Background: Observational studies have shown that higher body mass index (BMI) is associated with increased risk of developing disordered eating patterns. However, the causal direction of this relation remains ambiguous.Objective: We used Mendelian randomization (MR) to infer the direction of causality between BMI and disordered eating in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.Design: MR analyse...

BACKGROUND Chemicals with endocrine-disrupting abilities may act as obesogens and interfere with the body's natural weight-control mechanisms, especially if exposure occurs during prenatal life. OBJECTIVE We examined the association between prenatal exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and p,p'-dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (DDE) and subsequent obesity at 5 and 7 y of age. DESIGN...

BACKGROUND Studies have reported inconsistent findings on the association between dairy product intake and weight change and obesity. Only a few prospective studies have investigated the role of dairy consumption in both weight change and risk of becoming overweight or obese and whether these associations depend on the initial body weight. OBJECTIVE We prospectively investigated how dairy pro...

BACKGROUND Birth weight has been shown to be positively associated with adult obesity, but relatively few studies have examined the associations with growth in specific periods of early childhood. OBJECTIVE The objective was to assess the association of measures of growth between birth and 5 y of age with adult measures of adiposity. DESIGN We conducted a longitudinal study of young adults ...

In mathematical logic, we use first-order languages to describe mathematical structures. Intuitively, a structure is a set that we wish to study equipped with a collection of distinguished functions, relations, and elements. We then choose a language where we can talk about the distinguished functions, relations, and elements and nothing more. For example, when we study the ordered field of rea...

BACKGROUND Obesity is becoming a serious public health issue and is related to lung dysfunction. Because both weight and height are indicators of body size, body mass index (BMI) may not be an ideal index of obesity in prediction of pulmonary dysfunction. OBJECTIVE The objective of the study was to determine the predictability of waist circumference (WC) and BMI for pulmonary function in adul...

AIM To provide growth and sexual maturation reference data for Moroccan children living in The Netherlands and to compare them with the reference data of children of Dutch origin. METHODS Cross-sectional growth and demographic data were collected from 2880 children of Moroccan origin and 14,500 children of Dutch origin living in The Netherlands in the age range 0-20 y. Growth references for l...

1 Motivation We want to numerically approximate coefficients in a Fourier series. The first step is to see how the trapezoidal rule applies when numerically computing the integral (2π) −1 2π 0 F (t)dt, where F (t) is a continuous, 2π-periodic function. Applying the trapezoidal rule with the stepsize taken to be h = 2π/n for some integer n ≥ 1 results in (2π) −1 2π 0 F (t)dt ≈ 1 n n−1 j=0 Y j , ...

BACKGROUND Obesity is a contemporary epidemic that does not affect all age groups and sections of society equally. OBJECTIVE The objective was to examine socioeconomic differences in trajectories of body mass index (BMI; in kg/m(2)) and obesity between the ages of 45 and 65 y. DESIGN A total of 13,297 men and 4532 women from the French GAZEL (Gaz de France Electricité de France) cohort stud...

Height and weight data from children in the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, and Singapore were analyzed to investigate differences in growth between the groups of children. An investigation into the adjusted weight indexes of the form index = weight/heightp for differing powers of p (Benn index) showed that the power of p required to produce a correlation of zero between the index and hei...