Carolina Schwedhelm

Max-Delbrück-Centrum für Molekulare Medizin | MDC · Research Team Molecular Epidemiology

Metadata from epidemiological studies, including chronic disease outcome metadata (CDOM), are important to be findable to allow interpretability and reusability. We propose a comprehensive metadata schema and used it to assess public availability and findability of CDOM from German population-based observational studies participating in the consort...

Background Excessive intake of ultra-processed foods, formulated from substances extracted from foods or derived from food constituents, may be a modifiable behavioral risk factor for adverse maternal and infant health outcomes. Prior work has predominately examined health correlates of maternal ultra-processed food intake in populations with subst...

Objective To examine associations of school food availability with student intake frequency and BMI, and whether the number of neighborhood food outlets modifies these associations. Design Baseline assessment of a nationally representative cohort study of U.S. 10 th graders. Students reported intake frequency of fruits and vegetables (FV), snacks,...

This study investigates the relationship between meal-specific eating patterns during pregnancy and postpartum with maternal diet quality and energy intake. Participants in a prospective cohort study completed 24-h dietary recalls three times throughout both pregnancy and 1 year postpartum (n = 420). Linear regressions estimated the associations of...

Background Intake of most foods show correlations with other foods implying that change in the intake of one food affects the intake of other foods. However, it is unclear whether such relationships are quantitatively meaningful and should be considered when a change in dietary intake is suggested. Methods We used data from European Prospective In...

Background Little is known about how meal-specific food intake contributes to overall diet quality during pregnancy, which is related to numerous maternal and child health outcomes. Food networks are probabilistic graphs using partial correlations to identify relationships among food groups in dietary intake data, and can be analyzed at the meal le...

Objectives Our aim was to qualitatively assess networks describing interrelations among foods consumed at meals in pregnant women with high and low overall diet quality as defined by the Healthy Eating Index-2015 (HEI). Methods Multiple 24-hour dietary recalls (mean = 3.4) from 365 women in the Pregnancy Eating Attributes Study (PEAS) were collect...

Objectives This study examines associations of maternal characteristics with infant feeding of discretionary and health-promoting foods. Methods Mothers in PEAS, a prospective cohort study, reported maternal and child dietary intake, demographics, and eating competence (EC). Maternal diet quality (Healthy Eating Index-2015, HEI) was calculated com...

Purpose: Evidence for the association between chocolate intake and risk of chronic diseases is inconclusive. Therefore, we aimed to synthesize and evaluate the credibility of evidence on the dose-response association between chocolate consumption with risk of all-cause mortality, coronary heart disease (CHD), stroke, heart failure (HF), type 2 diab...

Purpose: We aimed to synthesize the evidence on the relation between different types of potato consumption with risk of all-cause mortality, coronary heart disease (CHD), stroke, type 2 diabetes (T2D), colorectal cancer (CRC), and hypertension. Methods: Systematic searches until May 2018 were conducted in PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science. Rand...

Our aim was to estimate and rank 12 food groups according to disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) from coronary heart disease (CHD), stroke, type 2 diabetes (T2D), and colorectal cancer (CRC) in 16 European countries. De novo published non-linear dose–response meta-analyses of prospective studies (based on 297 primary reports), and food consumpti...

Increased attention has been paid to circadian patterns and how predisposition to metabolic disorders can be affected by meal timing. Currently, it is not clear which role can be attributed to the foods selected at meals. On a cross-sectional sub-cohort study (815 adults) within the EPIC-Potsdam study we investigated whether the same foods (vegetab...

Purpose: The aim of the study was to investigate the association between the previously identified Gaussian graphical models' (GGM) food intake networks and risk of major chronic diseases as well as intermediate biomarkers in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and nutrition (EPIC)-Potsdam cohort. Methods: In this cohort analysis...

Following publication of the original article [1], the authors reported an error in Table 3. The correct Table 3 is provided below.

Background Meals differ in their nutritional content. This variation has not been fully addressed despite its potential contribution in understanding eating behavior. The aim of this study was to investigate the between-meal and between-individual variance in energy and macronutrient intake as a measure of variation in intake and the meal type-spec...

This meta-analysis summarizes the evidence of a prospective association between the intake of foods [whole grains, refined grains, vegetables, fruit, nuts, legumes, eggs, dairy, fish, red meat, processed meat, and sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs)] and risk of general overweight/obesity, abdominal obesity, and weight gain. PubMed and Web of Science...

Several meta-analyses have been published summarizing the associations of the Mediterranean diet (MedDiet) with chronic diseases. We evaluated the quality and credibility of evidence from these meta-analyses as well as characterized the different indices used to define MedDiet and re-calculated the associations with the different indices identified...

Background In previous meta-analyses of prospective observational studies, we investigated the association between food groups and risk of chronic disease. Objective The aim of the present network meta-analysis (NMA) was to assess the effects of these food groups on intermediate-disease markers across randomized intervention trials. Design Litera...

Gaussian graphical models (GGMs) are exploratory methods that can be applied to construct networks of food intake. Such networks were constructed for meal-structured data, elucidating how foods are consumed in relation to each other at meal level. Meal-specific networks were compared with habitual dietary networks using data from an EPIC-Potsdam su...

List of 39 food groups used throughout the analyses. (DOCX)

Flow-chart of participants of the validation sub-study within the EPIC Potsdam cohort. (DOCX)

List of all eating occasions with participant-identified labels used to record food intake in the 24-hour dietary recalls. (DOCX)

Mean contribution (% amount in grams) of eating occasions to food consumption over the day (n = 814). (DOCX)

Meal networks emphasizing relations also present in the habitual network (S3 Figs A-D) and habitual network emphasizing relations not found in any of the meal-specific dietary networks (S3 Fig E). (DOCX)

Background: The Mediterranean Diet (MedDiet) has been acknowledged as a healthy diet. However, its relation with risk of major chronic diseases in non-Mediterranean countries is inconclusive. The Nordic diet is proposed as an alternative across Northern Europe, although its associations with the risk of chronic diseases remain controversial. We ai...

Background: Pairwise meta-analyses have shown beneficial effects of individual dietary approaches on blood pressure but their comparative effects have not been established. Objective: Therefore we performed a systematic review of different dietary intervention trials and estimated the aggregate blood pressure effects through network meta-analysis i...

A major advantage of analyses on the food group level is that the results are better interpretable compared with nutrients or complex dietary patterns. Such results are also easier to transfer into recommendations on primary prevention of non-communicable diseases. As a consequence, food-based dietary guidelines (FBDG) are now the preferred approac...

The aim of the present study is to assess the comparative efficacy of different dietary approaches on glycaemic control in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus using a systematic review of the literature. Electronic and hand searches were performed until July 2017. The inclusion criteria were defined as follows: (1) randomized trial with a dietar...

Background Principal component analysis (PCA) is a widely used exploratory method in epidemiology to derive dietary patterns from habitual diet. Such dietary patterns seem to originate from intakes on multiple days and eating occasions. Therefore, analyzing food intake of study populations with different levels of food consumption can provide addit...

The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to summarize the evidence on the relation between intake of 12 major food groups, including whole grains, refined grains, vegetables, fruit, nuts, legumes, eggs, dairy, fish, red meat, processed meat, and sugar-sweetened beverages with risk of colorectal cancer (CRC). We conducted a systematic...

The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to summarize the evidence on the relation of the intakes of 12 major food groups, including whole grains, refined grains, vegetables, fruits, nuts, legumes, eggs, dairy, fish, red meat, processed meat, and sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) with the risk of hypertension. PubMed, Scopus, and Web...

Background: Despite growing evidence for food-based dietary patterns’ potential to reduce cardiovascular disease risk, knowledge about the amounts of food associated with the greatest change in risk of specific cardiovascular outcomes and about the quality of meta-evidence is limited.Therefore, the aim of this meta-analysis was to synthesize the kn...

The aim of the present systematic review and meta-analysis was to gain further insight into the effects of adherence to Mediterranean Diet (MedD) on risk of overall cancer mortality, risk of different types of cancer, and cancer mortality and recurrence risk in cancer survivors. Literature search was performed using the electronic databases PubMed,...

The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to synthesize the knowledge about the relation between intake of 12 major food groups and risk of type 2 diabetes (T2D). We conducted a systematic search in PubMed, Embase, Medline (Ovid), Cochrane Central, and Google Scholar for prospective studies investigating the association between whole...

Background: Suboptimal diet is one of the most important factors in preventing early death and disability worldwide. Objective: The aim of this meta-analysis was to synthesize the knowledge about the relation between intake of 12 major food groups, including whole grains, refined grains, vegetables, fruits, nuts, legumes, eggs, dairy, fish, red mea...

Introduction Lifestyle modification is one of the cornerstones in the management of hypertension. According to the most recent guidelines by the American Heart Association, all patients with hypertension should adopt the following dietary advices: increased consumption of fresh fruits, vegetables, low-fat dairy products and sodium reduction. The ai...

Background: Dietary advice is one of the cornerstones in the management of type 2 diabetes mellitus. The American Diabetes Association recommended a hypocaloric diet for overweight or obese adults with type 2 diabetes in order to induce weight loss. However, there is limited evidence on the optimal approaches to control hyperglycemia in type 2 dia...

Context: Evidence of an association between dietary patterns and individual foods and the risk of overall mortality among cancer survivors has not been reviewed systematically. Objective: The aim of this meta-analysis of cohort studies was to investigate the association between food intake and dietary patterns and overall mortality among cancer...

The objective of this study was to develop a scoring system (NutriGrade) to evaluate the quality of evidence of randomized controlled trial (RCT) and cohort study meta-analyses in nutrition research, building upon previous tools and expert recommendations. NutriGrade aims to assess the meta-evidence of an association or effect between different nut...

Background: High consumption of red and processed meats has been linked to higher chronic disease risk. It has been hypothesized that inflammation markers may mediate part of this association. Most previous studies on the association of red meat intake with circulating inflammation markers used C-reactive protein (CRP) but rarely other markers, an...

Background There is a lack of systematic and comprehensive evaluations whether food intakes lower or increase risk of chronic diseases. In this network meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies, we aim to evaluate the effects of different foods on risk of chronic diseases. Methods/design We will search PubMed and EMBASE. This will be supplemente...

Background: The current state of knowledge regarding the association of dairy products and weight gain, overweight, and obesity is based on studies reporting contradicting and inconclusive results. The aim of the present study was thus to clarify the link between dairy consumption in relation to changes in anthropometric measures/adiposity by a me...

Flow diagram. (DOCX)

Forest plot showing pooled OR/RR/HR with 95% CI for overweight comparing categories of dairy intakes. (EPS)

Forest plot of mean changes in waist circumference (cm/year) comparing the highest vs lowest dairy consumption category. (EPS)

Forest plot showing pooled OR/RR/HR with 95% CI for adiposity comparing low vs. whole−fat dairy intakes. (EPS)

(DOC)

Forest plot of mean changes in body weight (gram/year) comparing the highest vs lowest dairy consumption category. (EPS)

Forest plot of associations between changes in waist circumference (cm/year) and dairy consumption in cohort studies of adults. (EPS)

Full-text articles excluded with reasons. (DOCX)

High alcohol consumption is an important risk factor for chronic disease and liver degeneration. Paraoxonase (PON1) and arylesterase (AE) are functions of the enzyme paraoxonase, which is synthesised by the liver. Paraoxonase circulates in plasma bound to HDL and hydrolyses lipid peroxides, protecting lipoproteins against oxidative modification. It...