Saturated fatty acid concentrations are predictive of insulin sensitivity and beta cell compensation in dogs.

Chronic feeding of a high fat diet (HFD) in preclinical species induces broad metabolic dysfunction characterized by body weight gain, hyperinsulinemia, dyslipidemia and impaired insulin sensitivity. The plasma lipidome is not well characterized in dogs with HFD-induced metabolic dysfunction. We therefore aimed to describe the alterations that occur in the plasma lipid composition of dogs that are fed a HFD and examine the association of these changes with the clinical signs of metabolic dysfunction.

Body weight, gonadectomy, and other risk factors for diagnosis of osteoarthritis in companion dogs.

Objective: The aim of this study is to evaluate age, sex, body weight, breed, neuter status, and age at neutering as risk factors for diagnosis of osteoarthritis in companion dogs.

Animals: Dogs seen as patients at Banfield Pet Hospital in the United States from 1998 to 2019 with a date of death in 2019. The final cohort consisted of 131,140 dogs.

Pre-pandemic circadian phase predicts pandemic alcohol use among adolescents.

Later circadian timing during adolescence is linked to worse sleep, more severe depression and greater alcohol involvement, perhaps due to circadian misalignment imposed by early school schedules. School schedules shifted later during the COVID-19 pandemic, ostensibly reducing circadian misalignment and potentially mitigating problems with depression and alcohol. We used the pandemic as a natural experiment to test whether adolescent drinkers with later circadian timing showed improvements in sleep, depression and alcohol involvement.

Self-reported sleep and circadian characteristics predict alcohol and cannabis use: A longitudinal analysis of the National Consortium on Alcohol and Neurodevelopment in Adolescence Study.

Background: Growing evidence indicates that sleep characteristics predict future substance use and related problems. However, most prior studies assessed a limited range of sleep characteristics, studied a narrow age span, and included few follow-up assessments. Here, we used six annual assessments from the National Consortium on Alcohol and Neurodevelopment in Adolescence (NCANDA) study, which spans adolescence and young adulthood with an accelerated longitudinal design, to examine whether multiple sleep characteristics in any year predict alcohol and cannabis use the following year.

Preliminary Evidence That Circadian Alignment Predicts Neural Response to Monetary Reward in Late Adolescent Drinkers.

Background: Robust evidence links sleep and circadian rhythm disturbances to alcohol use and alcohol-related problems, with a growing literature implicating reward-related mechanisms. However, the extant literature has been limited by cross-sectional designs, self-report or behavioral proxies for circadian timing, and samples without substantive alcohol use. Here, we employed objective measures of sleep and circadian rhythms, and an intensive prospective design, to assess whether circadian alignment predicts the neural response to reward in a sample of late adolescents reporting regular alcohol use.

Circadian preference is associated with multiple domains of trait and state level impulsivity.

Impulsivity is a multidimensional construct with well-documented risk for substance use problems at both the trait- and state levels. A circadian preference towards eveningness has been linked to trait-level, global impulsivity, but whether this association holds true across multiple dimensions of impulsivity and whether actual sleep timing shows parallel associations with impulsivity remain unclear. Here, we extend existing literature by investigating whether eveningness is associated with multiple facets of both trait- and state-level impulsivity.

Physiological sleep measures predict time to 15-year mortality in community adults: Application of a novel machine learning framework.

Clarifying whether physiological sleep measures predict mortality could inform risk screening; however, such investigations should account for complex and potentially non-linear relationships among health risk factors. We aimed to establish the predictive utility of polysomnography (PSG)-assessed sleep measures for mortality using a novel permutation random forest (PRF) machine learning framework. Data collected from the years 1995 to present are from the Sleep Heart Health Study (SHHS; n = 5,734) and the Wisconsin Sleep Cohort Study (WSCS; n = 1,015), and include initial assessments of sleep and health, and up to 15 years of follow-up for all-cause mortality.

Profiles of Accelerometry-Derived Physical Activity Are Related to Perceived Physical Fatigability in Older Adults.

Physical activity (PA) is associated with greater fatigability in older adults; little is known about magnitude, shape, timing and variability of the entire 24-h rest-activity rhythm (RAR) associated with fatigability. We identified which features of the 24-h RAR pattern were independently and jointly associated with greater perceived physical fatigability (Pittsburgh Fatigability Scale, PFS, 0-50) in older adults ( = 181, 71.3 ± 6.

Associations between physiological and self-reported indices of emotion dysregulation across varying levels of alcohol use among individuals with and without borderline personality disorder.

Emotional functioning can be assessed across multiple levels of analysis (e.g., subjective, physiological).

An Optimal Self-Report Physical Activity Measure for Older Adults: Does Physical Function Matter?

The authors compared two self-report measures of physical activity, the Physical Activity Scale for the Elderly (PASE) and the Community Healthy Activities Model Program for Seniors (CHAMPS), against the device-derived SenseWear Armband (SWA), to identify a recommended self-report tool to measure physical activity in older adults across physical function levels. A total of 65 community-dwelling older adults completed the PASE, CHAMPS, and seven full days of SWA wear. The authors measured physical function using the modified short physical performance battery (SPPB) and a usual-paced 6-m walk.

Measuring Variability in Rest-Activity Rhythms from Actigraphy with Application to Characterizing Symptoms of Depression.

The twenty-four hour sleep-wake pattern known as the rest-activity rhythm (RAR) is associated with many aspects of health and well-being. Researchers have utilized a number of interpretable, person-specific RAR measures that can be estimated from actigraphy. Actigraphs are wearable devices that dynamically record acceleration and provide indirect measures of physical activity over time.

Activity patterns related to depression symptoms in stressed dementia caregivers.

Objectives: Self-reported activity restriction is an established correlate of depression in dementia caregivers (dCGs). It is plausible that the daily distribution of objectively measured activity is also altered in dCGs with depression symptoms; if so, such activity characteristics could provide a passively measurable marker of depression or specific times to target preventive interventions. We therefore investigated how levels of activity throughout the day differed in dCGs with and without depression symptoms, then tested whether any such differences predicted changes in symptoms 6 months later.

Assessment of body weight for age determination in kittens.

Objectives: The objective of this study was to assess the utility of using body weight for age determination in kittens.

Methods: Medical records were reviewed for serial body weight measurements collected from neonatal kittens (up to 8 weeks of age) from a breeding colony of specific pathogen-free domestic shorthair cats and for single-point body weight measurements of privately owned pediatric kittens (6-20 weeks of age) presenting for elective sterilization. Body weights were compared with known dates of birth and age assessed by dental eruption in combination with developmental characteristics.

Mortality among United States aerospace materials manufacturing workers.

Objectives: To evaluate long-term mortality rates among aerospace material manufacturing workers as follow-up to an earlier observed excess of nephritis/nephrosis.

Methods: Subjects were 2020 workers ever employed in the facility during 1963-2014. Vital status through 2014 was determined for all subjects and cause of death for 99.

Mortality Among Hardmetal Production Workers: Pooled Analysis of Cohort Data From an International Investigation.

Objectives: Based on a pooled analysis of data from an international study, evaluate total and cause-specific mortality among hardmetal production workers with emphasis on lung cancer.

Methods: Study members were 32,354 workers from three companies and 17 manufacturing sites in five countries. We computed standardized mortality ratios and evaluated exposure-response via relative risk regression analysis.

Heart Rate Variability Biofeedback Does Not Substitute for Asthma Steroid Controller Medication.

Despite previous findings of therapeutic effects for heart rate variability biofeedback (HRVB) on asthma, it is not known whether HRVB can substitute either for controller or rescue medication, or whether it affects airway inflammation. Sixty-eight paid volunteer steroid naïve study participants with mild or moderate asthma were given 3 months of HRVB or a comparison condition consisting of EEG alpha biofeedback with relaxing music and relaxed paced breathing (EEG+), in a two-center trial. All participants received a month of intensive asthma education prior to randomization.

Investigation of the mechanism for the preparation of 6-phenyl-2,4-dioxotetrahydropyrans by the potassium carbonate promoted condensation between acetoacetate esters and benzaldehyde.

Treatment of benzaldehyde and an acetoacetate ester with potassium carbonate in an alcohol solvent proceeds via γ-C-alkylation rather than α-C-alkylation resulting in the formation of 6-phenyl-2,4-dioxotetrahydropyran. Based upon results from deuterium exchange experiments, carbon-13 labeling experiments, (1)H NMR monitoring studies, and reactivity studies, our proposed mechanism for this reaction involves deprotonation at the α-carbon, intramolecular proton transfer to form a γ-anion, addition of the resulting γ-anion to the carbonyl carbon of benzaldehyde, and intramolecular transesterification.