Center for Occupational and Environmental Neurology

BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic has impacted on public health in several ways. The aim of the study was to investigate changes in lifestyle, adiposity, and cardiometabolic markers among young adults in Sweden during the COVID-19 pandemic and their determinants.MethodsThe study included 1 004 participants from the population-based birth cohort BAMSE. Anthropometrics, body composition (bioelectric impedance analyses), pulse, and blood pressure were measured before (December 2016–May 2019; mean age 22.6 years) and during (October 2020–June 2021; mean age 25.7 years) the COVID-19 pandemic. Lifestyle changes during the pandemic were assessed through a questionnaire.ResultsAll measures of adiposity (weight, BMI, body fat percentage, trunk fat percentage) and cardiometabolic markers (blood pressure, pulse) increased during the study period (e.g., body fat percentage by a median of + 0.8% in females, p < 0.001, and + 1.5% in males, p < 0.001). Male sex, non-Scandinavian ethnicity, BMI status (underweight and obesity), and changes in lifestyle factors, e.g., decreased physical activity during the pandemic, were associated with higher increase in BMI and/or adiposity.ConclusionLifestyle factors, adiposity and cardiometabolic markers may have been adversely affected among young adults in Sweden during the COVID-19 pandemic compared with the preceding years. Targeted public health measures to reduce obesity and improve healthy lifestyle are important to prevent future non-communicable diseases.

Celiac disease (CD) represents a unique model of autoimmunity in which a close genetic association with HLA genes, a highly specific humoral autoimmune response (autoantibodies to tissue transglutaminase, (TTG)), and, most importantly, the triggering environmental factor (gluten), are known. The lack of an animal model of the disease represents a major limitation in using CD as a research model of autoimmunity. To establish if pedigreed colony of baboons with hereditary chronic diarrhea could be used as a possible non-human primate model for CD. Baboons from the pedigreed colony at the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research were reviewed. Those animals with non-infective chronic diarrhea (≥21 days) and more than two clinical admissions between January 1998 and December 2003 were selected (N = 163). CD serology and intestinal histological analysis were performed on a selected number of animals. Fifty-one of the 163 cases (31%) of chronic diarrhea occurred among the offspring of 4 sires. Of the 20 cases studied, 5 (25%) tested TTG IgA and/or IgG antibodies positive, compared to 1/17 (5.9%) in healthy control baboons. Zonulin, a modulator of intestinal permeability that is up regulated in CD, resulted elevated in 8/20 (40%) baboons with chronic diarrhea and 0/17 controls. There was 80% correlation between positive TTG IgG and elevated zonulin. Duodenal samples obtained after the baboons were euthanized showed increased intraepithelial lymphocytes and, occasionally, marked lymphocytic mucosal infiltration and villi distortion and blunting. Implementation of a gluten free diet resolved the animals' weight loss. Our preliminary data suggest that a gluten-dependent hereditary enteropathy is present in the progeny of a few sires of the baboon colony studied. The clinical, serological, and histological features suggest a similarity to human CD and, therefore, that the progeny of this sire can be potentially used as a primate non-human model of CD.

This is a case report of a traumatic bilateral anterior dislocation of the hip in a 27-year-old man. No other cases of bilateral traumatic anterior dislocation seem to have been previously reported in the literature.