Search

Research

Higher dietary fiber intakes during pregnancy may have the potential health benefits of increasing gut microbiome diversity, lowering the risk of glucose intolerance and pre-eclampsia, achieving appropriate gestational weight gain, and preventing constipation. In this observational cohort study, we have assessed the dietary fiber intakes of 804 women in late pregnancy, using a semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire (SQ-FFQ). Overall, the median (interquartile range) dietary fiber intake was 24.1 (19.0-29.7) grams per day (g/day). Only 237/804 (29.5%) women met the recommended Adequate Intake (AI) of dietary fiber during pregnancy of 28 g/day.

Research

With great interest, we are following the discussion on Speaker Gender Representation and Trends in Authorship. While it is indeed very popular and important to look at speaker representation, authorship, or board membership by gender, the underlying reasons for the unequal gender representation are not as easy to determine. Counting numbers on panels or boards may also not add up to real representation.

Research

The prevention of suicide and suicide-related behaviour are key policy priorities in Australia and internationally. The World Health Organization has recommended that member states develop self-harm surveillance systems as part of their suicide prevention efforts. This is also a priority under Australia's Fifth National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Plan. The aim of this paper is to describe the development of a state-based self-harm monitoring system in Victoria, Australia. In this system, data on all self-harm presentations are collected from eight hospital emergency departments in Victoria. A natural language processing classifier that uses machine learning to identify episodes of self-harm is currently being developed.

Research

Interparental conflict (IPC) has the potential to adversely affect children's social, emotional, and behavioural functioning. The overall objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between both the severity and chronicity of IPC across early and middle childhood and children's emotional-behavioural functioning at 10-11 years. Specifically, we aimed to: (1) identify distinct trajectories of IPC spanning 10-11 years since birth of the study child as reported by mothers, and (2) examine the emotional-behavioural functioning of children exposed to the identified IPC trajectories.

Research

Altered maternal haemoglobin levels during pregnancy are associated with pre-clinical and clinical conditions affecting the fetus. Evidence from animal models suggests that these associations may be partially explained by differential DNA methylation in the newborn with possible long-term consequences. To test this in humans, we meta-analyzed the epigenome-wide associations of maternal haemoglobin levels during pregnancy with offspring DNA methylation in 3,967 newborn cord blood and 1,534 children and 1,962 adolescent whole-blood samples derived from 10 cohorts.

Research

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in massive global disruptions with considerable impact on the delivery of health services and national health programmes. Since the detection of the first COVID-19 case on 5th March 2020, the Royal Government of Bhutan implemented a number of containment measures including border closure and national lockdowns. Against the backdrop of this global COVID-19 pandemic response, there was a sudden surge of locally-transmitted malaria cases between June to August 2020.

Research

The incidence of neonatal varicella has decreased dramatically since the introduction of the varicella vaccination. Although the varicella zoster virus is often associated with a mild infection, it may cause severe morbidity and mortality, particularly in the neonatal period and immunocompromised hosts. We report a case of neonatal varicella acquired from maternal zoster in a mother on biological immunosuppressive therapy.

Research

Visceral leishmaniasis (VL; Leishmania donovani) cases produce interferon-γ and tumor necrosis factor in response to soluble leishmanial antigen in whole-blood assays. Using transcriptional profiling, we demonstrate the impact of interleukin-10, a cytokine implicated in VL, on this response.

Research

This paper presents the first causal estimates of the effect of weather on children's time allocation. It exploits exogenous variations in local weather observed during the random diary dates of two nationally representative cohorts of Australian children whose time-use diaries were surveyed biennially over 10 years.

Research

Both tumour suppressive and oncogenic functions have been reported for dual-specificity tyrosine phosphorylation-regulated kinase 1A (DYRK1A). Herein, we performed a detailed investigation to delineate the role of DYRK1A in glioblastoma. Our phosphoproteomic and mechanistic studies show that DYRK1A induces degradation of cyclin B by phosphorylating CDC23, which is necessary for the function of the anaphase-promoting complex, a ubiquitin ligase that degrades mitotic proteins.