Publications by authors named "Kong Y Chen"

Background: Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory disease associated with multiple comorbidities, including metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease. Although specific dietary interventions, such as intermittent fasting and caloric restriction, have been shown to ameliorate inflammation and promote weight loss, the effect of these interventions independent of weight loss remains unclear. Time-restricted eating (TRE), a type of intermittent fasting, limits the daily eating window to a fixed number of hours.

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Background: Ultraprocessed foods (UPFs) are often high in salt, fat, and sugar and low in fiber and nutrients. Research has suggested that UPFs are associated with all-cause mortality and have recently been proposed to align with properties of addictive substances. While research suggests that people with alcohol use disorder (AUD) have poor dietary habits in general, little is known about whether these people consume more UPFs than those without AUD.

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Cold exposure has been proposed to provide a constellation of salutary effects, yet its molecular correlates remain largely unknown. Brown adipose tissue (BAT) is the main site of adaptive thermogenesis, and its prevalence is linked with cardiometabolic health. Since the benefits of BAT activation and cold exposure more generally may be mediated through blood-borne factors, we conducted an extensive analysis of the circulating proteome linked with an acute cold challenge in healthy adults.

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Introduction: ActiGraph accelerometers are used extensively to objectively assess physical activity, sedentary behavior, and sleep. Here, we present an objective validation of five generations of ActiGraph sensors to characterize potential differences in output arising from changes to hardware or firmware.

Methods: An orbital shaker generated accelerations from 0 to 3700 milli- g in a randomized order to test the wGT3X-BT, GT9X, CentrePoint Insight Watch (CPIW) 1.

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Background/objectives: Attention bias (AB) toward food is associated with obesity, but it is unclear if programs designed to reduce AB can impact adolescents' eating behavior. We investigated whether a two-week, smartphone-delivered attention retraining (AR) program (vs a control program) altered food AB in adolescent girls with overweight.

Methods: Participants completed three food-cue visual-probe trainings/day.

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Background & Aims: Caloric overfeeding combined with adequate protein intake increases not only body fat mass but also fat-free mass. However, it remains unclear whether the increase in fat-free mass due to overfeeding is associated with an increase in total body protein mass. We evaluated the hypothesis that overfeeding would promote an increase in total body protein mass.

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Article Synopsis
  • An error grid is a tool that helps compare glucose levels measured by devices to see if they are correct and to identify any risks.
  • Experts created a new error grid called the DTS Error Grid that works for both blood glucose monitors (BGMs) and continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), organizing accuracy into five risk zones.
  • The results showed that the DTS Error Grid provides a clearer picture of how accurate these devices are and includes a separate matrix to evaluate how well CGMs track glucose trends over time.
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Background: Up to 50% of adolescents who undergo metabolic and bariatric surgery (MBS) have obesity 3 years post-MBS, placing them at continued risk for the consequences of obesity.

Objectives: We conducted an open-label, 16-week pilot study of liraglutide in adolescents with obesity after sleeve gastrectomy (SG) to investigate liraglutide effects on weight and body mass index (BMI) post-SG.

Methods: Adolescents aged 12-20.

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We tested whether spontaneous physical activity (SPA) from accelerometers could be used in a whole room calorimeter to estimate thermic effect of food (TEF). Eleven healthy participants ( = 7 females; age: 27 ± 4 yr; body mass index: 22.8 ± 2.

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  • Scientists studied how men and women feel different temperatures to see if women really are colder than men.
  • They found that women can feel cold at a lower temperature (about 21.9 °C) than men (about 22.9 °C) because women usually have more body fat for insulation.
  • However, both men and women reacted similarly in other ways to cold, showing that body size and composition are the main reasons for feeling different temperatures, not just being a boy or a girl.
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  • The study highlights that in mice, nearly 40% of the light phase and 80% of the dark phase are marked by periods of increased energy expenditure (EE), known as ultradian bouts.
  • These bouts are associated with higher body temperatures and consist of most physical activity and wakefulness, suggesting that they are more indicative of mouse physiology than the traditional light/dark cycles.
  • The findings indicate that these ultradian bouts, resulting from brain-driven increases in body temperature, lead to significant energy expenditure from various bodily activities, making mouse metabolic physiology largely episodic rather than solely reliant on circadian rhythms.
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  • Dieting might make people feel like they can't control their eating, but this study found that it might not be true for kids and teens.
  • The researchers let kids eat as much as they wanted and looked at how much they ate while checking if they were on a diet.
  • They found that only a few kids were dieting, and it didn’t change how much they ate, so more experiments are needed to understand this better.
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Objectives: Low social standing and teasing are independently associated with increased body mass index (BMI) and overeating in children. However, children with low social status may be vulnerable to teasing.

Methods: We tested the statistical interaction of subjective social status (SSS) and subjective socioeconomic status (SSES) and teasing distress on BMI, fat mass index (FMI), and eating in the absence of hunger (EAH) in children (Mage = 13.

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Background: A ketogenic diet (KD) may benefit people with neurodegenerative disorders marked by mitochondrial depolarization/insufficiency, including Parkinson's disease (PD).

Objective: Evaluate whether a KD supplemented by medium chain triglyceride (MCT-KD) oil is feasible and acceptable for PD patients. Furthermore, we explored the effects of MCT-KD on blood ketone levels, metabolic parameters, levodopa absorption, mobility, nonmotor symptoms, simple motor and cognitive tests, autonomic function, and resting-state electroencephalography (rsEEG).

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Diabetes Technology Society hosted its annual Diabetes Technology Meeting from November 1 to November 4, 2023. Meeting topics included digital health; metrics of glycemia; the integration of glucose and insulin data into the electronic health record; technologies for insulin pumps, blood glucose monitors, and continuous glucose monitors; diabetes drugs and analytes; skin physiology; regulation of diabetes devices and drugs; and data science, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. A live demonstration of a personalized carbohydrate dispenser for people with diabetes was presented.

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A distinct adipose tissue distribution pattern was observed in patients with methylmalonyl-CoA mutase deficiency, an inborn error of branched-chain amino acid (BCAA) metabolism, characterized by centripetal obesity with proximal upper and lower extremity fat deposition and paucity of visceral fat, that resembles familial multiple lipomatosis syndrome. To explore brown and white fat physiology in methylmalonic acidemia (MMA), body composition, adipokines, and inflammatory markers were assessed in 46 patients with MMA and 99 matched controls. Fibroblast growth factor 21 levels were associated with acyl-CoA accretion, aberrant methylmalonylation in adipose tissue, and an attenuated inflammatory cytokine profile.

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The linoleic acid (LA)-arachidonic acid (ARA)-inflammatory axis suggests dietary LA lowering benefits health because it lowers ARA and ARA-derived endocannabinoids (ECB). Dietary LA reduction increases concentrations of omega-3 eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and DHA derived ECB. The aim of this study was to examine targeted reduction of dietary LA, with and without EPA and DHA, on plasma EPA and DHA and ECB (2-arachidonoyl glycerol [2-AG], anandamide [AEA], and docosahexaenoyl ethanolamide [DHA-EA]).

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Objective: Elevated rates of gluconeogenesis are an early pathogenic feature of youth-onset type 2 diabetes (Y-T2D), but targeted first-line therapies are suboptimal, especially in African American (AA) youth. We evaluated glucose-lowering mechanisms of metformin and liraglutide by measuring rates of gluconeogenesis and β-cell function after therapy in AA Y-T2D.

Methods: In this parallel randomized clinical trial, 22 youth with Y-T2D-age 15.

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Article Synopsis
  • Subjective socioeconomic status (SSES) and objective socioeconomic status (OSES) independently influence children's body composition and eating behaviors, with low OSES limiting access to healthy foods and low SSES driving preference for high-energy foods.
  • A study analyzed data from the Children's Growth and Behavior Study to explore how SSES and OSES relate to children's BMI, fat mass index (FMI), and eating behaviors like hyperphagia.
  • Results showed that low SSES is linked to more severe hyperphagia, particularly in children from lower OSES households, highlighting the need for future research on how these socioeconomic factors interact to affect children's health.
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Purpose: Accelerometers are used to objectively measure physical behaviors in free-living environments, typically for seven consecutive days or more. We examined whether participants experience "wear fatigue," a decline in wear time day over day, during typical assessment period acquired in a nationally representative sample of 6- to 80-yr-olds in the United States.

Methods: Participants were instructed to wear an ActiGraph GT3X+ on their nondominant wrist continuously for seven consecutive days.

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Some, but not all studies have reported that, among youth with disordered eating and high weight, the relative reinforcing value of food (RRV-F, i.e., how hard a person will work for a high-energy-dense food when another reward is available) is greater, and food-related inhibitory control (i.

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Light is an essential part of many life forms. The natural light-dark cycle has been the dominant stimulus for circadian rhythms throughout human evolution. Artificial light has restructured human activity and provided opportunities to extend the day without reliance on natural day-night cycles.

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