Report of a Meeting: Food, Nutrition, and Autism: From Soil to Fork

Food and nutrition-related factors have the potential to impact development of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and quality of life for people with ASD, but gaps in evidence exist. On November 10, 2022, Tufts University's Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy and Food and Nutrition Innovation Institute hosted a one-day meeting to explore the evidence and evidence gaps regarding the relationships of food and nutrition with ASD. This meeting report summarizes the presentations and deliberations from the meeting. Topics addressed included prenatal and child dietary intake, the microbiome, obesity, food-related environmental exposures, mechanisms and biological processes linking these factors and ASD, food-related social factors, and data sources for future research. Presentations highlighted evidence for protective associations with prenatal folic acid supplementation and ASD development, increases in risk of ASD with maternal gestational obesity, and the potential for exposure to environmental contaminants in foods and food packaging to influence ASD development. The importance of the maternal and child microbiome in ASD development or ASD-related behaviors in the child was reviewed, as was the role of discrimination in leading to disparities in environmental exposures and psychosocial factors that may influence ASD. The role of child diet and high prevalence of food selectivity in children with ASD and its association with adverse outcomes were also discussed. Priority evidence gaps identified by participants include further clarifying ASD development, including biomarkers and key mechanisms; interactions among psychosocial, social, and biological determinants; interventions addressing diet, supplementation, and the microbiome to prevent and improve quality of life for people with ASD; and mechanisms of action of diet-related factors associated with ASD. Participants developed research proposals to address the priority evidence gaps. The workshop findings serve as a foundation for future prioritization of scientific research to address evidence gaps related to food, nutrition, and ASD.

Letter to the Editor: A possible threat to data integrity for online qualitative autism research

LAY ABSTRACT

Doing research online, via Zoom, Teams, or live chat, is becoming more and more common. It can help researchers to reach more people, including from different parts of the world. It can also make the research more accessible for participants, especially those with different communication preferences. However, online research can have its downsides too. We have recently been involved in three studies in which we had in-depth discussions with autistic people and/or parents of autistic children about various topics. It turns out, though, that some of these participants were not genuine. Instead, we believe they were "scammer participants": people posing as autistic people or parents of autistic children, possibly to gain money from doing the research. This is a real problem because we need research data that we can trust. In this letter, we encourage autism researchers to be wary of scammer participants in their own research.

88. Review of nursing home antibiotic stewardship citation deficiencies to identify opportunities to improve antibiotic stewardship implementation, 2018-2019

Background

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) set standards for nursing homes (NH) and conduct inspections to assess adherence to regulatory requirements, including antibiotic stewardship implementation. NHs not meeting requirements are issued a citation. We reviewed text summaries for citations related to antibiotic stewardship to assess implementation in NHs.

Methods

We obtained publicly available antibiotic stewardship deficiency citations issued to NHs from 9/2018—7/2019 and NH characteristics data from CMS Nursing Home Compare. We used the χ2 test to compare characteristics of NHs with and without citations.

We did a qualitative review of a randomly selected subset (318/635) of antibiotic stewardship citations and classified citations into one or more of four categories based on Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Core Elements of Antibiotic Stewardship: 1) Leadership & Accountability, 2) Action, 3) Tracking & Reporting, 4) Education (Fig 1). We developed subcategories based on our iterative review process to further describe the citations. Each citation was reviewed by two reviewers and yielded 95% agreement in categorization. Discordant citations were reviewed by a third reviewer, and core element categories with agreement by ≥2/3 reviewers were assigned, resulting in 99% agreement.

Antibiotic Stewardship Citation Deficiency Category Common Themes and Examples from Citation Text from Qualitative Review of Antibiotic Stewardship Citation Deficiencies.

Results

There were 635 NH stewardship citation deficiencies across 44 states from 9/2018—7/2019. NHs with a citation were more likely to have < 100 beds (60% vs. 50%) and for-profit ownership (75% vs. 70%) (Table 1).

Of the 318 reviewed citations, Action was cited in 67% of NHs; 115/213 had missing or incomplete criteria documented for antibiotic initiation. Tracking & Reporting was cited in 40% of NHs; 117/126 had missing or incomplete antibiotic or infection tracking logs. Leadership & Accountability was cited in 23% of NHs; 41/72 NHs had no stewardship policy available. Education was cited in 13% of NHs (Fig 2).

Table 1. Characteristics of US Nursing Homes With and Without an Antibiotic Stewardship Citation Deficiency from 9/2018-7/2019.

Conclusion

The most common opportunities for improvement fell under appropriate assessment and documentation of criteria for antibiotic initiation at the resident and facility-level. Training NH staff to use available resources for antibiotic stewardship activities may improve implementation. Further evaluation to identify barriers to implementation is needed.

Disclosures

David Gifford, MD, MPH, American Healthcare Association (Employee)

High reliability in respiratory rate assessment in children with respiratory symptomatology in a rural area in Mozambique

Early recognition of severe medical conditions is often based on clinical scores and vital sign measurements such as the respiratory rate (RR) count. We designed this study to determine the reliability of RR assessment counted three times during a full minute by independent observers in children in a developing country setting. A total of 55 participants were enrolled in the study. Participant ages ranged from 10 days to 7 years (median 22 months). Agreement for RR count was high (intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.95; 95% confidence interval: 0.93-0.97). Agreement for presence of tachypnea was also high (Kappa coefficient of 0.83, p < 0.001). However, a single reading would have misclassified 5-11% of the participants as non-tachypneic. Repeated RR counts offer reliable results if done during a full minute. Patients not fulfilling tachypnea criterion but with a high RR count should have the measurement repeated.