Publications by authors named "Denes Molnar"

It remains unclear how serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) concentrations relate to childhood bone health. We hypothesized that 25(OH)D was inversely associated with bone turnover biomarkers and positively associated with bone stiffness. Cross-sectional analyses were performed using data from participants (2-15-year-old, 51% boys) from the Identification and Prevention of Dietary- and Lifestyle-induced Health Effects in Children and Infants Study (IDEFICS)/I.

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Purpose: It is assumed that sensory taste perception shapes food choices and impacts dietary intake. However, this has rarely been studied in free living subjects of different age-groups with standardised methods. The present study investigated the association of the ability to rank sweet and fat taste intensities with consumption frequency of sweet and fatty foods in children, adolescents and adults from eight European countries.

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Unlabelled: Physical activity measured by accelerometry (PA-accelerometry) is used as an indicator of physical capacity in chronic diseases. Currently, only fragmented age ranges of reference percentile curves are available for European children and adolescents. This study aimed to provide age- and sex-specific percentiles for physical activity measured by hip-worn accelerometry derived throughout the full age range of European children and adolescents.

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Objective: To investigate the reliability of parental recall of birth weight, birth length and gestational age several years after birth.

Methods: Parentally recalled birth parameters were obtained from the European multicentric cohort study IDEFICS (Identification and prevention of dietary- and lifestyle-induced health effects in children and infants) and compared to the corresponding data externally recorded in the child's medical check-up booklet. The agreement between the two sources was examined using Bland-Altman plots, intraclass correlation coefficients and Cohen's kappa for clinically relevant categories.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study examines how traditional dietary assessments may fall short in accurately measuring children's intake of sweet and fatty snacks, which can contribute to obesity and health issues in childhood.
  • Researchers analyzed urine samples from children in two different cohorts to identify metabolite biomarkers that correlate with the consumption of snacks like chocolate, candy, and ice cream.
  • A total of 66 metabolites were linked to snack consumption, with associations found for specific types of snacks; however, many metabolites could not be specifically identified.
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  • The study explored how vitamin D levels affect inflammation markers in children and teens across eight European countries.
  • Researchers found that higher vitamin D levels were linked to increased levels of adiponectin and reduced inflammation scores, particularly in children with normal weight.
  • In overweight or obese children, only a positive connection to one marker (IP-10) was seen, highlighting the need for weight management to see improvements in inflammation related to vitamin D.
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This study aims to investigate the influence of psychosomatic and emotional status on food portion sizes (PSs) consumption from high energy-dense food groups in European children and adolescents. We hypothesized that psychosomatic and emotional status would have a significant association with the PS selection of energy-dense food. The study included 7355 children aged between 2 and 9.

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Childhood obesity is a complex disorder that appears to be influenced by an interacting system of many factors. Taking this complexity into account, we aim to investigate the causal structure underlying childhood obesity. Our focus is on identifying potential early, direct or indirect, causes of obesity which may be promising targets for prevention strategies.

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Growing evidence shows that maternal nutrition from preconception until lactation has an important effect on the development of non-communicable diseases in the offspring. Biological responses to environmental stress during pregnancy, including undernutrition or overnutrition of various nutrients, are transmitted in part by DNA methylation. The aim of the present narrative review is to summarize literature data on altered DNA methylation patterns caused by maternal macronutrient or vitamin intake and its association with offspring's phenotype (obesity and related metabolic changes).

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Article Synopsis
  • The study wanted to see if feeling good (psychosocial well-being) or being impulsive about emotions is better at helping teens choose healthier foods.
  • Researchers looked at data from over 2,000 European teens, asking about their food choices and feelings.
  • They found that working on controlling impulsive feelings might help teens eat less sugary and fatty foods more than just focusing on feeling good.
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  • - The study aimed to assess how behavioral risk factors for obesity develop from childhood to adolescence and how they relate to BMI across different European regions.
  • - Researchers analyzed data from over 14,000 participants, observing that changes in risk factors like diet and physical activity occurred similarly across regions, but differed in how they related to BMI as children aged.
  • - Key findings indicated that by age 11, consuming sugary foods and having active lifestyles were linked to lower BMI, while increased media use was associated with higher BMI; these links became more apparent as children grew older.
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Dietary diversity (DD) plays a crucial role in fostering high-quality diets, but its association with health outcomes, particularly body adiposity and non-communicable diseases (NCDs), is inconsistent. This may be due to a lack of a standardized method for estimating DD. Our study investigates the association between two DD indices, namely the dietary diversity score (DDS) and food variety score (FVS), and anthropometric measures, biochemical parameters, and diet quality in a large population sample from the I.

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  • Researchers studied how eating a healthy diet (called the EAT-Lancet diet) affects heart health in teens in Europe.
  • They used information from a big study and looked at what the teens usually ate and their heart health scores.
  • The results showed that eating healthier could mean better heart health, like lower chances of high blood pressure and cholesterol.
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  • - The study aimed to establish specific reference percentiles for ferritin and transferrin levels in European children aged 3-15 years, as no such values previously existed.
  • - Data collected from 3390 ferritin and 3416 transferrin measurements were analyzed, showing that iron deficiency affected 3% of children initially and 7% after six years, along with findings that higher heme iron intake is linked to increased ferritin levels.
  • - The results indicated that following a mainly vegetarian diet was associated with a lower likelihood of having sufficient serum ferritin levels, emphasizing the importance of dietary iron sources for children's iron status.
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The digital environment can pose health risks through exposure to unhealthy content. Yet, little is known about its relation to children's cognitive functioning. This study investigates the association between digital media (DM) exposure and children's cognitive functioning.

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Background: After birth, breast milk (BM) is a known essential source of antioxidants for infants. We analyzed the non-enzymatic total antioxidant capacity (TAC), oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC), and glutathione, calcium, transferrin, and total protein levels of human breast milk before and after Holder pasteurization (HoP).

Methods: The collected donor BM samples were pasteurized with HoP.

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Background And Aims: Evidence shows that migrant children have a higher risk of developing obesity than those with native parents. We aimed to investigate the association between parental migration background and cardiometabolic health in children and adolescents in Europe.

Methods And Results: We included 8745 children aged 2-17 from the second follow-up of the European IDEFICS/I.

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Background: Hepatic disorders are often complex and multifactorial, modulated by genetic and environmental determinants. During the last years, the hepatic disease has been progressively established from early stages in life. The use of genetic risk scores (GRS) to predict the genetic susceptibility to a particular phenotype among youth has gained interest in recent years.

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Aims/hypothesis: There is increasing evidence for the existence of shared genetic predictors of metabolic traits and neurodegenerative disease. We previously observed a U-shaped association between fasting insulin in middle-aged women and dementia up to 34 years later. In the present study, we performed genome-wide association (GWA) analyses for fasting serum insulin in European children with a focus on variants associated with the tails of the insulin distribution.

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Introduction: From genome wide association study (GWAS) a large number of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) have previously been associated with blood pressure (BP) levels. A combination of SNPs, forming a genetic risk score (GRS) could be considered as a useful genetic tool to identify individuals at risk of developing hypertension from early stages in life. Therefore, the aim of our study was to build a GRS being able to predict the genetic predisposition to hypertension (HTN) in European adolescents.

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Article Synopsis
  • This study investigates the relationship between vitamin D status and cardiometabolic risk markers in children, particularly focusing on those with obesity compared to healthy-weight children.
  • The research involved 2,171 children from the IDEFICS/I.Family cohort, analyzing how serum vitamin D levels correlate with various health indicators like blood pressure, triglycerides, and insulin resistance.
  • The findings suggest that lower vitamin D levels are linked to worse cardiometabolic outcomes, indicating that improving vitamin D status early in life could help lower these health risks in children.
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Purpose: The EAT-Lancet Commission proposed an evidence-based global reference diet to improve human health within planetary boundaries. Recently, the Planetary Health Diet Index (PHDI) was developed based on the EAT-Lancet recommendations and validated among Brazilian adults. However, the relative validity of the PHDI in adolescents has yet to be assessed.

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