Publications by authors named "Ruben Lopez-Nicolas"

Article Synopsis
  • Meta-analyses show variability in their criteria and reporting, impacting results, especially in cognitive training studies.
  • A review of 97 meta-analytic studies found good reporting on study search and screening, but poor transparency on key statistical methods and data used.
  • Many reviewed meta-analyses had inconsistent eligibility criteria and often did not adequately outline plans for handling data multiplicity or publication bias, indicating areas for improvement.
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Introduction: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) comprises a heterogeneous group of chronic diseases as ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn's disease (CD). IBD is the result of a dysregulation of intestinal homeostasis with a host's loss of tolerance toward normal enteric microflora. Plant-based extracts as phenolic compounds can play a role by modulating the intestinal inflammation response.

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Biscuits are bakery products made with wheat flour. Wheat is a good source of minerals and dietary fibre, although the presence of phytate or other components could modify mineral availability. In addition, cereal-based products are usually characterised by high fibre content that can influence satiety.

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Mass spectrometry has become the technique of choice for the assessment of a high variety of molecules in complex food matrices. It is best suited for monitoring the evolution of digestive processes in vivo and in vitro. However, considering the variety of equipment available in different laboratories and the diversity of sample preparation methods, instrumental settings for data acquisition, statistical evaluations, and interpretations of results, it is difficult to predict a priori the ideal parameters for optimal results.

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Objective: human lactoferrin (Lf) and human milk oligosaccharides possess a wide range of functions. So, the present study focusses on the role of Lf and/or galactooligosaccharides (GOS) in the modulation of gut microbiota composition. Methods: recombinant human lactoferrin (rhLf) was added to the first infant formula (0.

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Introduction: there is a close relationship between obesity, gut health and immune system. A low-grade of inflammation, which could precede obesity, may have implications for the development of metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance. Objective: analyzing the anti-inflammatory capacity of several types of whey (cow, sheep, goat and a mixture of them).

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The Inventory of Problems-29 (IOP-29) is a 29-item self-administered symptom validity test (SVT) that assesses the credibility of clinical presentations related to posttraumatic stress disorder, depression/anxiety, psychosis, cognitive impairment and combination thereof. To date, no publications have summarized the classification accuracy of the IOP-29 using a bivariate meta-analytical approach that preserves the two-dimensional nature of the estimators. Our objective was to conduct a systematic review and bivariate diagnostic test accuracy meta-analysis of the IOP-29 according to the relevant guidelines.

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Protein kinase C (PKC) comprises a family of highly related serine/threonine protein kinases involved in multiple signaling pathways, which control cell proliferation, survival, and differentiation. The role of PKCα in cancer has been studied for many years. However, it has been impossible to establish whether PKCα acts as an oncogene or a tumor suppressor.

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Background: The Florida Obsessive Compulsive Inventory (FOCI) and its pediatric version, the Children's Florida Obsessive Compulsive Inventory (C-FOCI), are instruments for evaluating obsessive-compulsive symptomatology.

Method: A reliability generalization meta-analysis was conducted to estimate an average reliability of the scores and to identify study characteristics that explained the heterogeneity among scores. Using Kuder-Richardson 20 (KR-20) and Cronbach's α, a total of 23 and 20 independent samples were included in the meta-analysis for the FOCI and C-FOCI.

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Recently, plant-based milk substitutes, as an emerging industry, are receiving more attention. Despite that, these dairy alternatives have not been adequately studied for their functional properties. Thus, the current research was devoted to study the satiety potential through in vitro secretion of cholecystokinin (CCK) and glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), and the antioxidant capacity of these dairy alternatives after in vitro digestion.

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Background/objective: Both theoretical proposals and empirical work point to a common concurrence between attitudes toward school violence and violent behavior. Studies often address this issue superficially or within intervention programs. Our objective is to describe the results of a systematic review and to conduct a meta-analysis exploring these associations.

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Polycaprolactone (PCL)was used via double emulsion/solvent evaporation technique for the encapsulation of polyphenols olive leaves (OLs) extracts. In this study, the PCL-microcapsules loaded with OLs polyphenols extract powder were characterized by scanning electron microscopy and fourier transform infrared spectrometry analysis. Their total phenolic (TPC), total flavonoid (TFC) contents, and antioxidant activities (DPPH, FRAP, and ABTS), and polyphenols stability were measured after oral, gastric, and intestinal steps of in vitro digestion.

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Background: The Dimensional Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (DOCS) is a well-established tool for assessing obsessive-compulsive symptomatology. A reliability generalization meta-analysis was conducted to estimate the average reliability of DOCS scores and how reliability estimates vary according to the composition and variability of samples, to identify study characteristics that can explain its variability, and to estimate the reliability induction rate.

Method: A literature search produced 86 studies that met the inclusion criteria.

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Meta-analysis is a powerful and important tool to synthesize the literature about a research topic. Like other kinds of research, meta-analyses must be reproducible to be compliant with the principles of the scientific method. Furthermore, reproducible meta-analyses can be easily updated with new data and reanalysed applying new and more refined analysis techniques.

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Nowadays, overweight and obesity has reached an epidemic level around the world. With the aim to tackle them, an interesting strategy is the study of food and ingredients with satiety properties. In addition to reducing food and/or calorie intake, this type of foods must be included as part of a healthy diet.

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Reliability generalization (RG) is a meta-analytic approach that aims to characterize how reliability estimates from the same test vary across different applications of the instrument. With this purpose RG meta-analyses typically focus on a particular test and intend to obtain an overall reliability of test scores and to investigate how the composition and variability of the samples affect reliability. Although several guidelines have been proposed in the meta-analytic literature to help authors improve the reporting quality of meta-analyses, none of them were devised for RG meta-analyses.

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Several studies demonstrated that protein from whey milk could be a new strategy to reduce energy intake and increase satiety. Sheep whey has high protein content, but it is also rich in lactose. The aim of this study was to screening different ultrafiltration membranes to separate protein and lactose from sheep whey in one step.

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Legumes are a rich source of a wide range of compounds that may represent an important tool to overcome gut dysbiosis. In this work, the prebiotic potential of two cooked legumes (cowpea and black bean) was investigated in comparison with potato:beef mixture, as substrates in batch faecal culture fermentation. Prior to the fermentation, all the samples were in vitro digested, passing through three phases, namely mouth, gastric and small intestine simulation, and then in vitro fermented for 6, 24 and 48 h.

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Background: The composition of diets consumed following weight loss (WL) can have a significant impact on satiety and metabolic health.

Objective: This study was designed to test the effects of including a nondigestible carbohydrate to achieve weight maintenance (WM) following a period of WL.

Methods: Nineteen volunteers [11 females and 8 males, aged 20-62 y; BMI (kg/m2): 27-42] consumed a 3-d maintenance diet (15%:30%:55%), followed by a 21-d WL diet (WL; 30%:30%:40%), followed by 2 randomized 10-d WM diets (20%:30%:50% of energy from protein:fat:carbohydrate) containing either resistant starch type 3 (RS-WM; 22 or 26 g/d for females and males, respectively) or no RS (C-WM) in a within-subject crossover design without washout periods.

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reservoirs other than humans are becoming increasingly recognized, and the occurrence of the pathogen in shellfish raises concern because spores can survive cooking temperature and edible bivalve mollusks are often consumed raw or poorly cooked. This study was conducted to determine the occurrence of pathogenic in retail bivalve mollusks. The microbiological quality of samples was also checked through the isolation of spp.

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The present work evaluated the effect of different processes in relation to mineral content and its bioavailability, as well as the effect of phytate and oxalate contents in biofortified beans. The following treatments were evaluated: raw beans (RB), cooked and oven-dried soaked beans (BOS), cooked and freeze-dried soaked beans (BFS), cooked and oven-dried beans without soaking (BOWS) and cooked and freeze-dried beans without soaking (BFWS). The mineral contents (mg per 100 g) varied between 3.

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This study aimed to evaluate the potential anti-inflammatory role of the most produced form of lactoferrin expressed in various expression systems (Fe-saturated recombinant human Lf, rhLf) and its hydrolysate in concentrations resembles that found in mature human milk. Co-culture model consisted of CaCo-2 and RAW 246.7 cell lines was used to evaluate the potential anti-inflammatory activity of rhLf and its hydrolysate.

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Plant extract activity can be modified by the digestion process. In order to assess the satiety effect of green tea and turmeric extracts, an in vitro gastrointestinal digestion process was performed and the STC-1 cell line was used. The enteroendocrine cell line was incubated (for 30, 60 and 120 minutes) with the digested and non-digested extracts measuring the secretion of cholecystokinin (CCK) and glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA).

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Purpose: Iron (Fe) deficiency anemia in young children is a global health concern which can be reduced by Fe fortification of foods. Cereal is often one of the first foods given to infants, providing adequate quantities of Fe during weaning. In this work, we have compared iron bioavailability and iron status of four iron sources used to fortify infant cereals, employing piglets as an animal model.

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Background: Potato (Solanum tuberosum) is a global crop and by far the most important non-cereal crop in the world. Therefore, it is necessary to assure its safe consumption. This is especially relevant in the case of its cultivation in abandoned mining areas, where the population tends to return to agriculture.

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