Publications by authors named "Maria A Nunes"

Background: Flaxseeds are functional foods popular in current diets. Cold-pressing is a solvent-free method to extract flaxseed oil, resulting in a by-product-defatted flour.

Objectives/methods: This study compared whole flaxseeds and defatted flour (proximate composition, fatty acids, vitamin E, total phenolics and flavonoids, antioxidant activity, amino acids, and protein quality) and updated the composition of cold-pressed oil (oxidative stability, peroxide value, UV absorbance, colour, fatty acids, vitamin E, total phenolics and flavonoids, and antioxidant activity) to assess the nutritional relevance and potential for food applications of these samples.

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Objectives: To evaluate a postpartum telephone-based lifestyle intervention to prevent diabetes in high-risk women with recent gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM).

Design: Multicentre parallel randomised clinical trial.

Setting: Specialised antenatal clinics in the Brazilian National System.

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The food industry is encouraged to develop new sustainable foodstuffs, and agri-food by-products can serve as valuable ingredients in these formulations. In this work, olive pomace (OP), a by-product of olive oil production, was incorporated as an ingredient in pasta. The changes in the nutritional composition and consumer acceptance were assessed, aiming to scale up the production.

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Background: Pregnancy provides a privileged and opportune moment to implement interventions promoting healthy lifestyle behaviors and significantly improving perinatal outcomes. The Healthy Lifestyle Behaviors Scale (HLBES) can be used to assess health promoting behaviors, such as diet, physical activity, and mental health.

Purpose: This study aimed to examine the psychometric properties of the HLBES in Portuguese pregnant women.

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Objective: To investigate Brazilian psychiatrists' knowledge of and perceived confidence in diagnosis and evidence-based treatment recommendations for eating disorders.

Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 259 psychiatrists filled out an online form including sociodemographic data and questions about the diagnosis and treatment of eating disorders based on standard guidelines. The sample's knowledge level and perceived confidence regarding eating disorders were characterized using descriptive statistics.

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Healthy lifestyle during pregnancy influences the pregnant woman's and child's physical and mental health, impacting perinatal outcomes. Healthy lifestyle beliefs are predictors of lifestyle behaviors, requiring a valid and reliable instrument to assess them during prenatal care. The 16-item Healthy Lifestyle Belief Scale (HLBS) measures a person's beliefs about their ability to live a healthy lifestyle.

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Olive pomace is a by-product from olive oil production that can be further processed to obtain olive pomace paste. In this work, the influence of different time/temperature binomials (65 °C/30 min; 77 °C/1 min; 88 °C/15 s; and 120 °C/20 min) on the nutritional quality, chemical composition, and efficiency on control/elimination of natural microbial load of olive pomace paste was ascertained. The treatments significantly impacted the contents of ash, fat, vitamin E, phenolics (including hydroxytyrosol), flavonoids, and antioxidant activity, but not the fatty acids profile.

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The increasing demand for superfoods has resulted in an increase in chia seeds consumption. The reintroduction of this ancient crop in agriculture is useful to ensure food security since it can grow in high-stress conditions. The current study aimed to characterize chia seeds, cold-pressed oil, and defatted cake (the oil extraction by-product) to improve their value and to meet consumer's expectations (low-fat products).

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Currently, society demands natural healthy foods with improved nutritional characteristics. Accordingly, poppies (Papaver somniferum) are a traditional crop, cultivated for food and pharmaceutical purposes, whose seeds meet consumers’ preferences, making them a promising candidate for incorporation into the formulation of novel functional foods. This work performed an overall chemical characterization of poppy seeds, cold-pressed oil, and press cake, a by-product of the oil industry.

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Objective: To investigate the association between diabetes mellitus (DM) and incidence of depressive episodes among men and women.

Methods: Data were used from 12,730 participants (5866 men and 6864 women) at baseline (2008-2010) and follow-up 1 (2012-2014) of the Longitudinal Study of Adult Health (ELSA-Brasil), a multicenter cohort of Brazilian civil servants. Participants were classified for diabetes using self-reported and clinical information, and evaluated for presence of depressive episodes by the Clinical Interview Schedule-Revised (CIS-R).

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Olive pomace, an olive oil processing byproduct, can be upcycled and meet the current demand for natural and sustainable food ingredients. In this work, a patented process was used to obtain a functional ingredient from different olive pomaces. The nutritional, chemical and antioxidant profiles, as well as the antimicrobial activity against , and , were investigated for the first time.

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Whole sesame seeds and sesame oil, which is obtained after cold pressing the seeds, are foodstuffs globally consumed due to their nutritional characteristics. The press cake that remains from the oil extraction process can be ground to form a defatted flour that can be incorporated into the human diet, contributing to the valorisation of this product. The nutritional comparison between the whole seeds and the press cake reveals the potential of this by-product to be incorporated in the formulation of diverse foodstuff, since it is richer than the seeds in proteins (30%) and fibre (25%) and still contains a proportion of oil (32%) with a fatty acid pattern characterized by the abundance of unsaturated fatty acids.

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The association between social capital and depression is a frequent research topic in developed countries, often with inconclusive results. Furthermore, for both social capital and depression, there are gender differences established in the literature. This study investigates gender differences in the association of social capital with the incidence and maintenance of depressive episodes.

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Background: There is mixed evidence on increasing rates of psychiatric disorders and symptoms during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in 2020. We evaluated pandemic-related psychopathology and psychiatry diagnoses and their determinants in the Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Health (ELSA-Brasil) São Paulo Research Center.

Methods: Between pre-pandemic ELSA-Brasil assessments in 2008-2010 (wave-1), 2012-2014 (wave-2), 2016-2018 (wave-3) and three pandemic assessments in 2020 (COVID-19 waves in May-July, July-September, and October-December), rates of common psychiatric symptoms, and depressive, anxiety, and common mental disorders (CMDs) were compared using the Clinical Interview Scheduled-Revised (CIS-R) and the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale-21 (DASS-21).

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In the last decade, there has been an increasing demand for wild-captured fish, which attains higher prices compared to farmed species, thus being prone to mislabeling practices. In this work, fatty acid composition coupled to advanced chemometrics was used to discriminate wild from farmed salmon. The lipids extracted from salmon muscles of different production methods and origins (26 wild from Canada, 25 farmed from Canada, 24 farmed from Chile and 25 farmed from Norway) were analyzed by gas chromatography with flame ionization detector (GC-FID).

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Citrus leprosis (CL) is one of the most important viral diseases in sweet orange orchards in Latin America. It is caused by members of at least five species of the so-called Brevipalpus-transmitted viruses (BTV), and the prevalent is Citrus leprosis virus C (CiLV-C). This virus has the broadest host range amongst all CL-associated viruses and is transmitted by Brevipalpus yothersi, a polyphagous mite that can colonize a large variety of host plants, including some spontaneous ground cover plants.

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Citrus leprosis (CL) is one of the most devastating viral diseases of orchards, and industries correspondingly invest highly in the management and control of the virus vector. In Brazil, the disease is caused most predominantly by the citrus leprosis virus C (CiLV-C, Kitaviridae: Cilevirus), and also by citrus leprosis virus N (CiLV-N, Rhabdoviridae: Dichorhavirus). Both viruses are transmitted by false spider mites and at least three different species, Brevipalpus yothersi Baker, B.

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Quantitative reverse transcription PCR (RT-qPCR) is a high-throughput method to analyze the transcriptional expression of genes. Currently, no reference genes have been described for evaluating gene expression in Brevipalpus yothersi, the false spider mite, a polyphagous that act as vector of the citrus leprosis virus C (CiLV-C), an important citrus disease. This study aimed to identify the most stable reference genes in B.

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The false spider mite Brevipalpus yothersi infests a broad host plant range and has become one of the most economically important species within the genus . This phytophagous mite inflicts damage by both feeding on plants and transmitting plant viruses. Here, we report the first draft genome sequence of the false spider mite, which is also the first plant virus mite vector to be sequenced.

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Reported in Brazil since the 1930's, citrus leprosis, caused mainly by citrus leprosis virus C, has been a major concern for the national sweet orange production. In recent years, the disease has spread to several other countries and it is now considered a worldwide threat. The occurrence of the disease has been studied almost exclusively in sweet oranges because other citrus genotypes are of secondary relevance in Brazil and in some other American countries where it occurs.

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Background: Common psychiatric symptoms may hinder achieving ideal cardiovascular health (ICH). We aimed to investigate the association between the ICH score and psychiatric disorders in Brazilian adults.

Methods: In this cross-sectional analysis, 13,743 participants free of cardiovascular disease from the ELSA-Brasil study were assessed using the American Heart Association ICH score.

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Few studies have evaluated the association between diet and mental disorders, and it has been established that ω-3 (-3) fatty acids may have a beneficial effect for sufferers of anxiety disorders. This study is part of the Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Adult Health (ELSA-Brasil)—a population-based cohort study on diet and mental health—and searched for associations between anxiety disorders and consumption of -3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA). The study had a cross-sectional design, with a total sample of 12,268 adults.

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