Due to the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the Chinese government implemented strict lockdown measures to control the spread of infection. The impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on eating habits and lifestyles in the general population is unclear. This cross-sectional study was conducted via an online survey to obtain an overview of the food access, food intake, and physical activity of Chinese residents during the initial stage of the COVID-19 lockdown, and to investigate the association between staying at home/working from home and changes in eating habits and lifestyles. A total of 2702 participants (70.7% women) were included. Most of the participants maintained their habitual diet, while 38.2% increased their snack intake, 54.3% reported reduced physical activity, and 45.5% had increased sleep duration. Most people (70.1%) reported no change in body weight, while 25.0% reported an increase. Always staying at home/working from home was associated with an increase in animal product, vegetable, fruit, mushroom, nut, water, and snack intake, as well as sleep duration and frequency of skipping breakfast (odds ratio (OR) 1.54, 1.62, 1.58, 1.53, 1.57, 1.52, 1.77, 2.29, and 1.76 respectively). Suggestions should be made to encourage people to reduce their snack intake, maintain the daily consumption of breakfast, and increase physical activity during future lockdown periods.

BackgroundThe somatosensory phenotype of Chinese temporomandibular disorders (TMD) patients is not sufficiently studied with the use of contemporary techniques and guidelines.MethodsA standardized quantitative sensory testing (QST) battery consisting of 13 parameters with a stringent statistical protocol developed by the German Research Network on Neuropathic Pain was performed over the most painful and corresponding contralateral sites as well as the right hand of 40 Chinese patients with TMD and pain classified according to the Diagnostic Criteria for TMD (DC/TMD). The same QST protocol was performed bilaterally over the infraorbital, mental, and hand regions of 70 age- and gender-stratified healthy Chinese controls. Z-scores and loss/gain scores were computed for each TMD patient.ResultsFor patients, 82.5 % had somatosensory abnormalities in the painful facial region, while 60.0 % had abnormalities confined to the right hand. The most frequent abnormalities were somatosensory gain to pinprick (35.0 %) and pressure (35.0 %) stimuli, somatosensory loss to pinprick (25.0 %), cold (22.5 %), and heat (15.0 %) nociceptive stimuli. The most frequent loss/gain score was L0G2 (no somatosensory loss combined with a gain of mechanical somatosensory function) for both the facial (40.0 %) and hand (27.5 %) regions. Involving side-to-side differences in the evaluation increased the diagnostic sensitivity by 2.5–25.0 % across different parameters.ConclusionsSomatosensory abnormalities were commonly detected in Chinese TMD pain patients both within and outside the primary painful region, strongly indicating disturbances in the central processing of somatosensory stimuli. The individual variations in somatosensory abnormalities indicate a possible need for development of individualized TMD pain management.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s10194-016-0632-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Ethnic differences in pain experiences have been widely assessed in various pathological and experimental conditions. However, limited sensory modalities have been described in previous research, and the affective-motivational factors have so far been estimated to be the main mediator for the ethnic differences. This study aimed to detect the ethnic differences of oro-facial somatosensory profiles related to the sensory-discriminative dimension in healthy volunteers. The standardised quantitative sensory testing battery developed by the German Research Network on Neuropathic Pain was performed bilaterally in the infraorbital and mental regions on age- and gender-matched healthy Chinese and Danes, 29 participants each group. The influences of ethnicity, gender and test site on the somatosensory profile were evaluated by three-way anova. The ethnic disparities were also presented by Z-scores. Compared to Danes, Chinese were more sensitive to thermal detection, thermal pain, mechanical deep pain and mechanical pain rating parameters (P < 0·002) related to small fibre functions. However, the inverse results were observed for mechanical tactile modality related to large fibre function (P < 0·001) and wind-up ratio (P = 0·006). Women presented higher sensitivity compared to men. The mean Z-scores of all the parameters from Chinese group were in the normal zone created by Danish Caucasians' means and SDs. The ethnic disparities in somatosensory profile illustrated the necessity of establishing the reference data for different ethnic groups and possibly individual pain management strategies for the different ethnic groups.

SummaryThe reliability of comprehensive intraoral quantitative sensory testing (QST) protocol has not been examined systematically in patients with chronic orofacial pain. The aim of the present multicenter study was to examine test-retest and inter-examiner reliability of intraoral QST measures in terms of absolute values and z-scores as well as within-session coefficients of variation (CV) values in patients with atypical odontalgia (AO) and healthy pain-free controls. Forty-five AO patients and 68 healthy controls were subjected to bilateral intraoral gingival QST and unilateral extratrigeminal QST (thenar) on three occasions (twice on one day by two different examiners and once approximately one week later by one of the examiners). Intraclass correlation coefficients and kappa values for inter-examiner and test-retest reliability were computed. Most of the standardized intraoral QST measures showed fair to excellent inter-examiner (9-12 of 13 measures) and test-retest (7-11 of 13 measures) reliability. Furthermore, no robust differences in reliability measures or within-session variability (CV) were detected between AO patients and the healthy reference group. These reliability results in chronic orofacial pain patients support earlier suggestions based on data from healthy subjects that intraoral QST is sufficiently reliable for use Correspondence: Dr. Lene Baad-Hansen, Section of Clinical Oral Physiology, Department of Dentistry, HEALTH, Aarhus University, Vennelyst Boulevard 9, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark, lene.hansen@odontologi.au.dk. All authors declare no conflicts of interest. NIH Public Access