A new 2015 international survey by the World Action on Salt and Health (WASH) has revealed the saltiest children’s fast food meals around the world, highlighting not only the excessive amounts of salt in these meals, but also the huge variation in the same meals across different countries.

One example is that two Australian KFC meals have been found to contain double the salt of the same product in the UK. The survey looked at 387 meals from fast food chains like McDonald’s, KFC and Burger King from 37 countries.

“The new research from the World Action on Salt and Health is a big wake-up call and should make parents think twice about some fast food,” said Dr Jacqui Webster from The George Institute.

“It shows that the vast majority of children’s meals sold by fast food companies contain more than the recommended maximum amount of salt for a young child’s meal.

“The different salt levels for the same meal in different countries is also a cause for concern. For example, KFC’s Popcorn Nuggets and Fries in Australia contain 1.86 grams of salt per serve, which is much more than a child should eat in one meal, and more than twice the amount of salt in the same meal in the UK.”  

“On a more positive note it is good to see that the children’s turkey sub sold by Subway contains the same level of salt as the lowest in the world, although almost a gram of salt is still too high.”

“The George Institute has been highlighting the negative health aspects of eating too much salt for about a decade now, including the urgent need to protect our children from eating too much salt.

“Government and the food industry need to increase their efforts to ensure that salt levels in all foods including those marketed and sold to children, are reduced in line with international best practice.”

Read the Daily Mail article on this study.

The Oxford Mail has featured our innovative study on a tablet application that measures the vital signs of heart failure sufferers

The system allows doctors to remotely check patients’ weight, blood pressure, blood oxygen levels and heart rate.

The Oxford Mail interviewed participant Fliss Emptage who said: “The device is a brilliant idea as your doctor can immediately access the information.

"It is reassuring that you are able to view your own results, but my thoughts are that it is going to make a huge difference to older people in rural communities. The fact that they will have this digital connection to their doctor is important.”

The trial, which has run since late last year, has received 93 per cent patient satisfaction from 52 patients who took a study questionnaire.

Read the full Oxford Mail article.

FInd out more about the Seamless User-centred Proactive Provision of Risk-stratified Treatment for Heart Failure (SUPPORT-HF) project.

New research has found Australian baby and toddler food products are of a higher nutritional quality than those in the UK.

Senior author Professor Victoria Flood from the University of Sydney said the study, which examined 309 products from 17 manufacturers, showed Australia performing better than some other countries including the UK.

“The nutritional quality of baby and toddler foods has been largely overlooked in health research, but it is an increasingly important market to consider,” Prof Flood said.

“Our youngest children need the best possible start when they are naturally moved onto solid foods and begin to develop their habits and tastes.

“Only Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada have published research on the healthiness of their baby and toddler foods, with UK and Canada showing higher levels of sodium and sugar overall than we have in similar products in Australia,.”

Director of the Food Policy division at the George Institute for Global Health, Professor Bruce Neal, said the toddler and baby food market was growing rapidly and this study provided an important benchmark to monitor changes in the sector.

“The market has grown at 4.8% a year for the past five years and is worth more than $300 million a year in Australia,” Prof Neal said.

“Part of the increase in this market can be attributed to time-poor parents needing to make quick food decisions and that isn’t likely to change any time soon, so we need to get it right.”

The findings, which have been published in the Maternal and Child Health Journal show:

• Only 19 products or 6% were high in saturated fat
• 92 products or 30% were considered high in sugar
• 72 products or 23% contained added sugar
• Salt was on the ingredient list for just 17 products and only five were considered high in sodium
• Only 25 products or just 8% had a Health Star Rating of less than 3 stars, while 45% were 4 out of 5 stars

Professor Flood said the taste preferences of infants meant that their eating habits should be carefully monitored in their early years.

“Young children naturally prefer sweet and salty foods over those with less sweet tastes such as vegetables,” she said.

“Commercial baby foods are consumed by as many as 90% of children at nine months old and 50% of 18 month olds.

“So, the impact of these foods on children cannot be overestimated and we encourage all parents to pay close attention to what they are putting in their supermarket trolleys.”

By Professor Terry Dwyer 

New data is helping scientific researchers unlock the mystery of the causes of childhood cancer, a topic of which surprisingly little is known. A recent study found that the incidence of childhood cancer rises with increasing birthweight. Along a continuum, a one kilogram birthweight increase correlates to a 26 percent increase in the risk of all childhood cancers.

Researchers from the International Childhood Cancer Cohort Consortium (I4C), an international alliance of longitudinal studies of children, spent the past decade investigating data from the live births of children across six geographically diverse countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Denmark, Israel, Norway and Australia.

The study was the first designed to collect specific data before the child developed cancer. Along with the size, and geographic and temporal diversity of the cohorts, the information gathered is high quality, has strong validity and lends credence toward the association.

While the finding was straightforward – the larger the baby the higher the risk of cancer during childhood – the answers for mothers are not. The study does not provide advice or guidance on how to reduce the risk of cancer occurrence. However, while the data may seem alarming, the number of babies who might suffer childhood cancer because they are larger is very small and there is cause for optimism. So little is known about the causes of childhood cancer that this finding gives researches an important lead – a clue – into where to look next.

Now that a correlation has been found, related factors can be further investigated. For example, the study found that a mother’s pre-pregnancy weight and weight gain during pregnancy were not particularly related. Now researchers need to determine what explains this finding. Is it genetic? Or perhaps related to hormonal factors that are known to actually increase sizes of babies? We now know there must be a cause locked up there in terms of just what makes the baby bigger. It is the job of science to unlock it.

I4C investigators have already begun to embark upon several lines of inquiry sparked from this study. For example, they plan to expand the geographic mix to include new cohorts such as in Japan and China to see whether this association exists there as well. Additional investigation into other factors that have some relationship to birth weight, such as birth order are planned, to see whether the association is similar in infants of different birth order. Finally, and importantly, researchers plan on making cord blood measurements from infants in the cohorts to determine whether growth hormones of various types explain what we have found.

As a researcher and leader of the I4C, I am more optimistic that we’ll find ways of preventing childhood cancer than I was when we started this study 10 years ago. And I am optimistic because the global scientific community is beginning to assemble strong clues, like this piece of evidence, which will help take us down a path that hopefully will give us more ways of understanding how to prevent childhood cancer.

The mystery around childhood cancer remains. But fortunately, we are one step closer to unlocking it.

Professor Terry Dwyer is the Executive Director for The George Institute for Global Health. Dwyer, a Professor of Epidemiology at the Oxford Martin School and the Nuffield Dept. of Population Health, also leads the International Childhood Cancer Cohort Consortium, an international alliance of longitudinal studies of children that conducted the research.

The ‘Seamless User-Centred Proactive Provision of Risk-stratified Treatment for Heart Failure’ (SUPPORT-HF) project, now in its second stage of development, has proved a great success among trial participants.

Current treatment methods in the United Kingdom require patients to frequently visit the hospital and their local GP for regular check-ups, an often laborious process.

The SUPPORT-HF application allows heart failure patients to monitor their progress from the comfort of their own home by recording their blood pressure, weight and symptoms.

For Felicity Emptage, a heart failure patient and participant in the SUPPORT-HF project, the innovative program has dramatically changed her life.

“Now I’m using the HF 2 device, it really frees me up brilliantly because I know I’m being monitored and being looked after. It’s peace of mind really.”

“I hope that the people who finance this thing are listening, because it is absolute gold dust and has given me my life back.”

The George Institute for Global Health and the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Oxford developed the program to address issues of provision of care for patients with chronic heart failure outside of hospitals and the local GP in the United Kingdom.

If the system is an overall success, it will reduce the cost to the health service of un-predicted hospitalisations and help patients better manage their conditions at home.

Study Lead, Professor Kazem Rahimi of The George Institute for Global Health UK said the current models of health care delivery don’t focus enough on the time patients spend in the community.

“There is a small amount of time that patients spend in hospital and then they tend to be out there on their own.”

“This project is about supporting patients with heart failure, to manage their own condition at home.”

The data collected from patients is then communicated to researchers who can identify patterns that might predict which patients are going to need hospitalisation enabling them to intervene earlier in a more informed fashion.

“We use the information provided by the program to proactively monitor those people minimising the risk of needing to go back to hospital.”

To find out more about the SUPPORT-HF app and Felicity’s story, click here.

The Lancet has released the findings of its Global Burden of Disease Study, identifying low back pain as the leading cause of disability worldwide.

The study has revealed that low back pain is in the top ten leading causes of years lived with disability in every country in the world, yet despite this, there has been little policy discussion of how to address and prevent these disorders.

The Back Pain Group at The George Institute for Global Health in Australia is conducting high quality research to address this. Their research is helping to understand the causes, best treatments and importantly, ways of preventing low back pain.

Research projects from the Australian group have received global recognition, most notably with the PACE and PACE-2 projects which showed that paracetamol is no more effective for treating low back pain than a placebo.

Deputy Director of the Musculoskeletal Division, Professor Jane Latimer, said researchers from Australia and the United Kingdom had recently come together to address the primary concerns of both nations around effective treatment.

“The Lancet study shows what an important issue back pain is for the world and that to find effective solutions we must build strong international collaborations where musculoskeletal researchers, clinicians, consumers and policy makers can work together ” Professor Latimer said.

“It is incredibly important, but also exciting, to share ideas with others across the world, to agree on the important questions in the back pain field, and to work together in the search for answers.

“Primarily, both nations are concerned with the high number of spinal surgical procedures performed on older people with back pain despite there being little evidence of effect, the widespread prescription of paracetamol as pain relief for patients presenting with simple backache and the best ways to prevent back pain in those who have already suffered an episode.

Professor Latimer recently returned from The University of Oxford where she met with UK experts including Professor Alan Silman, Professor Sallie Lamb and Mr Dominique Rothenfluh from the Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Disease at the University of Oxford, Professor Nadine Foster and Jonathan Hill, senior back pain researchers at Keele University, and expert in chronic disease prevention and management, Dr Amanda Hall from the George Institute UK.