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Background: Optimal maternal nutrition is associated with better pregnancy and infant outcomes. Culinary nutrition programmes have potential to improve diet quality during pregnancy. Therefore, this research aimed to understand the experiences of cooking and the wants and needs of pregnant women regarding a cooking and food skills programme in the United Kingdom (UK) and Republic of Ireland (ROI). Methods: Online focus group discussions with pregnant women and those who had experienced a pregnancy in the UK or ROI were conducted between February and April 2022. Two researchers conducted a thematic analysis. Seven focus groups with ROI participants (n = 24) and six with UK participants (n = 28) were completed. Results: Five themes were generated. These were (1) cooking during pregnancy: barriers, motivators and solutions; (2) food safety, stress and guilt; (3) need for cooking and food skills programmes and desired content; (4) programme structure; (5) barriers and facilitators to programme participation. Overall, there was support for a programme focusing on broad food skills, including planning, food storage, using leftovers and to manage pregnancy‐specific physiological symptoms such as food aversions. Participants emphasised the importance of inclusivity for a diverse range of people and lifestyles for programme design and content. Conclusions: Current findings support the use of digital technologies for culinary nutrition interventions, potentially combined with in‐person sessions using a hybrid structure to enable the development of a support network. Highlights: Thirteen online focus group discussions were conducted across the UK and Ireland.Five themes were generated around cooking during pregnancy and the content and structure of a cooking and food skills programme.There was support for an inclusive cooking programme that included a wide range of food‐related skills.Participants believed the programme should be supported by the health services.There was support for the use of digital technologies, potentially combined with in‐person sessions using a hybrid structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Micronutrient status during pregnancy influences maternal and fetal health, birth outcomes, and the risk of chronic disease in offspring. Research reporting dietary intake during pregnancy in nationally representative population samples, however, is limited. This review summarizes the micronutrient intakes of pregnant women from developed countries and compares them with relevant national recommendations. A systematic search without date limits was conducted. All studies reporting the micronutrient intakes of pregnant women were considered, irrespective of design. Two authors independently identified studies for inclusion and assessed methodological quality. Nutritional adequacy was summarized, with confounding factors considered. Meta-analysis data are reported for developed countries collectively, by geographical region, and by dietary methodology. Pregnant women in developed countries are at risk of suboptimal micronutrient intakes. Folate, iron, and vitamin D intakes were consistently below nutrient recommendations in each geographical region, and calcium intakes in Japan were below the Japanese recommendations and the average intake levels in other developed countries. Research examining the implications of potential nutrient insufficiency on maternal and offspring health outcomes is needed along with improvements in the quality of dietary intake reporting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: Hypertension is a key risk factor for major adverse cardiovascular events but remains difficult to treat in many individuals. Dietary interventions are an effective approach to lower blood pressure (BP) but are not equally effective across all individuals. BP is heritable, and genetics may be a useful tool to overcome treatment response heterogeneity. We investigated whether the genetics of BP could be used to identify individuals with hypertension who may receive a particular benefit from lowering sodium intake and boosting potassium levels. METHODS: In this observational genetic study, we leveraged cross-sectional data from up to 296 475 genotyped individuals drawn from the UK Biobank cohort for whom BP and urinary electrolytes (sodium and potassium), biomarkers of sodium and potassium intake, were measured. Biologically directed genetic scores for BP were constructed specifically among pathways related to sodium and potassium biology (pharmagenic enrichment scores), as well as unannotated genome-wide scores (conventional polygenic scores). We then tested whether there was a gene-by-environment interaction between urinary electrolytes and these genetic scores on BP. RESULTS: Genetic risk and urinary electrolytes both independently correlated with BP. However, urinary sodium was associated with a larger BP increase among individuals with higher genetic risk in sodium- and potassium-related pathways than in those with comparatively lower genetic risk. For example, each SD in urinary sodium was associated with a 1.47-mm Hg increase in systolic BP for those in the top 10% of the distribution of genetic risk in sodium and potassium transport pathways versus a 0.97-mm Hg systolic BP increase in the lowest 10% (P=1.95×10-3). This interaction with urinary sodium remained when considering estimated glomerular filtration rate and indexing sodium to urinary creatinine. There was no strong evidence of an interaction between urinary sodium and a standard genome-wide polygenic score of BP. CONCLUSIONS: The data suggest that genetic risk in sodium and potassium pathways could be used in a precision medicine model to direct interventions more specifically in the management of hypertension. Intervention studies are warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: COVID-19 data have been generated across the United Kingdom as a by-product of clinical care and public health provision, as well as numerous bespoke and repurposed research endeavors. Analysis of these data has underpinned the United Kingdom's response to the pandemic, and informed public health policies and clinical guidelines. However, these data are held by different organizations, and this fragmented landscape has presented challenges for public health agencies and researchers as they struggle to find relevant data to access and interrogate the data they need to inform the pandemic response at pace., Objective: We aimed to transform UK COVID-19 diagnostic data sets to be findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR)., Methods: A federated infrastructure model (COVID - Curated and Open Analysis and Research Platform [CO-CONNECT]) was rapidly built to enable the automated and reproducible mapping of health data partners' pseudonymized data to the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership Common Data Model without the need for any data to leave the data controllers' secure environments, and to support federated cohort discovery queries and meta-analysis., Results: A total of 56 data sets from 19 organizations are being connected to the federated network. The data include research cohorts and COVID-19 data collected through routine health care provision linked to longitudinal health care records and demographics. The infrastructure is live, supporting aggregate-level querying of data across the United Kingdom., Conclusions: CO-CONNECT was developed by a multidisciplinary team. It enables rapid COVID-19 data discovery and instantaneous meta-analysis across data sources, and it is researching streamlined data extraction for use in a Trusted Research Environment for research and public health analysis. CO-CONNECT has the potential to make UK health data more interconnected and better able to answer national-level research questions while maintaining patient confidentiality and local governance procedures., (©Emily Jefferson, Christian Cole, Shahzad Mumtaz, Samuel Cox, Thomas Charles Giles, Sam Adejumo, Esmond Urwin, Daniel Lea, Calum Macdonald, Joseph Best, Erum Masood, Gordon Milligan, Jenny Johnston, Scott Horban, Ipek Birced, Christopher Hall, Aaron S Jackson, Clare Collins, Sam Rising, Charlotte Dodsley, Jill Hampton, Andrew Hadfield, Roberto Santos, Simon Tarr, Vasiliki Panagi, Joseph Lavagna, Tracy Jackson, Antony Chuter, Jillian Beggs, Magdalena Martinez-Queipo, Helen Ward, Julie von Ziegenweidt, Frances Burns, Joanne Martin, Neil Sebire, Carole Morris, Declan Bradley, Rob Baxter, Anni Ahonen-Bishopp, Paul Smith, Amelia Shoemark, Ana M Valdes, Benjamin Ollivere, Charlotte Manisty, David Eyre, Stephanie Gallant, George Joy, Andrew McAuley, David Connell, Kate Northstone, Katie Jeffery, Emanuele Di Angelantonio, Amy McMahon, Mat Walker, Malcolm Gracie Semple, Jessica Mai Sims, Emma Lawrence, Bethan Davies, John Kenneth Baillie, Ming Tang, Gary Leeming, Linda Power, Thomas Breeze, Duncan Murray, Chris Orton, Iain Pierce, Ian Hall, Shamez Ladhani, Natalie Gillson, Matthew Whitaker, Laura Shallcross, David Seymour, Susheel Varma, Gerry Reilly, Andrew Morris, Susan Hopkins, Aziz Sheikh, Philip Quinlan. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (https://www.jmir.org), 27.12.2022.)