BACKGROUND:: Vitamin D deficiency is increasingly being recognized as a highly prevalent and undertreated problem. This study was conducted to determine the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency/insufficiency in hospitalized adults in northeast Tennessee. METHODS:: A prospective cohort study was conducted on 99 inpatients admitted to an internal medicine teaching service from July through October 2006 at a single private hospital in Johnson City, Tennessee. A single measurement of 25-hydroxyvitamin D was performed on all patients. RESULTS:: Of the 99 patients, 53% were vitamin D deficient or insufficient (30% deficient with a level of <20 ng/mL and 23% insufficient with a level between 20ĝ€"29.9 ng/mL). The highest frequency of deficiency was in females <50 years. CONCLUSION:: Vitamin D deficiency is highly prevalent in all age groups and in both females and males in this population. Clinicians should consider measuring the vitamin D level of all inpatients on a routine basis.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death worldwide. The risks for women increase at the onset of menopause. A central feature in CVD patients is excessive sympathetic stimulation of beta-adrenergic receptors (β-ARs). Both clinical and animal studies show that estrogen loss and age exacerbate cardiac β-AR signaling and contractile function. We, therefore, examined the hypothesis that prolonged estrogen deficiency followed by chronic sympathetic injury worsens left ventricular cardiac function in the aged female heart. Bilateral ovariectomy (OVX) or SHAM surgery was performed in female mice at 2.5 months of age and infused with Isoproterenol (ISO; 400μg/kg/h) at 12 months (12M) post OVX for 3 days to induce chronic sympathetic stimulation. Transthoracic two-dimensional M-mode echocardiography was used to measure left ventricular (LV) wall thickness and left ventricular end-systolic diameter (LVESD) and left ventricular end-diastolic diameter (LVEDD), percent fractional shortening (%FS), and ejection fraction (EF). Animal body weight was measured to calculate the heart-body ratio, followed by the removal of the heart, left lung, and uterus during euthanasia. Tissue samples were treated with wheat germ agglutinin staining to measure cardiac myocyte cross-sectional area (hypertrophy). Results show that prolonged ovariectomy increased mortality in mice treated with ISO post-ovariectomy (OVX +ISO) compared to the SHAM+ISO group. Echocardiography imaging demonstrated a smaller systolic diameter and increased contractility in the ISO and ISO+OVX groups. OVX, ISO, and ISO+OVX treatment had a significant decrease in LVESD versus SHAM and OVX groups. The LVEDD resulted in a significant decrease with ISO treatment compared to the SHAM group, and no significant difference was observed between the OVX and ISO+OVX groups compared to the SHAM. Percent FS presented a significant increase in cardiac function in OVX, ISO, and ISO+OVX groups compared to the SHAM. There was an increased %FS in the ISO+OVX compared to the OVX group, and no significant difference between the ISO+OVX and ISO treatment groups. Percent EF significantly increased in the OVX, ISO, and ISO+OVX treatment groups from the SHAM and OVX group, and no significant difference between the ISO+OVX and ISO treatment groups. OVX increased left ventricular mass compared to SHAM. While ISO treatment did not increase LV mass ISO+OVX treatment group significantly increased in LV mass when compared to the ISO treatment group. There was no significant difference in the left ventricular mass between the ISO+OVX vs. OVX group. There was no significant difference in cardiac myocyte cross-sectional area in the SHAM, OVX vs ISO groups. There was however a significant increase in myocyte cross-sectional area in the ISO+OVX group compared to OVX treatment and ISO groups. The results presented here show that estrogen loss impairs left ventricular cardiac function and increases remodeling in response to β-AR stimulation and that prolonged estrogen loss may blunt the sympathetic response in the heart. These results highlight the importance of the long-term effects of estrogen loss during menopause in the treatment and management of heart disease.

No description available.

Iron deficiency anemia (IDA) is the most common extraintestinal complication encountered in patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), and it is more prevalent in pediatric patients compared to adults (Rogler and Vavricka). The inflammation and blood loss from the disease impacts both the absorption and storage of iron in the body (Rogler and Vavricka). With the intent of establishing a standard of care for IDA treatment in patients with IBD, we conducted a prospective study of 104 consecutive pediatric patients to assess the safety and efficacy of intravenous (IV) iron therapy compared to oral therapy and no treatment, as well as the effects of iron therapy on patient quality of life. Efficacy was assessed by comparing the change in hemoglobin levels in the interval between admission to outpatient follow-up. The average time to the first ambulatory follow-up was 29.08 days. 69 patients received IV iron therapy, 17 patients received oral iron supplementation, and 18 patients had no treatment. Treatment with IV iron resulted in a statistically significant increase in hemoglobin levels (2.00 g/dL ± 1.57 g/dL, as mean ± standard deviation) from admission to the first follow-up ambulatory appointment (p < .0001). Patients receiving IV iron therapy also experienced a significantly greater mean increase in hemoglobin levels than those treated with oral iron (p = .0084) or no treatment (p = .0018). Further, patients treated with IV iron experienced a significant increase in their quality of life at follow-up compared to admission as measured by the Impact-III questionnaire (p = .0179). Our study illustrates the importance of screening pediatric patients with IBD for IDA and suggests that IV iron treatment is safe and more effective in raising hematologic and iron measures than orally- administered alternative options.

Vitamin D is known to benefit skeletal bone health and prevent rickets in children. Limited evidence exists to support a role of vitamin D in linear growth and stunting, especially in children at high risk for growth faltering, e.g. undernourished low socio-economic status children <5 years. Also, it is unclear if the immunomodulatory benefits of vitamin D impact childhood pneumonia. It is critical to determine whether vitamin D ameliorates stunting and pneumonia, as these conditions are responsible for a high burden of child mortality and morbidity. A secondary analysis of two studies in Ecuador was undertaken to determine the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency and the effect of vitamin D status on growth (height-for-age (HAZ) and weight-for-age (WAZ) z-scores) (n=516) and illness duration in children hospitalized for severe pneumonia (n=348). Serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) concentrations of children who participated in a community-based trial (ages 6-36 months) and hospital-based trial (ages 2-59 months) were determined at baseline. Overall, 18.6% of children had serum 25(OH)D levels <17 ng/ml (n=516), 62.2% were stunted (HAZ≤-2), and 65.5% were underweight (WAZ≤-1). Children with 25(OH)D concentrations <17 ng/ml had a higher risk of stunting (HAZ≤-2) than those with concentrations ≥17 ng/ml (ORadj: 2.8; 95%CI: 1.6, 4.7) in logistic regression models. Underweight (WAZ≤-1) children were twice as likely to have 25(OH)D concentrations <17 ng/ml than normal weight children (WAZ>-1) (ORadj: 2.0; 95%CI: 1.2,3.3). Vitamin D deficiency (≤20 ng/ml) did not affect pneumonia duration among hospitalized children in Cox proportional hazard models (HRadj: 1.2; 95% CI: 0.93,1.5). Younger children (2-12 months), underweight children (WAZ≤-2), and children with higher respiratory rates had a longer duration of illness (HRadj: 0.61; 95% CI: 0.43,0.86; HRadj: 0.78; 95% CI: 0.59,1.0; HRadj: 0.97; 95% CI: 0.96,0.99, respectively). Underweight Ecuadorian children are at increased risk for lower serum 25(OH)D concentrations. Low vitamin D status is associated with stunting among undernourished children but not with the duration of pneumonia illness. This indicates that vitamin D may be a modifiable risk factor for stunting, which, if validated in further research, can potentially impart beneficial effects on growth among stunted children in resource limited settings. / 2020-06-30T00:00:00Z

Few studies in the area of psychodietetics have concentrated upon the relationship between a single dietary nutrient and behavior. However, some vitamins have been shown to be particularly important to central nervous system activity. Among these is Vitamin C (ascorbic acid). Two experiments were done to determine the effects of ascorbic acid deficient diets on a learning task in which guinea pigs were subjects. Learning was defined as acquisition and extinction of shock-escape and shock-avoidance behavior. In Experiment I, twelve adult guinea pigs were fed diets containing two different deficient amounts of ascorbic acid for six weeks. They were then run on shock-escape, shock-avoidance and extinction schedules. No significant differences in behavior among the dietary groups were shown by statistical analysis, either in acquisition or extinction. In Experiment II, three adult guinea pigs were fed the same ascorbic acid-deficient diets as in Experiment I for six weeks after a baseline performance on a shuttlebox shock avoidance schedule was obtained. Performance after dietary treatment among or across subjects was not observably different from the performance prior to treatment. Serum and adrenal protein analysis confirmed that the dietary treatment had lowered the total ascorbic acid content of the serum and adrenals, but behavior did not show a corresponding or consistent change. These results indicate that ascorbic acid deficient diets fed to adult guinea pigs did not result in a change in behavior as observed on shock-escape, shock-avoidance, or extinction schedules.

In a few instances an agricultural problem lend itself well to research into some of the more basic aspects of a problem as well as to research to determine the exact nature of the problem ad to prescribe a cure. Such a problem was found by the author to exist on a soil of the Twin Falls, Idaho area. Besides making an attempt to ascertain the exact nature of the problem, an experiment was set up in an attempt to understand more about the mechanism responsible for the problem.

Iron deficiency chlorosis (IDC) is the most common reason for chlorosis in soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merrill) and causes an average yield loss of 120 million dollars per year across 1.8 million ha in the North Central US alone. As the most effective way to avoid IDC is the use of tolerant cultivars, they are visually rated for IDC by experts; however, this method is subjective and not feasible for a larger scale. An alternate more objective image processing method can be implemented in various platforms and fields. This approach relies on a color vegetation index (CVI) that can quantify chlorophyll, as chlorophyll content is a good IDC indicator. Therefore, this research is aimed at developing image processing methods at leaf, plot, and field scales with machine learning methods for chlorophyll and IDC measurement. This study also reviewed and synthesized the IDC measurement and management methods. Smartphone digital images with machine learning models successfully estimated the chlorophyll content of soybean leaves infield. Dark green color index (DGCI) was the best-correlated CVI with chlorophyll. The pixel count of four different ranges of DGCI (RPC) was used as input features for different models, and the support vector machine produced the highest performance. Handheld camera images of soybean plots extracted DGCI, which mimicked visual rating, and canopy size that were used as inputs to decision-tree based models for IDC classification. The AdaBoost model was the best model in classifying IDC severity. Unmanned aerial vehicle soybean IDC cultivar trial fields images extracted DGCI, canopy size, and their product (CDP) for IDC severity monitoring and yield prediction. The area under the curve (AUC) was employed to aggregate the data into a single value through time, and the correlation between all the features and yield was good. Although CDP at latest growth stage had the highest correlation with yield, AUC of CDP was the most consistent index for soybean yield prediction. This research demonstrated that digital image processing along with the machine learning methods can be successfully applied to the soybean IDC measurement and the various soybean related stakeholders can benefit from this research.

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