Nutrition
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Current limitations of conventional dietary assessment methods restrict the establishment of diet-disease relationships and efficacy of dietary interventions. Technology, in particular the use of mobile phones, may help resolve methodologic limitations, in turn improving the validity of dietary assessment and research and associated findings. This review aims to evaluate the validity, feasibility, and acceptability of dietary assessment methods that have been deployed on mobile phone platforms. ⋯ All mobile phone dietary assessment methods showed similar, but not superior, validity or reliability when compared with conventional methods. Participants' satisfaction and preferences for mobile phone dietary assessment methods were higher than those for conventional methods, indicating the need for further research. Validity testing in larger and more diverse populations, over longer durations is required to evaluate the efficacy of these methods in dietary research.
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Review
Perioperative nutritional support of patients undergoing pancreatic surgery in the age of ERAS.
The results achieved through the Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) approach in gastrointestinal surgery have led to its enthusiastic acceptance in pancreatic surgery. However, the ERAS program also involves an early oral feeding that is not always feasible after pancreatoduodenectomy. The aim of this review was to investigate in the literature whether the difficulty with early oral feeding in these patients was adequately balanced by perioperative enteral or parenteral nutritional support as recommended by the European Society for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism (ESPEN) guidelines or whether these recommendations have lost value in the "bundle" of the ERAS. ⋯ The current practice of the ERAS program in these patients appears to neglect some ESPEN recommendations. On the other hand, both ESPEN and ERAS recommendations could be combined for a supplemental benefit for the patient.
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Colon cancer strikes more than 1 million people annually and is responsible for more than 500,000 cancer deaths worldwide. Recent evidence suggests that the majority of malignancies, including colon cancer are driven by cancer stem cells (CSCs) that are resistant to current chemotherapeutic approaches leading to cancer relapse. Wnt signaling plays a critical role in colon stem cell renewal and carcinogenesis. ⋯ Although conventional chemotherapy targets the PI3K/AKT pathways and can significantly reduce tumor size, it fails to eliminate CSCs and has serious side effects. Dietary bioactive compounds such as grape seed extract, curcumin, lycopene, and resveratrol have promising chemopreventive effects, without serious side effects on various types of cancers due to their direct and indirect actions on CSC self-renewal pathways such as the Wnt pathway. Understanding the role of CSCs in diet-induced colon cancer will aid in development of evidence-based dietary chemopreventive strategies and/or therapeutic agents targeting CSCs.