Obesity increases the risk of 13 cancer types. Given the long process of carcinogenesis, it is important to determine the impact of patterns of body mass over time.Using data from 30,377 participants in the Melbourne Collaborative Cohort Study, we identified body mass index (BMI) trajectories across adulthood and examined their association with the risk of obesity-related cancer. Participants c...

Neighbourhood characteristics can impact the health of residents. This study investigated associations between objectively derived neighbourhood characteristics, including novel space syntax metrics, and self-reported body mass index (BMI) among Canadian men and women.Our study included survey data collected from a random cross-section of adults residing in Calgary, Alberta (n = 1718). The surv...

Previous experiments in rodents showed that ablation of the septal brain region caused hyperdipsia. We investigated which part of the septal region needs ablation to produce hyperdipsia in sheep, and whether increased drinking was a primary hyperdipsia. Following ablation of the medial septal region (n = 5), but not parts of the lateral septal region (n = 4), daily water intake increased from ~...

Observational and acute laboratory intervention research has shown that excessive sedentary time is associated adversely with cardiometabolic biomarkers. This systematic review with meta-analyses synthesises results from free living interventions targeting reductions in sedentary behaviour alone or combined with increases in physical activity.Six electronic databases were searched up to August ...

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is the most common inflammatory arthritis and is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular events and mortality. Evidence regarding outcomes following PCI is limited. This study aimed to assess differences in outcomes following percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) between patients with and without RA. The Melbourne Interventional Group PCI registry (2005 to ...

While maternal mental health strongly influences neurodevelopment and health in the offspring, little is known about the determinants of inter-individual variation in the mental health of mothers. Likewise, the in utero biological pathways by which variation in maternal mental health affects offspring development remain to be defined. Previous studies implicate lipids, consistent with a known i...

Little research has examined the effects of high concentration, medium-duration smoke exposure on cardiovascular health. We investigated whether six weeks of exposure to smoke from the 2014 Hazelwood coal mine fire in Victoria (Australia), was associated with long-term clinical or subclinical cardiovascular disease approximately four years later, in adult residents of the towns of Morwell (expo...

Assessment of left ventricular function is pivotal in many decisions, but ejection fraction has fundamental limitations for assessment of mild dysfunction, and especially for repeated assessments. Myocardial deformation imaging using speckle-tracking is widely available on modern echocardiography systems, and is now feasible as a clinical, rather than purely a research tool. Strain can be measu...

Amongst other immune cells, neutrophils play a key role in systemic inflammation leading to cardiovascular disease and can release inflammatory factors, including lipocalin-2 (LCN2). LCN2 drives cardiac hypertrophy and plays a role in maladaptive remodelling of the heart and has been associated with renal injury. While lifestyle factors such as diet and exercise are known to attenuate low-grade...

Platelets are clearly central to thrombosis and hemostasis. In addition, more recently, evidence has emerged for non-hemostatic roles of platelets including inflammatory and immune reactions/responses. Platelets express immunologically relevant ligands and receptors, demonstrate adhesive interactions with endothelial cells, monocytes and neutrophils, and toll-like receptor (TLR) mediated respon...

Over the past decade, the use of probiotics to modify the gut microbiome has become a public spotlight in reducing the severity of a number of chronic diseases such as autoimmune disease, diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular disease. Recently, the gut microbiome has been shown to play an important role in regulating bone mass. Therefore, targeting the gut microbiome may be a potential alternativ...

To establish pre-clinical proof of concept that sustained subcutaneous delivery of the secretome of human cardiac stem cells (CSCs) can be achieved in vivo to produce significant cardioreparative outcomes in the setting of myocardial infarction.Rats were subjected to permanent ligation of left anterior descending coronary artery and randomized to receive subcutaneous implantation of TheraCyte d...

Chronotropic incompetence is common in heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) and is linked to impaired aerobic capacity. Whether upstream autonomic signaling pathways responsible for raising exercise heart rate are impaired in HFpEF is unknown. We investigated the integrity of central command and muscle metaboreceptor function, 2 predominant mechanisms responsible for exertiona...

Use of donation after circulatory death (DCD) hearts is becoming more prevalent in cardiac transplantation. However, there is no standardized approach to myocardial preservation, and little data exists on ultrastructural changes in DCD hearts. We have previously identified increased proapoptotic and proinflammatory activity in brain dead donor (BDD) hearts that subsequently exhibit primary graf...

This study aimed to investigate the theoretical impact of reallocating a specific amount of sedentary time with an equal amount of (a) total and (b) ≥1-minute bout-accumulated time spent in different activity intensities, on inflammatory biomarkers in 8- to 9-year-old children. Accelerometry and inflammatory biomarker baseline data from the Transform-Us! Study (complete cases n = 149) were util...

Growing evidence suggests that men exposed to androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) have an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. While exercise has shown to attenuate some adverse effects of ADT, the effects on cardiometabolic health have not been systematically evaluated.To evaluate the effect of exercise on cardiometabolic health in men with prostate cancer (PCa) receiving ADT.A systematic ...