June 2024

Worldwide nearly 400 million children and adolescents were overweight in 2022, and adolescent obesity has quadrupled since 1990. Given the well-known impact of adolescent obesity on health and wellbeing – both immediate and into adulthood – improving dietary habits in this age group is a matter of urgency and a major public health priority. Early adolescence is an ideal time to promote healthy eating, given that dietary and other health-related habits established during this time tend to persist into adulthood. In this issue, Anne Ahrendt Bjerregaard and colleagues examine whether a chatbot-based health education program (versus no program) could improve dietary behaviours and body weight trajectories among nearly 8000 adolescents in Denmark. The 12-week SMS-based intervention focused on key dietary behaviors, aiming to decrease the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, and increase the intake of fruits, vegetables and fish. The authors found no discernible effect on body mass index or dietary habits at 6 months or 18 months after the intervention, leading them to call for more refined and personalized messaging systems to improve the potential utility of such programs.

Image Credit: WHO / Violaine Martin.

Research Articles

Hearing loss in Australian First Nations children at 6-monthly assessments from age 12 to 36 months: Secondary outcomes from randomised controlled trials of novel pneumococcal conjugate vaccine schedules

Amanda Jane Leach, Nicole Wilson, Beth Arrowsmith, Jemima Beissbarth, Kim Mulholland, Mathuram Santosham, Paul John Torzillo, Peter McIntyre, Heidi Smith-Vaughan, Sue A. Skull, Victor M. Oguoma, Mark D. Chatfield, Deborah Lehmann, Christopher G. Brennan-Jones, Michael J. Binks, Paul V. Licciardi, Ross M. Andrews, Tom Snelling, Vicki Krause, Jonathan Carapetis, Anne B. Chang, Peter Stanley Morris

PLOS Medicine: published June 3, 2024 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1004375

A sex- and gender-based analysis of alcohol treatment intervention research involving youth: A methodological systematic review

A.J. Lowik, Caroline Mniszak, Michelle Pang, Kimia Ziafat, Mohammad Karamouzian, Rod Knight

PLOS Medicine: published June 3, 2024 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1004413

Effect of a multicomponent quality improvement strategy on sustained achievement of diabetes care goals and macrovascular and microvascular complications in South Asia at 6.5 years follow-up: Post hoc analyses of the CARRS randomized clinical trial

Mohammed K. Ali, Kavita Singh, Dimple Kondal, Raji Devarajan, Shivani A. Patel, V. Usha Menon, Premlata K. Varthakavi, Vijay Vishwanathan, Mala Dharmalingam, Ganapati Bantwal, Rakesh Kumar Sahay, Muhammad Qamar Masood, Rajesh Khadgawat, Ankush Desai, Dorairaj Prabhakaran, K. M. Venkat Narayan, Nikhil Tandon

PLOS Medicine: published June 3, 2024 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1004335

Metabolic profiles of children aged 2–5 years born after frozen and fresh embryo transfer: A Chinese cohort study

Wei Zhou, Wanbing Feng, Jinli Chang, Jingmei Hu, Fuxia Li, Kuona Hu, Jiejing Jiao, Xinyi Xue, Ting Lan, Wenjing Wan, Zi-Jiang Chen, Linlin Cui

PLOS Medicine: published June 6, 2024 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1004388

Immunogenicity, reactogenicity, and IgE-mediated immune responses of a mixed whole-cell and acellular pertussis vaccine schedule in Australian infants: A randomised, double-blind, noninferiority trial

Gladymar Pérez Chacón, Marie J. Estcourt, James Totterdell, Julie A. Marsh, Kirsten P. Perrett, Dianne E. Campbell, Nicholas Wood, Michael Gold, Claire S. Waddington, Michael O’ Sullivan, Sonia McAlister, Nigel Curtis, Mark Jones, Peter B. McIntyre, Patrick G. Holt, Peter C. Richmond, Tom Snelling

PLOS Medicine: published June 10, 2024 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1004414

An SMS chatbot digital educational program to increase healthy eating behaviors in adolescence: A multifactorial randomized controlled trial among 7,890 participants in the Danish National Birth Cohort

Anne Ahrendt Bjerregaard, Daniel E. Zoughbie, Jørgen Vinsløv Hansen, Charlotta Granström, Marin Strøm, Þórhallur Ingi Halldórsson, Inger Kristine Meder, Walter Churchill Willett, Eric L. Ding, Sjúrður Fróði Olsen

PLOS Medicine: published June 14, 2024 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1004383

Safety and pharmacokinetics of VRC07-523LS administered via different routes and doses (HVTN 127/HPTN 087): A Phase I randomized clinical trial

Stephen R. Walsh, Cynthia L. Gay, Shelly T. Karuna, Ollivier Hyrien, Timothy Skalland, Kenneth H. Mayer, Magdalena E. Sobieszczyk, Lindsey R. Baden, Paul A. Goepfert, Carlos del Rio, Guiseppe Pantaleo, Philip Andrew, Carissa Karg, Zonglin He, Huiyin Lu, Carmen A. Paez, Jane A. G. Baumblatt, Laura L. Polakowski, Wairimu Chege, Maija A. Anderson, Sophie Janto, Xue Han, Yunda Huang, Julie Dumond, Margaret E. Ackerman, Adrian B. McDermott, Britta Flach, Estelle Piwowar-Manning, Kelly Seaton, Georgia D. Tomaras, David C. Montefiori, Lucio Gama, John R. Mascola, for the HVTN 127/HPTN 087 Study Team

PLOS Medicine: published June 24, 2024 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1004329

Trends in weight gain recorded in English primary care before and during the Coronavirus-19 pandemic: An observational cohort study using the OpenSAFELY platform

Miriam Samuel, Robin Y. Park, Sophie V. Eastwood, Fabiola Eto, Caroline E. Morton, Daniel Stow, Sebastian Bacon, Amir Mehrkar, Jessica Morley, Iain Dillingham, Peter Inglesby, William J. Hulme, Kamlesh Khunti, Rohini Mathur, Jonathan Valabhji, Brian MacKenna, Sarah Finer, The OpenSAFELY Collaborative

PLOS Medicine: published June 24, 2024 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1004398

Correction

Correction: Health and economic benefits of achieving hepatitis C virus elimination in Pakistan: A modelling study and economic analysis

Aaron G. Lim, Nick Scott, Josephine G. Walker, Saeed Hamid, Margaret Hellard, Peter Vickerman

PLOS Medicine: published June 25, 2024 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1004423

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