PLoS medicine
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Helping consumers make healthier food choices is a key issue for the prevention of cancer and other diseases. In many countries, political authorities are considering the implementation of a simplified labelling system to reflect the nutritional quality of food products. The Nutri-Score, a five-colour nutrition label, is derived from the Nutrient Profiling System of the British Food Standards Agency (modified version) (FSAm-NPS). How the consumption of foods with high/low FSAm-NPS relates to cancer risk has been studied in national/regional cohorts but has not been characterized in diverse European populations. ⋯ In this large multinational European cohort, the consumption of food products with a higher FSAm-NPS score (lower nutritional quality) was associated with a higher risk of cancer. This supports the relevance of the FSAm-NPS as underlying nutrient profiling system for front-of-pack nutrition labels, as well as for other public health nutritional measures.
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Multiple occasions of device-measured physical activity have not been previously examined in relation to metabolic traits. We described associations of total activity, moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA), and sedentary time from three accelerometry measures taken across adolescence with detailed traits related to systemic metabolism. ⋯ Our results support associations of physical activity with metabolic traits that are small in magnitude and more robust for higher MVPA than lower sedentary time. Activity fluctuates over time, but associations of current activity with most metabolic traits do not differ by previous activity. This suggests that the metabolic effects of physical activity, if causal, depend on most recent engagement.
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In a Perspective on the research article from Jacobson and colleagues, Amitabh Suthar and colleagues from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention discuss the importance of and considerations for developing real-time and large-scale reporting systems for tracking and controlling antimicrobial resistance.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Crowdsourcing to expand HIV testing among men who have sex with men in China: A closed cohort stepped wedge cluster randomized controlled trial.
HIV testing rates are suboptimal among at-risk men. Crowdsourcing may be a useful tool for designing innovative, community-based HIV testing strategies to increase HIV testing. The purpose of this study was to use a stepped wedge cluster randomized controlled trial (RCT) to evaluate the effect of a crowdsourced HIV intervention on HIV testing uptake among men who have sex with men (MSM) in eight Chinese cities. ⋯ In this setting, crowdsourcing was effective for developing and strengthening community-based HIV testing services for MSM. Crowdsourced interventions may be an important tool for the scale-up of HIV testing services among MSM in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC).
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In a Policy Forum, Marc Lipsitch and colleagues discuss trial design issues in infectious disease outbreaks.