Tagged / nutrition

BU research into breast milk quality-Participants needed

BU research, PG research, Research news, Uncategorized

 

We are looking for breast feeding mums to donate 5 mL of breast milk for a research study conducted at BU.

When mother’s own milk is not sufficient or appropriate, preterm babies can be fed with donor milk from a human milk bank. However, the processes used in milk banking might increase the risk of fat degradation in the milk. Currently, nothing is known about fat degradation products in donor milk. With this study, we aim to quantify fat degradation products in donor milk, and we are currently looking for some term breast milk to compare our results to.

If you are breastfeeding and would like to take part in the study, please get in touch!

Please feel free to share the information with any breastfeeding mum you know!

If you want to know more about milk banking in the UK, read my earlier blog post here.

Many thanks, Isabell

inessel@bournemouth.ac.uk

01202965009

BU research into breast milk quality-Participants needed

BU research, PG research, Research news, student research, Uncategorized

 

We are looking for breast feeding mums to donate 5 mL of breast milk for a research study conducted at BU.

When mother’s own milk is not sufficient or appropriate, preterm babies can be fed with donor milk from a human milk bank. However, the processes used in milk banking might increase the risk of fat degradation in the milk. Currently, nothing is known about fat degradation products in donor milk. With this study, we aim to quantify fat degradation products in donor milk, and we are currently looking for some term breast milk to compare our results to.

If you are breastfeeding and would like to take part in the study, please get in touch!

Please feel free to share the information with any breastfeeding mum you know!

If you want to know more about milk banking in the UK, read my earlier blog post here.

Many thanks, Isabell

inessel@bournemouth.ac.uk

01202965009

BU PhD student PROSPERO publication

BU research, Delicious links, international, Publishing, Research news, student research, Uncategorized, writing

Congratulations to BU PhD student Dimitrios Vlachos who had his PROSPERO protocol published [1].   Dimitrios working on a project promoting the Mediterranean-style diet in childbearing age, he is supervised across faculties by Dr. Fotini Tsofliou and Prof. Katherine Appleton.

Well done!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH)

 

Reference:

  1. Tsofliou, F., Appleton, K., Vlachos, D. (2018) Barriers and facilitators to following a Mediterranean style diet in adults: a systematic review of observational and qualitative studies. PROSPERO 2018 CRD42018116515

 

 

 

BU Nutrition students help to transform hospital menus

BU research, student research

BSc (Hons) Nutrition students at Bournemouth University have been working with staff at Poole’s Alderney Hospital to produce new menus for hospital patients and staff, which are tasty, nutritious and full of locally-sourced ingredients.

Thanks to the students, Alderney Hospital also expects to see a reduction in its food wastage figures which could lead to significant savings.

Click here to find out more about how the BU students carried out this transformation.

Mike Smith, Geograph.

 

BU’s PGR student Isabell Nessel has been awarded New Investigator Award and will be presenting at the 13thCongress of the International Society for the Study of Fatty Acids and Lipids (ISSFAL)

BU research, PG research, Uncategorized

The 13th Congress of the International Society for the Study of Fatty Acids and Lipids (ISSFAL) http://www.issfal.org/ will be held in Las Vegas, USA in May 2018. BU will be highly represented at this biennial congress, which is the biggest and most prestigious congress in the field of fatty acid and lipid research. Isabell Nessel, a third year PhD student in the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences, will present her PhD work at this congress. She is supervised by Dr Simon Dyall and Prof Minesh Khashu.

Her research aims to investigate ways to increase the intake of long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids in the perinatal period and to address whether this intake is associated with any adverse effects, due to the susceptibility of the fatty acids to oxygen-related damage. Isabell secures a prestigious oral presentation, and is also presenting two posters at this international congress, which expects around 800 delegates!

Isabell was awarded a full Santander Mobility Award to cover the travel costs to Las Vegas. Furthermore, Isabell won a New Investigator Award, which is granted by ISSFAL in conjunction with the Congress to recognise and encourage excellent abstract submissions.

The Congress will be an excellent opportunity for her to present her PhD work, and to learn about the latest research and the newest methods.

Isabell would like to express her gratitude to Santander, ISSFAL, and Bournemouth University for making this trip possible, and to her supervisors Dr Simon Dyall and Prof Minesh Khashu for their support with the applications and abstracts!

 

Look out for her blog post after the conference.

If you would like to know more about her research in the meantime, e-mail her at inessel@bournemouth.ac.uk

BU’s Joanne Holmes’ interview with Elder about healthy appetite in older people

BU research

Food scientist and BU lecturer in Nutrition, Joanne Holmes, talks to Elder about the importance of socialisation, stimulation and choice to encourage healthy appetite in older people.

“As a nutritionist, I became aware of the fact that there was growing evidence that under-nutrition, commonly known as malnutrition, is a prevalent problem for older people. The figures show that up to about 45 percent of older people living in residential care are at risk of under-nutrition, and for those over 75 years old living on their own, it runs between 35-40 percent,” says Joanne Holmes.

“It was apparent that we were good at monitoring and assessing the fact that people were undernourished – what wasn’t so clear was what was happening to follow that up and move people from being undernourished to an acceptable weight.

“I wanted to understand what and how much people were eating and drinking and whether or not it was the mealtime experience that affected that.

“There are usually a series of events that are linked to undernourishment when someone goes into care. What generally happens is that someone will struggle at home, for one reason or another – perhaps there might be a dementia diagnosis, and they can’t continue to live on their own, or they fall and aren’t able to get around. They eventually end up in hospital, and then in long-term residential care. But once they’re in care, it’s tough to try and get them eating again.

“I come from a food science background, and I think a lot of the work to-date has been done by looking at undernourishment from a clinical point of view. I wanted to come at it from a food angle and look at enhancing the eating experience for those in care.”

Read the full interview here.

End of year ADRC Christmas Seminar – PhD Student presentations

BU research, Research news, Uncategorized

Six of  the ADRC PhD students gave short presentations of their plans and findings  at the end of year ADRC  Christmas seminar held on 12th  December. They included the following:

Yolanda Barrado-Martin : Process evaluation of a Tai Chi exercise intervention to prevent falls among older people with dementia.

Raysa El Zein : Dietary intervention study using coconut oil to evaluate effects of ketone metabolism in older adults.

Christopher Hilton : The role of attention in spatial (dis)orientation in people with early signs of dementia.

Joanne Holmes : An exploration of the factors that affect the extensive meal experience for cognitively active elderly living in residential care.

Mananya Podee : Improving holiday accommodation and service provision for people with dementia: An exploration of needs and expectations.

Vladislava Segen : How does ageing affect ability to recognise places, stay oriented & navigate successfully?

It was a highly successful afternoon with lots of good discussion and challenging questions posed for our students.  Well done to everyone who presented and we look forward to hearing more about your great work in due course!

ADRC present INSCCOPe project poster at BAPEN 2017 Annual Conference

Research news, Uncategorized

ADRC Post-doctoral Research Fellow Dr. Mike Bracher presents INSCCOPe baseline findings at the 2017 BAPEN Annual Conference Poster session.

The Ageing and Dementia Research Centre (ADRC)’s Dr. Mike Bracher presented initial findings from baseline data collection for the INSCCOPe (Implementing Nutrition Screening in Community Care for Older People) project, at the poster session of the 2017 BAPEN Annual Conference (22nd November 2017).

Led by ADRC co-lead Professor Jane Murphy, the project aims to improve screening and treatment of malnutrition for older people in the community, by exploring how best to implement service improvements for nutrition screening and treatment for malnutrition in older people.

The aim is to maximise scalability and cost effectiveness of a new procedure for screening and treatment of malnutrition in the community, by providing an evidence base to support implementation across wider settings within the health service.

ADRC co-lead Prof. Jane Murphy (left), Wessex AHSN Senior Programme Manager Kathy Wallis (centre), and Wessex AHSN Teaching and Research Fellow Dr. Emma Parsons (right) showcase INSCCOPe and other projects within the AHSN’s Nutrition in Older People Programme at the 2017 BAPEN Annual Conference.

At baseline (T0), the project (using a combination of questionnaires and telephone interviews) demonstrated:

  • strong support for, and value placed upon, nutrition screening and treatment activity by participants;
  • ambivalence / doubt with respect to current logistical and organisational support for screening and treatment related activity.

Work is currently underway to implement suggested changes to implementation of the procedure identified from data collected at T1 (two months following implementation of the new procedure through training sessions with staff).

Following this, the third and final data collection point (T2 – 8 months following completion of training) will take place, after which the project will be evaluated. If successful, findings from the INSCCOPe project will inform rollout of the new procedure across Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust.

Click here to view/download the poster

or

Click here to go to the INSCCOPe project page

 

BU’s PGR Paul Fairbairn at the Lipids and Brain IV conference in Nancy

BU research, Knowledge Exchange, PG research, student research

The Société Française pour l’Etude des Lipides (SFEL) recently held the fourth iteration of their Lipids and Brain conference in Nancy France.

I was given the opportunity to present some preliminary results from an ongoing study I am conducting as part of my PhD, looking into the effects of a multi-nutrient omega-3 fatty acid supplement and exercise on mobility and cognitive function in ladies aged 60+.  Analysis of the baseline data revealed relationships between levels of omega-3 fatty acids in the blood with cognitive and gait outcomes, however this effect differed between non-frail and pre-frail participants.

The conference brought together scientists, physicians and nutritionists to provide a unique prospective on the role of lipid nutrition in the prevention and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases with a large focus on Alzheimer’s Disease (AD).  The conference was a mix of lectures, invited reviews, and poster sessions.  There was a tremendous variety of topics presented, including lectures on the pathophysiology and epidemiology of AD, how AD can impact lipid metabolism and the effects of lipid intake on prevention and treatment of AD.

During the conference Professor Stephen Cunnane from the Research Center on Aging, Sherbrooke (Canada) was presented with the prestigious Chevreul Medal.

On a personal note this was an exciting opportunity for me to present my work and represent Bournemouth University and my supervisory team of Dr. Simon Dyall and Dr. Fotini Tsofliou at a respected conference.  It was very satisfying to see some interest in my work from researchers whose work I myself look up to.

I would like to extend my gratitude towards Bournemouth University, for providing the funding that allowed me to attend the conference and to the scientific committee at the SFEL for organising such an impeccable event.

If you would like to learn more about our research, please feel free to contact me at pfairbairn@bournemouth.ac.uk

 

Industrial Partnership Awards (IPAs) through the BBSRC- DEADLINE: 17/01/18

BU research

The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) have announced the Industrial Partnership Awards (IPAs), a scheme that encourages significant involvement with industry partners.  The scheme allows companies registered in the UK, or who have a UK R&D/manufacturing site to work equally on research with academic partners.  Companies from outside the UK may be worked with on a case by case basis.

Companies are expected to contribute at least 10% of the overall budget as cash. Funding is only available for organisations eligible for BBSRC support; IPA projects are normally funded in preference to standard grants of equivalent scientific merit.

Responsive mode priorities include:

  • Food, nutrition and health
  • Healthy ageing across the lifecourse
  • Reducing waste in the food chain
  • Technology development for the biosciences

The deadline for the scheme is 17 January 2018, at 16:00. For further advice, please contact Ehren Milner (emilner@bournemouth.ac.uk).

 

Cancer and Nutrition NIHR Infrastructure Collaboration

Featured academics, Uncategorized

Do you have an interest in people living with Cancer and Nutrition?

Then read more about the important activities of the Cancer and Nutrition NIHR infrastructure collaboration.

Since its establishment in 2014 the collaboration has sought to better enable a wide community of interested parties to bring together the high quality research being carried out in cancer together with the highquality research being carried out in nutrition, so that each can add value to the other in the interest of patients and the public.

There are 5 workstreams : Workstream 1: Patientsand Public,  Workstream 2: Professional Workforce – training and capacity building,  Workstream 3: Research – building an infrastructure and action plan to tackle the evidence gap, Workstream 4 characterising nutritional status in cancer – the Tookit, Workstream 5: commercial sector and industry,

Professor Jane Murphy from the Ageing and Dementia Research Centre (ADRC) leads ‘Workstream 2: Professional Workforce – training and capacity building’  and is a member of the Steering Committee.

The activities accomplished in Phase 2 are presented in the following report just published and more details about the collaboration can be found on the website.

Report Link
http://cancerandnutrition.nihr.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Cancer-Nutrition-Full-Report-FINAL_03-06-16.pdf

Website Link
http://cancerandnutrition.nihr.ac.uk/work-streams/

Please contact Jane:  jmurphy@bournemouth.ac.uk if you would like to know more or have any questions or queries.

BU’s PGR Isabell Nessel at the Department of Life Sciences, University of Roehampton

BU research, PG research, Uncategorized

 I had the pleasure of spending the last three weeks in the Department of Life Sciences (University of Roehampton), working with Dr Giulia Corona and Dr Volker Behrends. We successfully validated an ultra-high performance liquid chromatography coupled with triple quadrupole mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) method to analyse lipid peroxidation products (breakdown products of fats) in human urine samples.

Our ultimate goal is to identify the time-course of oxidative stress and subsequent breakdown of lipids in neonates, by analysing urinary lipid peroxides, to facilitate evidence-based approaches to antioxidant support in preterm neonates. My supervisors Dr Simon Dyall and Prof Minesh Khashu and I are currently developing a pilot study in cooperation with Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust to test the feasibility of measuring these products in urine samples from preterm neonates. However, before moving on to preterm samples, the method had to be tested and validated, using adult urine samples.

The project was made possible by an HSS Seed Corn fund obtained by Dr Simon Dyall, the PGR fund of Isabell Nessel, the collaboration with Dr Giulia Corona and Dr Volker Behrends at the Department of Life Sciences (University of Roehampton) and collaboration with Dr Thierry Durand and his group from the Institute des Biomolecules Max Mousseroux, (Montpellier, France) who generously provided the standards used in this analysis. I am grateful that I had this opportunity to further develop my research skills and to learn a new state-of-the-art technique and would like to thank all involved for making this possible!

If you would like to learn more about our research please feel free to contact me at inessel@bournemouth.ac.uk

Isabell

Nutrition and Dementia care workbook now ebook!

This week is Dementia Awareness Week and the Ageing and Dementia Research Centre (ADRC) is engaging with a number of initiatives to raise awareness of dementia.

In 2016 we launched our nutrition and dementia care workbook, a research informed training tool informed by our project led Professor Jane Murphy with Joanne Holmes, funded by the Burdett Trust for Nursing. This has been very well received across health and social care, enabling staff to make quality improvements and impact on the delivery of nutritional care for people living with dementia.

This week we are excited to release an online version of our workbook and will have a much wider reach to support people living with dementia. It is freely available to everyone and can be accessed from our website http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/nutrition-dementia

For more details contact Michelle O’Brien: mobrien@bournemouth.ac.uk

Fundraising for the Hearts Milk Bank at BU

BU research, PG research, student research, Uncategorized

On the 17th of November, The World Prematurity Day, there was a fundraising cake sale for the Hearts Milk Bank.

cake-saleThe amount raised will help to either

– feed 14 babies for a day

–  or feed 3 babies for 5 days, the average time they need donor milk

– or buy enough containers for 55 mums to start donating milk

– or buy almost 3  transportation bags.

The Hearts Milk Bank is therefore 1 step closer to provide donor milk for babies born too soon or too sick!

 

I would like to thank anyone who has made this cake sale possible, the bakers and the buyers, the great people who donated money, SUBU, and the people helping me on the day. You are awesome!

Gillian Weaver, co-founder of the bank contacted me to say “We are so grateful to you Isabell and to everyone who supported your cake sale on World Prematurity Day. You raised a fantastic amount and we will put it to very good use helping to ensure that all premature and sick babies get access to safe and assured supplies of donor milk irrespective of where they are born in the UK. We know that this not only helps to prevent tiny babies from life threatening illnesses but also supports their mothers whilst they build up their own breastmilk supply. The Hearts Milk Bank (the bank with a difference) will also be a biobank of breastmilk samples for much needed research into breast cancer so your support for us is doubly valuable!”

ukamb_logo2If you would like to learn more about donor milk visit the website of the UK Association for Milk Banking.

gkjo6pcssbgobqmecfa6If you would like to learn more about the Hearts Milk Bank or would like to donate, please click here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/hearts-milk-bank-saving-tiny-babies-helping-mums-cancer

 

I learned about donor milk as part of my PhD thesis at BU, focusing on the effects of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids in the perinatal period. If you are interested in our research please contact me at inessel@bournemouth.ac.uk

Many thanks, Isabell