Clara Minto

Main Properties of Canola Oil Components: A Descriptive Review of Current Knowledge

Together with olive and soybean, canola is one of the most important and diffuse oilseed crops. Due to high oleic acid and antioxidant contents, canola oil shows positive effects on cholesterol, glycemic control, blood pressure and cancer. For these reasons, canola oil can be considered an important food-resource: future scientific research is expected to provide further evidence on adoption of canola oil as a standard dietary choice in healthy subjects as well as a therapeutic strategy in disease treatment.

Is Internet use associated with anxiety in patients with and at risk for cardiomyopathy

OBJECTIVE The aim of the study was to determine the relation between online health information seeking behavior and anxiety level among a sample of patients with manifested cardiomyopathy or at risk for cardiomyopathy. METHODS The research is a cross-sectional study conducted among 104 patients with cardiomyopathy diagnosis and patients at risk for cardiomyopathy. Patients completed 3 different questionnaires: Use of Internet Health Information questionnaire about the use of Internet, Short Form SF-12 items questionnaire on quality of life, and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory measuring general anxiety levels. RESULTS Forty-eight patients had a diagnosis of primary or secondary cardiomyopathy, and 56 patients, with conditions predisposing to cardiomyopathy. Eighty-five percent of the considered population is surfing the Internet to obtain nonspecific information about health in general, and the 65% use it to look specifically for heart disease. For both groups of patients with cardiomyopathy and at risk for cardiomyopathy, online health information seeking behavior is associated with substantially lower state anxiety levels (P = .041). CONCLUSION Web use, as a source of health information, has been shown to be associated with anxiety reduction in patients with or at risk for cardiomyopathy, suggesting that Internet technology can be a useful instrument due to its informational power and its potentially therapeutic value.

Extending PubMed searches to ClinicalTrials.gov through a machine learning approach for systematic reviews

OBJECTIVES Despite their essential role in collecting and organizing published medical literature, indexed search engines are unable to cover all relevant knowledge. Hence, current literature recommends the inclusion of clinical trial registries in systematic reviews (SRs). This study aims to provide an automated approach to extend a search on PubMed to the ClinicalTrials.gov database, relying on text mining and machine learning techniques. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING The procedure starts from a literature search on PubMed. Next, it considers the training of a classifier that can identify documents with a comparable word characterization in the ClinicalTrials.gov clinical trial repository. Fourteen SRs, covering a broad range of health conditions, are used as case studies for external validation. A cross-validated support-vector machine (SVM) model was used as the classifier. RESULTS The sensitivity was 100% in all SRs except one (87.5%), and the specificity ranged from 97.2% to 99.9%. The ability of the instrument to distinguish on-topic from off-topic articles ranged from an area under the receiver operator characteristic curve of 93.4% to 99.9%. CONCLUSION The proposed machine learning instrument has the potential to help researchers identify relevant studies in the SR process by reducing workload, without losing sensitivity and at a small price in terms of specificity.

Wearable Devices for Caloric Intake Assessment: State of Art and Future Developments

Background: The self-monitoring of caloric intake is becoming necessary as the number of pathologies related to eating increases. New wearable devices may help people to automatically record energy assumed in their meals. Objective: The present review collects the released articles about wearable devices or method for automatic caloric assessments. Method: A literature research has been performed with PubMed, Google Scholar, Scopus and ClinicalTrials.gov search engines, considering released articles regarding applications of wearable devices in eating environment, from 2005 onwards. Results: Several tools allow caloric assessment and food registration: wearable devices counting the number of bites ingested by the user, instruments detecting swallows and chewings, methods that analyse food with digital photography. All of them still require more validation and improvement. Conclusion: Automatic recording of caloric intake through wearable devices is a promising method to monitor body weight and eating habits in clinical and non-clinical settings, and the research is still going on.

Electronic Questionnaires Design and Implementation

Background: Nursing and health care research are increasingly using e-questionnaires and e-forms for data collection and survey conduction. The main reason lies in costs, time and data-entry errors containment, increased flexibility, functionality and usability. In spite of this growing usage, no specifc and comprehensive guidelines for designing and submitting e-questionnaires have been produced so far. Objective: The aim of this review is to collect information on the current best practices, taking them from various fields of application. An evaluation of the efficacy of the single indication is provided. Method: A literature review of guidelines currently available on WebSM (Web Survey Methodology) about electronic questionnaire has been performed. Four search strings were used: “Electronic Questionnaire Design”, “Electronic Questionnaire”, “Online Questionnaire” and “Online survey”. Articles’ inclusion criteria were English language, relevant topic in relation to the aim of the research and the publication date from January 1998 to July 2014. Results: The review process led to identify 48 studies. The greater part of guidelines is reported for Web, and e-mail questionnaire, while a lack of indications emerges especially for app and e-questionnaires. Conclusion: Lack of guidelines on e-questionnaires has been found, especially in health care research, increasing the risk of use of ineffective and expensive instruments; more research in this field is needed.

Anchoring Vignettes in EQ-5D-5L Questionnaire: Validation of a New Instrument

Background: Health Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) is an indicator of patients physical, psychological and social life. HRQoL is influenced by experience, beliefs, perceptions and expectations, and measures subjective perspective of the patient himself. EQ-5D-5L and SF-12 questionnaires are validated instruments useful to measure HRQoL, increasingly administered in electronic formats. Objective: The main purpose is to evaluate the feasibility of anchoring vignettes for the EQ-5D-5L questionnaire, with the aim to improve intergroup comparability of responses among different subjects. A comparison with SF-12 questionnaire is carried out. Method: This is a cross-sectional study conducted at the ambulatories of cardiology of the University Hospital of Padova, in Italy. Thirty-eight subjects with a diagnosis of cardiovascular disease or at risk of cardiovascular disease were enrolled. A factorial analysis has been performed to assess the convergent validity of EQ-5D-5L questionnaire compared to Sf-12. Moreover, a compound Hierarchical Ordered Probit (Chopit) model has been estimated to evaluate if the questionnaire form affects the subjective evaluation process in order to compare EQ-5D-5L with and without vignettes. Results: Correlation and factor analysis demonstrate that EQ_5D questionnaire is coherent with SF-12 in paper format. Chopit model estimation shows that questionnaire format does not affect the subjective question interpretation. Moreover, in a parametric model including vignettes, education attainment, disease severity, and gender are predictors of HRQoL status. Conclusion: The EQ-5D including vignettes in electronic format seems to be a valid tool to measure HRQoL as compared to EQ-5D without vignettes in paper format and to SF-12 questionnaire.

Pimpinella Anisum and Illicium Verum: The Multifaceted Role of Anise Plants

The role of dietary active compounds in human nutrition is an important area of investigation in the field of nutritional science. In this perspective, functional foods play a relevant role, offering a new kind of health tool that promises specific effects related to particular food components. Anise plant has a long cultural tradition in various countries all over the world, both as food and as drug. The essential oil of anise, extracted from the dry ripe fruits of Illicium verum and Pimpinella anisum, contains anethole, an active chemical compound that showed several functional properties including antimicrobial, antioxidant, hypoglycemic, hypolipidemic and oestrogenic properties. To date, studies conducted on the properties of anise, demonstrated the efficacy of the plant in the improvement of physiological condition in human and the possibility to exploit the active compounds of anise for the treatment of several chronic diseases. The aim of this review is to collect data on anise in order to evaluate its pharmacological properties.

Cacao as a Globalised Functional Food: Review on Cardiovascular Effects of Chocolate Consumption

Polyphenols have increasingly been studied for their influence on cardiometabolic health. Since cacao and chocolate can be a rich source of polyphenols, they too have been investigated for their supposed health benefits. In the first part of this paper the history of the food and medicinal uses of the cacao plant was briefly examined. A particular emphasis has been placed on the analysis of the process of transformation of the cacao seed into chocolate, since many of the processing steps involved have important consequences on the final product’s content in polyphenols and flavanols, and hence on the purported beneficial activity of chocolate. This evaluation is also of great importance in interpreting the results of the epidemiological and clinical studies. The relevant literature was surveyed in the second part of the paper, and the results for the consumption of polyphenol-rich chocolate are that it is well correlated to a reduction of the overall cardiovascular risk, and of arterial blood pressure in hypertensive subjects. Less corroborated are the positive effects on vascular endothelial health, on blood lipids and on lipid peroxidation. There are also preliminary but promising results for a positive action on insulin sensitivity, platelet function and inflammation. It remains to be seen whether and how these results can be translated into pragmatic guidelines on the health benefits of the consumption of commercial chocolate bars or products.

Beneficial and Healthy Properties of Eucalyptus Plants: A Great Potential Use

Eucalyptus (Eucapyptus spp.), an evergreen tall tree native to Australia and Tasmania, has been used since ancient times by the aboriginal population for several purposes. In particular, the species E. globulus is widely used in the pulp industry, as well as for the production of eucalyptus oil extracted on a commercial scale in many countries as raw materials in perfumery, cosmetics, food, beverages, aromatherapy and phytotherapy. The 1,8-cineole (eucalyptol), the principal and the most important constituent extracted from eucalyptus leaves, demonstrated an antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory activities. Despite the fact that the healthy effects of eucalyptus have been well established by research, further studies are necessary to investigate other prime effects of the plant and its possible implication in the treatment of a greater number of pathological conditions.