Subjective feelings of appetite of wholegrain breakfasts evaluated under controlled, laboratory and 'at home' conditions.

BACKGROUND: Appetite regulating properties of foods are usually investigated under laboratory conditions, whereas in real life, foods are consumed under at home conditions. The objective of this study was to compare the acute effects of breakfasts when tested in a laboratory condition and in an at home condition. Appetite regulating properties of two bread breakfasts and two cereal breakfasts were also compared. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: In this randomized cross-over trial balanced for laboratory and at home test conditions, thirty-two women consumed five breakfasts, i.e. two bread breakfasts, two cereal breakfasts and one fried-egg breakfast. Visual analogue scales for measuring appetite were captured via an on-line scoring system and were analyzed as incremental area under the curve, as satiation phase and as satiety phase. RESULTS: Location effects were limited to two small effects only. An overall location effect in hunger feelings was observed (p = 0.040), which occurred specifically during the short satiation period (p = 0.0002) where hunger feelings scored higher under laboratory conditions. Similarly, a location effect was observed for desire to eat (p = 0.001); this was again higher under laboratory conditions. No other location effects were observed. Bread breakfasts did not differ in their appetite regulating properties. The Steel Cut oatmeal breakfast was reported to be more satiating (p = 0.001) as compared to the ready-to-eat cereal. CONCLUSIONS: Whereas the five breakfasts varied somewhat in their appetite regulating properties, evaluation under laboratory conditions overall did not result in different appetite scores compared to the at home conditions. This suggests that at home testing may be a useful alternative to laboratory test conditions for nutrition research.

Raman spectroscopy as a promising tool for noninvasive point-of-care glucose monitoring.

Self-monitoring of glucose is important for managing diabetes. Noninvasive glucose monitors are not yet available, but patients would benefit highly from such a device. We present results that may lead to a novel, point-of-care noninvasive system to measure blood glucose based on Raman spectroscopy. A hospitalized cohort of 111 subjects was measured using a custom-made Raman spectrometer system. Blood glucose reference samples were used to correlate Raman data to glucose levels, using advanced preprocessing and analysis algorithms. A correlation coefficient (R (2)) of .83 was found correlating independent Raman-based predictions on reference blood glucose for the full cohort. Stratification of the cohort in gender-specific groups raised correlation levels to .88 (females) and .94 (males). Glucose could be measured noninvasively with average errors as low as 0.9 mM. We conclude that this novel system shows promising results for the advance of noninvasive, point-of-care glucose monitoring.

Optical fingerprinting in bacterial epidemiology: Raman spectroscopy as a real-time typing method.

Hospital-acquired infections (HAI) increase morbidity and mortality and constitute a high financial burden on health care systems. An effective weapon against HAI is early detection of potential outbreaks and sources of contamination. Such monitoring requires microbial typing with sufficient reproducibility and discriminatory power. Here, a microbial-typing method is presented, based on Raman spectroscopy. This technique provides strain-specific optical fingerprints in a few minutes instead of several hours to days, as is the case with genotyping methods. Although the method is generally applicable, we used 118 Staphylococcus aureus isolates to illustrate that the discriminatory power matches that of established genotyping techniques (numerical index of diversity [D]=0.989) and that concordance with the gold standard (pulsed-field gel electrophoresis) is high (95%). The Raman clustering of isolates was reproducible to the strain level for five independent cultures, despite the various culture times from 18 h to 24 h. Furthermore, this technique was able to classify stored (-80 degrees C) and recent isolates of a methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus-colonized individual during surveillance studies and did so days earlier than established genotyping techniques did. Its high throughput and ease of use make it suitable for use in routine diagnostic laboratory settings. This will set the stage for continuous, automated, real-time epidemiological monitoring of bacterial infections in a hospital, which can then be followed by timely corrective action by infection prevention teams.