Background Because consumption of conventional yogurt has beneficial effects in a healthy population, and insulin resistance (IR) is the mutual pathogenesis in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and metabolic syndrome (MetS), we hypothesized that yogurt would ameliorate IR in patients with NAFLD and MetS. Objectives The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of yogurt on IR and secondary endpoints including liver fat, gut microbiota, and serum biomarkers of inflammation and oxidative stress in obese women with NAFLD and MetS. Methods One hundred obese women aged 36–66 y with both NAFLD and MetS were randomly assigned to consume 220 g/d of either conventional yogurt or milk for 24 wk. At baseline and week 24, we measured anthropometric indices, serum glucose, insulin, lipids, and cytokines in all participants, and liver fat and gut microbiota in 20 participants randomly selected from each group. Results Forty-eight participants from the yogurt group and 44 from the milk group completed the intervention. Compared with milk, yogurt significantly decreased the homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance (−0.53; 95% CI: −1.03, −0.02), fasting insulin (−2.77 mU/L; 95% CI: −4.91, −0.63 mU/L), 2-h insulin (−25.5 mU/L; 95% CI: −33.0, −17.9 mU/L), 2-h area under the curve for insulin (−29.4 mU/L · h; 95% CI: −44.0, −14.8 mU/L · h), alanine aminotransferase (−4.65 U/L; 95% CI: −8.67, −0.64 U/L), intrahepatic lipid (−3.44%; 95% CI: −6.19%, −0.68%), and hepatic fat fraction (−3.48%; 95% CI: −6.34%, −0.63%). Yogurt also decreased serum LPS (−0.31 EU/mL; 95% CI: −0.48, −0.14 EU/mL), fibroblast growth factor 21 (−57.76 pg/mL; 95% CI: −86.32, −29.19 pg/mL), lipids, and biomarkers of inflammation and oxidative stress, and altered gut microbiota composition. Mediation analysis showed that yogurt may improve IR by reducing serum lipids, inflammation, oxidative stress, and LPS. Conclusions Yogurt was better than milk at ameliorating IR and liver fat in obese Chinese women with NAFLD and MetS, possibly by improving lipid metabolism, reducing inflammation, oxidative stress, and LPS, and changing the gut microbiota composition. This trial was registered at www.chictr.org.cn as ChiCTR-IPR-15006801.

Background Nonpharmacologic interventions that modify lifestyle can lower blood pressure (BP) and have been assessed in numerous randomized controlled trials and pairwise meta‐analyses. It is still unclear which intervention would be most efficacious. Methods and Results Bayesian network meta‐analyses were performed to estimate the comparative effectiveness of different interventions for lowering BP. From 60 166 potentially relevant articles, 120 eligible articles (14 923 participants) with a median follow‐up of 12 weeks, assessing 22 nonpharmacologic interventions, were included. According to the surface under the cumulative ranking probabilities and Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) quality of evidence, for adults with prehypertension to established hypertension, high‐quality evidence indicated that the Dietary Approach to Stop Hypertension (DASH) was superior to usual care and all other nonpharmacologic interventions in lowering systolic BP (weighted mean difference, 6.97 mm Hg; 95% credible interval, 4.50–9.47) and diastolic BP (weighted mean difference, 3.54 mm Hg; 95% credible interval, 1.80–5.28). Compared with usual care, moderate‐ to high‐quality evidence indicated that aerobic exercise, isometric training, low‐sodium and high‐potassium salt, comprehensive lifestyle modification, breathing‐control, and meditation could lower systolic BP and diastolic BP. For patients with hypertension, moderate‐ to high‐quality evidence suggested that the interventions listed (except comprehensive lifestyle modification) were associated with greater systolic BP and diastolic BP reduction than usual care; salt restriction was also effective in lowering both systolic BP and diastolic BP. Among overweight and obese participants, low‐calorie diet and low‐calorie diet plus exercise could lower more BP than exercise. Conclusions DASH might be the most effective intervention in lowering BP for adults with prehypertension to established hypertension. Aerobic exercise, isometric training, low‐sodium and high‐potassium salt, comprehensive lifestyle modification, salt restriction, breathing‐control, meditation and low‐calorie diet also have obvious effects on BP reduction.

The early diagnosis and accurate prognosis prediction of esophageal cancer is an essential part of improving survival. However, these diseases lack effective and specific markers. A total of 1,744 samples of HumanMethylation450 data were integrated to identify and validate specific methylation markers for esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC) and esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) as well as for Barrett’s esophagus (BE) using The Cancer Genome Atlas and the Gene Expression Omnibus. The diagnostic and prognostic methylation classifiers were constructed by moderated t-statistics and the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator method. The diagnostic methylation classifier using 12 CpG sites was constructed in training set (377 samples) that could effectively discriminate samples of BE, EAC, and ESCC from normal tissue (AUC = 0.992), which achieved highly predictive ability in both internal (187 samples, AUC = 0.990) and external validation (184 samples, AUC = 0.978). The prognostic methylation classifier with 3 CpG and 2 CpG sites for EAC and ESCC respectively, could accurately estimate the prognosis of an individual patient and improved the predictive ability of the tumor node metastasis staging system. Overall, our study systematically analyzed large-scale methylation data and provided promising markers for the diagnosis and prognosis of esophageal cancer.

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Background: Existing data from several reports on the association between lipid profile and ovarian tumour (OT) suggests divergent conclusions. Our aim was to examine whether circulating lipid profile: total cholesterol (TC), triglyceride (TG), high-density lipoprotein (HDL) and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) differed between cases and noncases of OT. Methods: Electronic repositories; PUBMED, EMBASE and Cochrane library were explored through December 2019 to retrieve published articles for inclusion in the meta-analysis after quality assessment. Heterogeneity was assessed using I 2 statistics, the effect of individual studies on the overall effect size was tested using sensitivity analysis and funnel plot was used to evaluate publication bias. Results: Twelve studies, involving 1767 OT cases and 229,167 non-cases of OT were included in this meta-analysis and I 2 statistics ranged between 97 and 99%. Mean circulating TC (− 16.60 [− 32.43, − 0.77]mg/dL; P = 0.04) and HDL (− 0.25[− 0.43, − 0.08]mmol/L; P = 0.005) were significantly lower among OT cases compared to non-OT cases. Conclusion: Decreased TC and HDL profiles were observed among subjects with OT in this collection of reports. The implications of TC and HDL in tumour manifestations and growth need to be validated in a large multi-ethnic longitudinal cohort adjusting for relevant confounders.