Impact of Registered Dietitian Expertise in Health Guidance for Weight Loss

Background & Objectives

Expertise of registered dietitians (RDs) is important for health guidance but has been poorly evaluated. We evaluated the kind of RD expertise that would improve their skills.

Design, Setting, Participants, Measurements

This study was a post-hoc analysis of our randomized controlled trial, which compared the weight change between participants using the web-based self-disclosure health support and those using the email health support. Healthy men and women aged 35–64 years with a body mass index (BMI) of > = 24.5 kg/m² were recruited for this study. We evaluated the relationship of RD expertise indicators including the duration of working as an RD, the experience of health counseling, and membership in the Japan Dietetic Association (JDA) with the weight loss of study participants. The primary endpoint was the change in body weight. Comparison of changes in body weight by the RD expertise indicators was evaluated using analysis of covariance.

Results

A total of 175 participants were eligible for analyses. Changes in body weight were significantly greater when they were supported by the RDs in the routine counseling group than when supported by the RDs in the non-routine counseling group (-1.8 kg versus -0.4 kg, fully adjusted P = 0.0089). Duration of working as an RD and JDA membership did not significantly affect changes in body weight.

Conclusions

Among some indices of RD experience, the experience of providing routine experience of health counseling was associated with weight loss.     

Constraining OCT with Knowledge of Device Design Enables High Accuracy Hemodynamic Assessment of Endovascular Implants

Background

Stacking cross-sectional intravascular images permits three-dimensional rendering of endovascular implants, yet introduces between-frame uncertainties that limit characterization of device placement and the hemodynamic microenvironment. In a porcine coronary stent model, we demonstrate enhanced OCT reconstruction with preservation of between-frame features through fusion with angiography and a priori knowledge of stent design.

Methods and Results

Strut positions were extracted from sequential OCT frames. Reconstruction with standard interpolation generated discontinuous stent structures. By computationally constraining interpolation to known stent skeletons fitted to 3D ‘clouds’ of OCT-Angio-derived struts, implant anatomy was resolved, accurately rendering features from implant diameter and curvature (n = 1 vessels, r² = 0.91, 0.90, respectively) to individual strut-wall configurations (average displacement error ~15 μm). This framework facilitated hemodynamic simulation (n = 1 vessel), showing the critical importance of accurate anatomic rendering in characterizing both quantitative and basic qualitative flow patterns. Discontinuities with standard approaches systematically introduced noise and bias, poorly capturing regional flow effects. In contrast, the enhanced method preserved multi-scale (local strut to regional stent) flow interactions, demonstrating the impact of regional contexts in defining the hemodynamic consequence of local deployment errors.

Conclusion

Fusion of planar angiography and knowledge of device design permits enhanced OCT image analysis of in situ tissue-device interactions. Given emerging interests in simulation-derived hemodynamic assessment as surrogate measures of biological risk, such fused modalities offer a new window into patient-specific implant environments.     

Practical one-step glucuronidation via biotransformation

We herein report a practical one-step glucuronidation method by biotransformation using Streptomyces sp. SANK 60895. This novel direct method of biotransformation has been shown to be more practical and scalable for glucuronidation than previously reported chemical and enzymatic procedures given its simplicity, high β-selectivity, cost-effectiveness, and reproducibility. We applied the present method to the synthesis of acyl glucuronide and hydroxy-β-glucuronide of mycophenolic acid and compound 4, respectively. This method was also shown to be applicable to the N-glucuronidation of various compounds.     

Highly efficient transfection system for functional gene analysis in adult amphibian lens regeneration

The analysis of newt lens regeneration has been an important subject in developmental biology. Recently, it has been reported that the genes involved in the normal eye development are also expressed in the regenerative process of lens regeneration in the adult newt. However, functional analysis of these genes has not been possible, because there is no system to introduce genes efficiently into the cells involved in the regeneration. In the present study, lipofection was used as the method for gene transfer in cultured pigmented iris cells that can transdifferentiate into lens cells in newt lens regeneration. Positive expression of a reporter gene was obtained in more than 70% of cells. In addition, the aggregate derived from gene-transfected cells maintained its expression at a high level for a long time within the host tissue. To verify the effectiveness of this model system with a reporter gene in lens regeneration, Pax6, which is suggested to be involved in normal eye development and lens regeneration, was transfected. Ectopic expression of lens-specific crystallins was obtained in cells that show no such activity in normal lens regeneration. These results made it possible for the first time to analyze the molecular mechanism of lens regeneration in the adult newt.     

Mosaic analysis with oep mutant reveals a repressive interaction between floor-plate and non-floor-plate mutant cells in the zebrafish neural tube

The floor plate is located at the ventral midline of the neural tube in vertebrates. Floor-plate development is severely impaired in zebrafish one-eyed pinhead (oep) mutants. oep encodes a membrane-bound protein with an epiblast growth factor (EGF) motif and functions autonomously in floor-plate precursors. To understand the cell behavior and cell-cell interaction during floor-plate development, the distribution and gene expression of wild-type and oep mutant cells in genetic mosaics were examined. When mutant shield cells were transplanted into a wild-type host, an ectopic neural tube with a floor plate was induced. However, the floor plate of the secondary axis was consistently devoid of mutant cells while its notochord was composed entirely of mutant cells. This indicates that oep shield cells adopt only a notochord fate in a wild-type environment. In reciprocal transplants (wild to oep), however, grafted shield cells frequently contributed to part of the floor-plate region of the secondary neural tube and expressed floor-plate markers. Careful examination of serial sections revealed that a mutant neural cell, when located next to the wild-type cells at the ventral midline, inhibited floor-plate differentiation of the adjacent wild-type cells. This inhibition was effective over an area only one- or two-cells wide along the anteroposterior axis. As the cells located at the ventral midline of the oep neural tube are thought to possess a neural character, similar to those located on either side of the floor plate in a wild-type embryo, this inhibition may play an important role during normal development in restricting the floor-plate region into the ventral-most midline by antagonizing homeogenetic signals from the floor-plate cells.     

Microtubules become more dynamic but not shorter during preprophase band formation: a possible "search-and-capture" mechanism for microtubule translocation

The dynamic behavior of the microtubule cytoskeleton plays a crucial role in cellular organization, but the physical mechanisms underlying microtubule (re)organization in plant cells are poorly understood. We investigated microtubule dynamics in tobacco BY-2 suspension cells during interphase and during the formation of the preprophase band (PPB), the cytoskeletal structure that defines the site of cytokinesis. Here we show that after 2 h of microtubule accumulation in the PPB and concurrent disappearance elsewhere in the cortex, the PPB is completed and starts to breakdown exponentially already 20 min before the onset of prometaphase. During formation of the PPB, the dynamic instability, i.e., the stochastic alternating between growing and shrinking phases, of the cortical microtubules outside the PPB increases significantly, but the microtubules do not become shorter. Based on this, as well as on the cross-linking of microtubules in the PPB and the lack of evidence for motor involvement, we propose a "search-and-capture" mechanism for PPB formation, in which the regulation of dynamic instability causes the cortical microtubules to become more dynamic and possibly longer, while the microtubule cross-linking activity of the developing PPB preferentially stabilizes these "searching" microtubules. Thus, microtubules gradually disappear from the cortex outside the PPB and aggregate to the forming PPB.