Résumé
Objectives: In April 2020, a state of emergency was declared regarding COVID-19, and refraining from going out was requested. Although there is concern about weight gain after the spread of the infection, there are few reports of studies in Japan. The present study examined the association between refraining from going out and weight gain after the spread of COVID-19 infection. Methods: Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses were conducted. Cross-sectional: Data from an internet survey conducted in August 2020 among the general population in Japan were used. Of the 25482 valid responses, 18116 persons aged 20-64 were included in the analysis. Information on refraining from going out was ascertained by a self-administered questionnaire. The outcome variable, subjective weight gain, was categorized as "increased" or "same as before/reduced" based on the question of subjective weight change in the last month compared to before January 2020. Longitudinal: In addition to cross-sectional data, data from the February 2019, February 2020, and February 2021 surveys were collated;4399 individuals participated in all four time points, of which 4337 were included in the analysis after excluding outliers. Two outcome variables were used: (1) weight change of "> 0 kg" from February 2020 to February 2021, and (2) weight change of "> 0 kg" from February 2020 to February 2021 and subjective weight change of "increased". Logistic regression analysis was used for analysis, adjusting for sex, age, occupation, hospitalization, breakfast deprivation, and snacking (in the longitudinal, the rate of weight change in the year before baseline was also adjusted). In addition, the indirect effect of snacking was examined using the Sobel test. Results: Cross-sectional: 5168 (28.5%) of 18116 subjects reported weight gain. Multivariate-adjusted odds ratios (95% confidence intervals) for weight gain in comparison with "never refrained" were 1.46 (1.16-1.83) for "almost never refrained," 1.87 (1.54-2.27) for "sometimes refrained," and 2.07 (1.71-2.51) for "always refrained" (p-trend < 0.001). Snacking had a significant indirect effect on the association between refraining from going out and weight gain (p < 0.001). Longitudinal (1) No significant association was found (p-trend =0.401). Longitudinal (2) Similar to the cross-sectional, we found a significant association (p-trend =0.003) and a significant indirect effect of snacking (p < 0.001). Conclusions: Our results implied that refraining from going out after the spread of COVID-19 infection contributed to weight gain, and snacking mediated this association.
Résumé
High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) launched an education project for the fabrication of an accelerator named "AxeLatoon" in 2020 together with the National Institute of Technology (KOSEN). This project aims to improve engineering skills of students and foster the next generation of accelerator researchers by providing hands-on training in the field of accelerator science. In the first year, we collaborated with the NIT (KOSEN), Ibaraki College to build an accelerator. Students took the initiative in this extracurricular activity and challenged building an accelerator. From 2021, we expanded this project to other prefectures and four schools are now participating. The design and fabrication of a small cyclotron accelerator is currently underway. Despite the restrictions on activities and the limited mobility of people due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, the project continues to educate students about basic technologies and accelerators. We are holding seminars a few times a month utilizing online communication tools. In this report, we would like to share the status of AxeLatoon's activities based on the actual production of students at KOSEN and deepen the discussion on accelerator outreach programs. © Copyright owned by the author(s) under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)