scholarly journals Challenges Associated With the Design and Deployment of Food Intake Urine Biomarker Technology for Assessment of Habitual Diet in Free-Living Individuals and Populations—A Perspective

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manfred Beckmann ◽  
Thomas Wilson ◽  
Amanda J. Lloyd ◽  
Duarte Torres ◽  
Ana Goios ◽  
...  

Improvement of diet at the population level is a cornerstone of national and international strategies for reducing chronic disease burden. A critical challenge in generating robust data on habitual dietary intake is accurate exposure assessment. Self-reporting instruments (e.g., food frequency questionnaires, dietary recall) are subject to reporting bias and serving size perceptions, while weighed dietary assessments are unfeasible in large-scale studies. However, secondary metabolites derived from individual foods/food groups and present in urine provide an opportunity to develop potential biomarkers of food intake (BFIs). Habitual dietary intake assessment in population surveys using biomarkers presents several challenges, including the need to develop affordable biofluid collection methods, acceptable to participants that allow collection of informative samples. Monitoring diet comprehensively using biomarkers requires analytical methods to quantify the structurally diverse mixture of target biomarkers, at a range of concentrations within urine. The present article provides a perspective on the challenges associated with the development of urine biomarker technology for monitoring diet exposure in free-living individuals with a view to its future deployment in “real world” situations. An observational study (n = 95), as part of a national survey on eating habits, provided an opportunity to explore biomarker measurement in a free-living population. In a second food intervention study (n = 15), individuals consumed a wide range of foods as a series of menus designed specifically to achieve exposure reflecting a diversity of foods commonly consumed in the UK, emulating normal eating patterns. First Morning Void urines were shown to be suitable samples for biomarker measurement. Triple quadrupole mass spectrometry, coupled with liquid chromatography, was used to assess simultaneously the behavior of a panel of 54 potential BFIs. This panel of chemically diverse biomarkers, reporting intake of a wide range of commonly-consumed foods, can be extended successfully as new biomarker leads are discovered. Towards validation, we demonstrate excellent discrimination of eating patterns and quantitative relationships between biomarker concentrations in urine and the intake of several foods. In conclusion, we believe that the integration of information from BFI technology and dietary self-reporting tools will expedite research on the complex interactions between dietary choices and health.

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saskia Meijboom ◽  
Martinette T. van Houts-Streppel ◽  
Corine Perenboom ◽  
Els Siebelink ◽  
Anne M. van de Wiel ◽  
...  

AbstractSelf-administered web-based 24-h dietary recalls (24 hR) may save a lot of time and money as compared with interviewer-administered telephone-based 24 hR interviews and may therefore be useful in large-scale studies. Within the Nutrition Questionnaires plus (NQplus) study, the web-based 24 hR tool Compl-eat™ was developed to assess Dutch participants’ dietary intake. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the performance of this tool against the interviewer-administered telephone-based 24 hR method. A subgroup of participants of the NQplus study (20–70 years, n 514) completed three self-administered web-based 24 hR and three telephone 24 hR interviews administered by a dietitian over a 1-year period. Compl-eat™ as well as the dietitians guided the participants to report all foods consumed the previous day. Compl-eat™ on average underestimated the intake of energy by 8 %, of macronutrients by 10 % and of micronutrients by 13 % as compared with telephone recalls. The agreement between both methods, estimated using Lin's concordance coefficients (LCC), ranged from 0·15 for vitamin B1 to 0·70 for alcohol intake (mean LCC 0·38). The lower estimations by Compl-eat™ can be explained by a lower number of total reported foods and lower estimated intakes of the food groups, fats, oils and savoury sauces, sugar and confectionery, dairy and cheese. The performance of the tool may be improved by, for example, adding an option to automatically select frequently used foods and including more recall cues. We conclude that Compl-eat™ may be a useful tool in large-scale Dutch studies after suggested improvements have been implemented and evaluated.


2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (3) ◽  
pp. 213-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Conrad ◽  
Ute Nöthlings

Valid estimation of usual dietary intake in epidemiological studies is a topic of present interest. The aim of the present paper is to review recent literature on innovative approaches focussing on: (1) the requirements to assess usual intake and (2) the application in large-scale settings. Recently, a number of technology-based self-administered tools have been developed, including short-term instruments such as web-based 24-h recalls, mobile food records or simple closed-ended questionnaires that assess the food intake of the previous 24 h. Due to their advantages in terms of feasibility and cost-effectiveness these tools may be superior to conventional assessment methods in large-scale settings. New statistical methods have been developed to combine dietary information from repeated 24-h dietary recalls and FFQ. Conceptually, these statistical methods presume that the usual food intake of a subject equals the probability of consuming a food on a given day, multiplied by the average amount of intake of that food on a typical consumption day. Repeated 24-h recalls from the same individual provide information on consumption probability and amount. In addition, the FFQ can add information on intake frequency of rarely consumed foods. It has been suggested that this combined approach may provide high-quality dietary information. A promising direction for estimation of usual intake in large-scale settings is the integration of both statistical methods and new technologies. Studies are warranted to assess the validity of estimated usual intake in comparison with biomarkers.


2008 ◽  
Vol 99 (6) ◽  
pp. 1266-1274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen J. Moore ◽  
Louisa J. Ells ◽  
Sally A. McLure ◽  
Sean Crooks ◽  
David Cumbor ◽  
...  

Self-report recall questionnaires used to measure physical activity and dietary intake in children can be labour intensive and monotonous and tend to focus on either dietary intake or physical activity. The web-based software, Synchronised Nutrition and Activity ProgramTM (SNAPTM), was developed to produce a novel, simple, quick and engaging method of assessing energy balance-related behaviours at a population level, combining principles from new and existing 24 h recall methodologies, set within a user-friendly interface. Dietary intake was measured using counts for twenty-one food groups and physical activity levels were measured in min of moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA). A combination of the mean difference between methods, type II regression and non-parametric limits of agreement techniques were used to examine the accuracy and precision of SNAPTM. Method comparison analyses demonstrated a good agreement for both dietary intake and physical activity behaviours. For dietary variables, accuracy of SNAPTM (mean difference) was within ± 1 count for the majority of food groups. The proportion of the sample with between-method agreement within ± 1 count ranged from 0·40 to 0·99. For min of MVPA, there was no substantial fixed or proportional bias, and a mean difference between methods (SNAPTM – accelerometry) of − 9 min. SNAPTM provides a quick, accurate, low-burden, cost-effective and engaging method of assessing energy balance behaviours at a population level. Tools such as SNAPTM, which exploit the popularity, privacy and engagement of the computer interface, and linkages with other datasets, could make a substantial contribution to future public health monitoring and research.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Kentaro Murakami ◽  
Nana Shinozaki ◽  
Tracy A McCaffrey ◽  
M Barbara E Livingstone ◽  
Satoshi Sasaki

Abstract Food frequency questionnaires, the primary method of dietary assessment in large-scale nutritional epidemiologic studies, preclude an informed evaluation of the timing of dietary intake and meal-specific dietary intake. In this study, we developed the Meal-based Diet History Questionnaire (MDHQ), a self-administered questionnaire designed for estimating food and nutrient intakes for each meal type separately. The development was done based on a 16-day dietary record obtained from 242 Japanese adults. The MDHQ consisted of the three different parts, with a total of 196 items. Part 1 of the MDHQ asks about consumption frequency of generic food groups (n 24) for each meal type: breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner, and night snack. Part 2 of the MDHQ asks about relative consumption frequency of sub-food groups within one of the generic food groups which are asked in Part 1. Combining information derived from Parts 1 and 2 enables to increase the number of foods we can estimate efficiently but within a limited number of questions. Part 3 of the MDHQ asks about general eating behaviors, which are intended to use in a variety of ways during dietary intake calculation. A series of calculation algorithms for food groups, energy, and nutrients were also prepared. Given that the MDHQ was empirically developed based on comprehensive information on actual food consumption, this innovative tool may be promising for future epidemiological research on meal patterns and time of day of dietary intake, or chrono-nutrition research. A rigorous evaluation of validity of the MDHQ is warranted.


2014 ◽  
Vol 112 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carine Vereecken ◽  
Marc Covents ◽  
Inge Huybrechts ◽  
Colette Kelly ◽  
Lea Maes

Few studies have investigated the relative validity of FFQ in young children and no study has investigated the relative validity of changes in children's food intake in a longitudinal context. The aim of the present study was to compare the FFQ of the longitudinal Family Influences on Food Intake study, assessing children's food intake in the previous 3 months, with a 3 d online food record when children were 3 and 7 years old, as well as to investigate the relative validity of changes in food group intake over a 4-year period. Parents (n 89) completed the FFQ and an online food record over three non-consecutive days on two separate occasions (January–April 2008 and 2012). Wilcoxon signed-rank tests and Spearman's correlations were used to compare food group intake and changes in intake assessed using both methods. In 2008, the intake of eleven of the twenty-two food groups was overestimated and that of four food groups underestimated in the FFQ in comparison with the online tool; in 2012, the intake of four food groups was overestimated and that of seven food groups underestimated. Nevertheless, changes in intake did not differ significantly between the two methods for eighteen food groups. Correlations in 2008 and 2012 were, on average, 0·47; correlations between the changes in dietary intake were, on average, 0·26. The results suggest that despite the significant differences between the two methods for a number of food groups at both baseline and/or follow-up, the FFQ can be used to monitor changes in dietary intake for groups of young children.


2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 778
Author(s):  
Francini Xavier Rossetti

O presente artigo teve como objetivo revisar a literatura sobre hábitos alimentares de universitários brasileiros e identificar possíveis condicionantes.  A revisão consistiu na busca de artigos publicados entre 2004 e 2014 nas bases de dados Pubmed, Lilacs e Scielo, por meio da combinação dos termos: college students, university, nutrition, diet, food consumption, eating habits, food intake, dietary intake.  Outra estratégia foi a busca manual nas listas de referências dos artigos identificados e selecionados por meio da pesquisa eletrônica. Optou-se por excluir publicações com amostra indivíduos exclusivamente do sexo feminino, selecionando-se 9 artigos para análise. Os principais fatores associados ao consumo alimentar entre universitários brasileiros foram rendimento familiar, dupla jornada de estudo e trabalho, área do curso de graduação, estado nutricional, sexo e local de realização das refeições.  A produção científica sobre consumo alimentar de universitários brasileiros é escassa, destacando-se maiores contribuições nos últimos 5 anos. Em relação aos métodos utilizados, predominam questionários de frequência alimentar. A análise sob a ótica de padrões de consumo alimentar, a necessidade de relacionar o consumo com medidas de desfecho e a necessidade de estudos longitudinais com essa população se fazem necessários, levando em consideração delineamentos adequados, do ponto de vista dos condicionantes do consumo alimentar do ponto de vista sociodemográfico, ambiental e individual.


Author(s):  
Saba Yousaf ◽  
Umar Bacha ◽  
Mehak Zafar ◽  
Ahmad Raza ◽  
Muhammad Arbaz Khan ◽  
...  

Background: Food insecurity consistently challenges middle-income countries, including Pakistan. The aim of this study was to evaluate the dietary food intake of the households in the selected location through a semi-structured questionnaire. Methods: A cross sectional study was carried out among 500 households comprised 2094 participants to investigate dietary intake and status of food insecurity. Furthermore, socio-demographic and weekly dietary food intake was collected through a semi-structured questionnaire in 2019. Those households who assent to participate were included in the study. Results: Mean household size was 5.80±2.05 comprised 49.27% male and 50.61% female. Six food types were commonly consumed in the study population. Among these foods (g/capita/day) starch remained at the top 734.43 followed by fruits 256.02 and vegetables 89.77. These data highlighted limited dietary diversity and reduced dietary intake. The energy intake (per capita/day) from the food basket, contribution of the starch was the highest 32.37% versus protein 14.43%, milk 14.08%, vegetables 1.31%, and fruit 7.79% with an overall calories intake 81.08% from all food groups except tea. Finally, of the 500 households, 42.4% people were below the poverty line, 41.8% people at the poverty line, and 15.8% people were above the poverty line. Conclusion: The results showed that dietary intake of the participants was below the reference intake, demonstrating food insecurity and unbalanced diet.


Parasitology ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 134 (6) ◽  
pp. 763-776 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. POULIN

SUMMARYAs a scientific discipline matures, its theoretical underpinnings tend to consolidate around a few general laws that explain a wide range of phenomena, and from which can be derived further testable predictions. It is one of the goals of science to uncover the general principles that produce recurring patterns in nature. Although this has happened in many areas of physics and chemistry, ecology is yet to take this important step. Ecological systems are intrinsically complex, but this does not necessarily mean that everything about them is unpredictable or chaotic. Ecologists, whose grand aim is to understand the interactions that govern the distribution, abundance and diversity of living organisms at different scales, have uncovered several regular patterns, i.e. widely observable statistical tendencies, in the abundance or diversity of organisms in natural ecosystems. Some of these patterns, however, are contingent, i.e. they are only true under particular circumstances; nevertheless, the broad generality of many patterns hints at the existence of universal principles. What about parasite ecology: is it also characterized by recurring patterns and general principles? Evidence for repeatable empirical patterns in parasite ecology is reviewed here, in search of patterns that are consistently detectable across taxa or geographical areas. The coverage ranges from the population level all the way to large-scale patterns of parasite diversity and abundance (or biomass) and patterns in the structure of host-parasite interaction networks. Although general laws seem to apply to these extreme scales of studies, most patterns observed at the intermediate scale, i.e. the parasite community level, appear highly contingent and far from universal. The general laws uncovered to date are proving valuable, as they offer glimpses of the underlying processes shaping parasite ecology and diversity.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yingqi Gu ◽  
Akshay Zalkikar ◽  
Mingming Liu ◽  
Lara Kelly ◽  
Amy Hall ◽  
...  

AbstractClinical studies from WHO have demonstrated that only 50–70% of patients adhere properly to prescribed drug therapy. Such adherence failure can impact therapeutic efficacy for the patients in question and compromises data quality around the population-level efficacy of the drug for the indications targeted. In this study, we applied various ensemble learning and deep learning models to predict medication adherence among patients. Our contribution to this endeavour involves targeting the problem of adherence prediction for a particularly challenging class of patients who self-administer injectable medication at home. Our prediction pipeline, based on event history, comprises a connected sharps bin which aims to help patients better manage their condition and improve outcomes. In other words, the efficiency of interventions can be significantly improved by prioritizing the patients who are most likely to be non-adherent. The collected data comprising a rich event feature set may be exploited for the purposes of predicting the status of the next adherence state for individual patients. This paper reports on how this concept can be realized through an investigation using a wide range of ensemble learning and deep learning models on a real-world dataset collected from such a system. The dataset investigated comprises 342,174 historic injection disposal records collected over the course of more than 5 years. A comprehensive comparison of different models is given in this paper. Moreover, we demonstrate that the selected best performer, long short-term memory (LSTM), generalizes well by deploying it in a true future testing dataset. The proposed end-to-end pipeline is capable of predicting patient failure in adhering to their therapeutic regimen with 77.35 % accuracy (Specificity: 78.28 %, Sensitivity: 76.42%, Precision: 77.87%,F1 score: 0.7714, ROC AUC: 0.8390).


2003 ◽  
Vol 89 (6) ◽  
pp. 594-607 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valeria Pala ◽  
Sabina Sieri ◽  
Domenico Palli ◽  
Simonetta Salvini ◽  
Franco Berrino ◽  
...  

One of the aims of the EPIC study is to produce accurate descriptions of the dietary habits of the participants recruited in the 27 EPIC centers of 10 European countries. To do this, different dietary assessment instruments were developed and applied to capture the wide range of diets characterizing the different European populations. Three different food frequency questionnaires were developed for Italy: one for the centers of Varese, Turin and Florence, one for Ragusa and one for Naples. These inquired about eating habits over the previous year and were completed by 46,839 Italian EPIC participants. Specially developed software analyzed the responses and linked them to food composition tables in order to provide a nutritional breakdown of individual and collective diets. A further aim of EPIC was to develop a method of rendering data from different dietary questionnaires comparable. To do this, dietary data were collected from a sample of about 8% of the Italian EPIC cohort, using a standardized computer-driven 24-hour dietary recall interview, and then compared with the dietary data collected by the questionnaires. This paper provides an extensive description of the technical features and performance of the food frequency questionnaires and the 24-hour recall interview, including a comparison of estimates of the intake of different food groups provided by the two instruments. From this comparison, the repeatability and reliability of consumption estimates was assessed, resulting in indications for improving data comparability. The paper also presents food frequency questionnaire estimates of the daily intake of foods and nutrients by center, sex and age group, as well as information on dietary habits such as place and time of intake, and food preparation and preservation methods as provided by the 24-hour recall interview. The picture that emerged is that Italian eating habits are undergoing marked changes, with a tendency to less healthy eating. Documentation of these changes in relation to age, sex and region provides an essential starting point for investigating the influence of diet on the development of cancer and other chronic diseases.


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