Publications by authors named "Lakerveld J"

Article Synopsis
  • The study examines how socioeconomic position (SEP), food environments, walkability, and greenspace impact type 2 diabetes (T2D) risk, focusing on their interconnection.
  • Lower SEP correlates with a higher risk of T2D, with significant hazard ratios indicating a strong link between education, income, occupation, and diabetes prevalence.
  • Environmental factors only weakly mediate the relationship between SEP and T2D, suggesting that while lower SEP leads to a less healthy environment, this isn't the primary driver for increased diabetes risk.
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Unhealthy lifestyle behaviors such as poor diets and physical inactivity account for most of the cardiometabolic disease (CMD) burden, including type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. Much of this burden is mediated by the effects of unhealthy lifestyle behaviors on overweight and obesity, and disproportionally impacts certain population groups-including those from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds. Combined lifestyle interventions (CLIs), which target multiple behaviors, have the potential to prevent CMD, but their implementation, reach and effectiveness in routine practice are often limited.

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  • The study explores the relationship between air pollution and its impact on cognitive functioning and brain health, given the rise in dementia cases and a lack of cures.
  • It involved 4,002 participants from The Maastricht Study, analyzing various brain integrity markers and cognitive abilities while considering their residential air pollution exposure.
  • Results showed no significant links between air pollution and cognitive performance or most brain markers, but a curvilinear relationship was noted where both low and high exposures were related to reduced grey matter volume.
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  • This study investigates how changes in the food environment affect cardiovascular disease (CVD) risks over time among Dutch adults aged 35 and older.
  • Researchers analyzed data from over 4.6 million individuals between 2004 and 2018, correlating food environment healthiness and the presence of various food retailers with rates of hospitalization and mortality due to different types of CVD.
  • Findings indicate that a healthier food environment correlates with lower hospitalization and death rates from CVD, highlighting the importance of local food availability on health outcomes, especially for younger and urban populations.
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This study aimed to assess sociodemographic, personality, and psychological moderators, and lifestyle behavioural mediators, of the association between obesogenicity of neighbourhoods and weight status in Dutch adults. This cross-sectional study used baseline data of 150,506 adult participants of the Lifelines study. To quantify obesogenicity of Dutch neighbourhoods, the Obesogenic Built Environment CharacterisTics (OBCT) index was used, calculated for 1000 m circular buffers around participant's residencies.

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Background: Epidemiological and toxicological studies indicate that increased exposure to air pollutants can lead to neurodegenerative diseases. To further confirm this relationship, we evaluated the association between exposure to ambient air pollutants and corneal nerve measures as a surrogate for neurodegeneration, using corneal confocal microscopy.

Methods: We used population-based observational cross-sectional data from The Maastricht Study including N = 3635 participants (mean age 59.

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Regular consumption of ultra-processed foods (UPF) is a risk factor for morbidity and mortality. UPF are widely available in supermarkets. Nudging and pricing strategies are promising strategies to promote healthier supermarket purchases and may reduce UPF purchases.

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The role of the social environment can facilitate positive health outcomes through active community engagement, normalization of healthy behaviors, and stress buffering. We aim to examine the associations of neighborhood social cohesion with changes in BMI over time. A total of 7641 participants from The Maastricht Study between the ages of 40 and 75 years were analyzed.

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Background: Overweight and obesity impose a considerable individual and social burden, and the urban environments might encompass factors that contribute to obesity. Nevertheless, there is a scarcity of research that takes into account the simultaneous interaction of multiple environmental factors.

Objectives: Our objective was to perform an exposome-wide association study of body mass index (BMI) in a multicohort setting of 15 studies.

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Background: Supermarket interventions are promising to promote healthier dietary patterns, but not all individuals may be equally susceptible. We explored whether the effectiveness of nudging and pricing strategies on diet quality differs by psychological and grocery shopping characteristics.

Methods: We used data of the 12-month Supreme Nudge parallel cluster-randomised controlled supermarket trial, testing nudging and pricing strategies to promote healthier diets.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study analyzed the link between neighborhood characteristics that promote obesity and various heart disease risk factors in over 183,000 adults from five Dutch cohort studies.
  • Specifically, researchers calculated the OBCT index, assessing how urban environments impact body weight, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels.
  • Results indicated that a higher OBCT score was tied to increases in BMI, higher cholesterol levels, and greater rates of overweight/obesity and hypertension.
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Intro: We aim to investigate the relationship between social cohesion and sedentary behavior (SB), total physical activity (PA), moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA), and dietary quality. Additionally, we assess whether these associations are independent of neighborhood walkability and the food environment.

Methods: A total of 7641 participants from The Maastricht Study in the Netherlands between the ages of 40 and 75 years were analyzed.

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Article Synopsis
  • Obesity is linked to serious health issues like diabetes and heart disease, leading to the development of the OBCT index, which evaluates environmental factors influencing obesity by combining food and physical activity components.
  • The study aimed to explore how the OBCT index correlates with body mass index (BMI) across a large Dutch population and attempted to enhance the index using various analytical methods.
  • Findings showed a significant but weak connection between the OBCT index and BMI, with the association influenced by demographic factors, and improvements to the index also resulted in only modest increases in explained variance for BMI.
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Background: Context-specific interventions may contribute to sustained behaviour change and improved health outcomes. We evaluated the real-world effects of supermarket nudging and pricing strategies and mobile physical activity coaching on diet quality, food-purchasing behaviour, walking behaviour, and cardiometabolic risk markers.

Methods: This parallel cluster-randomised controlled trial included supermarkets in socially disadvantaged neighbourhoods across the Netherlands with regular shoppers aged 30-80 years.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study analyzed air pollution exposure across different ethnic and socioeconomic groups in the Netherlands, finding that minority ethnic groups experienced consistently higher levels of pollution compared to the ethnic Dutch population.
  • - Data collected from over 17 million residents showed that exposure to nitrogen oxides (NO) and particulate matter (PM) was significantly higher (3-44% for NO and 1-9% for PM) in minority groups, particularly impacting those in the lowest socioeconomic status.
  • - The findings indicate environmental injustice linked to social characteristics, highlighting a need for further research into the health consequences and underlying factors contributing to these disparities in air pollution exposure.
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Background: The growth of urban dwelling populations globally has led to rapid increases of research and policy initiatives addressing associations between the built environment and physical activity (PA). Given this rapid proliferation, it is important to identify priority areas and research questions for moving the field forward. The objective of this study was to identify and compare research priorities on the built environment and PA among researchers and knowledge users (e.

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Background: Previous cross-sectional and longitudinal observational studies revealed positive relationships between contextual built environment components and walking behavior. Due to severe restrictions during COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, physical activity was primarily performed within the immediate living area. Using this unique opportunity, we evaluated whether built environment components were associated with the magnitude of change in walking activity in adults during COVID-19 restrictions.

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Objective: In 2050 two-thirds of the world's population is predicted to live in cities, which asks for a better understanding of how the urban environment affects mental health. Urbanicity has repeatedly been found to be a risk factor, in particular for psychosis. Here, we explored what factors of the urban exposome underlie the association between urban characteristics and psychotic experiences (PE) in adolescents.

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Aims: To systematically review the current evidence on the association between the neighbourhood food environment and cardiovascular disease (CVD) in adults.

Methods And Results: We searched the literature databases CINAHL, MEDLINE, and EMBASE for studies published between 1 January 2000 and 1 May 2022. Studies focusing on the indoor home, workplace, or school food environment were excluded.

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Background: We investigated the association of neighborhood walkability with accelerometer-measured physical activity (PA) and sedentary behavior (SB) and examined whether objective and subjective measures of walkability resulted in similar findings.

Methods: PA and SB from the first 7689 Maastricht Study participants ages 40-75 from 2010 to 2017 were measured using accelerometers for 7 days. Mean daily step count, light-intensity PA, moderate- to vigorous- intensity PA (MVPA), and SB were calculated.

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Aims: To provide a comprehensive overview of the current evidence on objectively measured neighbourhood built environment exposures in relation to cardiovascular disease (CVD) events in adults.

Methods And Results: We searched seven databases for systematic reviews on associations between objectively measured long-term built environmental exposures, covering at least one domain (i.e.

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We assessed the quality of food-related OpenStreetMap (OSM) data in urban areas of five European countries. We calculated agreement statistics between point-of-interests (POIs) from OSM and from Google Street View (GSV) in five European regions. We furthermore assessed correlations between exposure measures (distance and counts) from OSM data and administrative data from local data sources on food environment data in three European countries.

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Article Synopsis
  • This study looked at whether living in areas with healthier food options helps people eat better.
  • It analyzed data from over 7,000 people aged 40-75 in Maastricht, Netherlands, using surveys to check their diet and the type of food stores nearby.
  • The results showed that having healthier food shops nearby didn't really change what people ate, meaning there was no clear link between the food environment and diet quality.
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Background: Adults of low socioeconomic position (SEP) are generally less physically active than those who are more socioeconomically advantaged, which increases their cardiovascular disease incidence risk. Moreover, individuals of low SEP are often less easily reached with physical activity (PA) interventions than individuals of higher SEP. Smartphone apps have been presented as a promising platform for delivering PA interventions to difficult-to-reach individuals of low SEP.

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Background And Objectives: Serum ferritin levels are increasingly being used to assess iron stores. Considerable variation in ferritin levels within and between individuals has been observed, but our current understanding of factors that explain this variation is far from complete. We aim to combine multiple potential determinants in an integrative model, and investigate their relative importance and potential interactions.

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