Weight gain in freshman college students and perceived health.

Background: We determined body weight increase in first year Dutch college students. We had the objective to determine whether the awareness of the unhealthy lifestyle raised concerns and willingness to change habits.

Methods: Body weight, heartbeat, BMI, body fat percentages, and blood pressure values were collected from 1095 students.

Alcoholic pancreatitis.

Without doubt, alcohol consumption is one of the most important considerations in adults with acute or chronic pancreatitis. Understanding chronic pancreatitis as a complex disorder in which complimentary factors are required for recurrent acute and late chronic pancreatitis to develop in subsets of patients is critical for the early diagnosis and management of these individuals. Recent pathophysiological and genetic findings represent the beginning of major diagnostic and treatment breakthroughs that are likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

Genetic polymorphisms in alcoholic pancreatitis.

Chronic, excessive alcohol consumption is clearly associated with acute and chronic pancreatitis. However, both clinical and laboratory studies have demonstrated that alcohol consumption alone does not directly cause pancreatitis. Growing evidence suggests that environmental and possibly genetic cofactors must also be present before the mechanisms protecting the pancreas from pancreatitis are circumvented and pancreatitis develops.

Differential expression of toll-like receptors 2 and 4 in patients with liver cirrhosis.

Objective: Toll-like receptors (TLR) 2 and 4 were shown recently to mediate lipopolysaccharide (LPS)/endotoxin effects in vivo. Absence of clinical features, such as fever and leucocytosis, frequent infections, and up-regulation of anti-inflammatory cytokines suggest systemic differential regulation of LPS effects in patients with chronic endotoxinaemia due to liver cirrhosis.

Design: Regulation of TLR2 and TLR4 represents a possible pathway to control LPS-induced immune responses in liver cirrhosis.