analysis has been included in multiple prospective pediatric neuro-oncology clinical trials (NCT05009992, NCT04732065, NCT04775485). In these trials, the OMNIgene-GUT preservation tubes are used for the collection of the feces.

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Unexplainable gastrointestinal complaints occasionally occur after Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass (RYGB) surgery. We therefor investigated the impact of microbiota composition and metabolites on gastrointestinal complaints after RYGB. In the BARICO study (Bariatric surgery Rijnstate and Radboudumc neuroimaging and Cognition in Obesity), microbiota and metabolites were measured before surgery, and 6, and 24 months after surgery.

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Despite the growing acknowledgment of the importance of loneliness among older individuals, questionnaire length constraints may hinder the inclusion of common multi-item loneliness scales in surveys. Direct, single-item loneliness measures are a practical alternative, but scholars have expressed concerns that such measures may lead to underreporting. Our aim was to test whether such reservations are justified.

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Successful implementation of remote monitoring of vital signs outside of the hospital setting hinges on addressing three crucial unmet needs: longer-term wear, skin comfort and signal quality. Earlier, we developed a Health Patch research platform that uses self-adhesive dry electrodes to measure vital digital biomarkers. Here, we report on the analytical validation for heart rate, heart rate variability and respiration rate.

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Thymic involution is a key factor in human immune aging, leading to reduced thymic output and a decline in recent thymic emigrant (RTE) naive T cells in circulation. Currently, the precise definition of human RTEs and their corresponding cell surface markers lacks clarity. Analysis of single-cell RNA-seq/ATAC-seq data distinguished RTEs by the expression of SOX4, IKZF2, and TOX and CD38 protein, whereby surface CD38 expression universally identified CD8 and CD4 RTEs.

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The number of older adults in the Netherlands is growing rapidly, and an increasing share of them is foreign-born. This may have implications for long-term care (LTC) demand. This study provides insights into older migrants' current and future use of LTC provisions under the Dutch long-term care act (LTCA).

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Obesity is a multifactorial disease associated with low-grade inflammation. The gut is thought to be involved in obesity-related inflammation, as it is continuously exposed to antigens from food, microbiota and metabolites. However, the exact underlying mechanisms are still unknown.

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From 2019, in the United States and Europe, the synthetic opioid market has diversified with the appearance of the 2-benzylbenzimidazole family, commonly named "nitazenes". In vitro studies show that these synthetic opioids have much higher affinities on μ-opioid receptors: 100 times more than morphine, and slightly higher than fentanyl for isotonitazene, increasing the risk of overdose. In south of France, isotonitazene (IZN) was identified for the first time in March 2023.

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The gut and its microbiome have a major impact on many aspects of health and are therefore also an attractive target for drug- or food-based therapies. Here, we report on the added value of combining a microbiome screening model, the i-screen, with fresh intestinal tissue explants in a microfluidic gut-on-a-chip model, the Intestinal Explant Barrier Chip (IEBC). Adult human gut microbiome (fecal pool of 6 healthy donors) was cultured anaerobically in the i-screen platform for 24 h, without and with exposure to 4 mg/mL inulin.

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The classic ketogenic diet is an effective treatment option for drug-resistant epilepsy, but its high fat content challenges patient compliance. Optimizing liver ketone production guided by a method comparing substrates for their ketogenic potential may help to reduce the fat content of the diet without loss in ketosis induction. Here, we present a liver cell assay measuring the β-hydroxybutyrate (βHB) yield from fatty acid substrates.

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Objective: Sports participation is lower in people of Turkish and Moroccan origin in the Netherlands than in native Dutch people. Addressing this inequality calls for better insights into antecedents of sports participation in different ethnic groups. Theorists suggested that loneliness may hamper sports participation, and levels of loneliness are high among people of Turkish and Moroccan origin.

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During wildfires and fossil fuel combustion, biomass is converted to black carbon (BC) via incomplete combustion. BC enters the ocean by rivers and atmospheric deposition contributing to the marine dissolved organic carbon (DOC) pool. The fate of BC is considered to reside in the marine DOC pool, where the oldest BC C ages have been measured (>20,000 C y), implying long-term storage.

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In autoreactive germinal centers (GC) initiated by a single rogue B cell clone, wild-type B cells expand and give rise to clones that target other autoantigens, known as epitope spreading. The chronic, progressive nature of epitope spreading calls for early interventions to limit autoimmune pathologies, but the kinetics and molecular requirements for wild-type B cell invasion and participation in GC remain largely unknown. With parabiosis and adoptive transfer approaches in a murine model of systemic lupus erythematosus, we demonstrate that wild-type B cells join existing GCs rapidly, clonally expand, persist, and contribute to autoantibody production and diversification.

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Marine dissolved organic nitrogen (DON) is one of the planet's largest reservoirs of fixed N, which persists even in the N-limited oligotrophic surface ocean. The vast majority of the ocean's total DON reservoir is refractory (RDON), primarily composed of low molecular weight (LMW) compounds in the subsurface and deep sea. However, the composition of this major N pool, as well as the reasons for its accumulation and persistence, are not understood.

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Women of Turkish and Moroccan origin in the Netherlands are relatively likely to have an unhealthy bodyweight. This study sheds light on how ethnic differences in parity, i.e.

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Nutrition and oral health are closely related, especially in older adults in whom poor nutrition may lead to oral microbial perturbations, exacerbating poor oral health. In a 6-month randomized controlled trial, we evaluated the effects on oral microbiota and on oral health of dietary advice aimed at increasing protein intake to ≥1.2 g/kg adjusted body weight/day (g/kg aBW/d) in community-dwelling older adults with low habitual protein intake (<1.

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The development of microbiome-targeted strategies is limited by individual differences in gut microbiome composition and metabolic responses to interventions. In vitro models that can replicate this variation allow us to conduct pre-clinical studies and assess efficacy. This study describes the exposure of 16 individual fecal microbiota samples to 5 different fibers using an in vitro system for the anaerobic cultivation of bacteria.

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Introduction: This crossover randomized controlled trial (RCT) investigated differences in short-term entero-endocrine response to a mixed-meal tolerance test preceded by nutrient sensing between participants with pre-diabetes (pre-T2D) and type 2 diabetes (T2D). Additionally, differences in gut and oral microbiome composition between participants with a high and low entero-endocrine response were investigated.

Research Design And Methods: Ten participants with pre-T2D and ten with T2D underwent three test days with pre-loads consisting of either swallowing water (control), or rinsing with a non-nutritive sweetener solution, or swallowing the sweetener solution before a mixed-meal tolerance test.

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Background: Healthcare professionals working in long-term care facilities reported heavy job demands and a lack of job resources during the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. However, how job demands and resources in these facilities changed during the pandemic, and how possible changes affected professionals' work-related well-being, remains unclear. Thus, we explored changes in job demands and resources in the face of surging COVID-19 infection rates, and investigated associations of these changes with changes in burnout and work engagement, among healthcare professionals working in long-term care facilities in the Netherlands.

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In autoreactive germinal centers (GC) initiated by a single rogue B cell clone, wild-type B cells expand and give rise to clones that target other autoantigens, known as epitope spreading. The chronic, progressive nature of epitope spreading calls for early interventions, but the kinetics and molecular requirements for wild-type B cell invasion and participation in GC remain largely unknown. With parabiosis and adoptive transfer approaches in a murine model of systemic lupus erythematosus, we demonstrate that wild-type B cells join existing GCs rapidly, clonally expand, persist, and contribute to autoantibody production and diversification.

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