Factors Influencing the Input Side of Folate Nutrition
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Mandatory folic acid fortification of the food supply in Canada has led to a 50% reduction in neural tube defects. However, fortification in addition to folic acid supplement use has led to high blood values in the non-target population. To generate evidence to inform future fortification and supplementation policy, the aim of my thesis was to establish a better understanding of the ‘‘input side’’ of folate nutrition. I investigated the impact of extending folic acid fortification to whole wheat flour and the contribution of colonic bacterial synthesis of folate. Using data from the 2004 Canadian Community Health Survey 2.2 (n = 35,107), a modelling exercise predicted that extending folic acid fortification to whole wheat flour would decrease the prevalence of folate inadequacy in whole wheat consumers while not putting the entire population at additional risks. In the second study, I analyzed colonic evacuant collected from rural Africans (n=20) and African Americans (n=20) consuming their regular diets and after a two-week reciprocal dietary switch. Mean colonic folate content was increased by 40% among African Americans consuming a high fibre diet patterned after a typical rural African diet (43 ± 5g/d of fibre), highlighting folate producing capacity of gut microbiota could be manipulated using dietary approaches. In the third study, I established an approach to detect stable isotopic folate in urine and confirmed pre-formed folate can be absorbed across the human iii colon using urinary excretion. While urinary enrichment was detected after administration of single oral and IV dose of 13C5-5-formyltetrahydrofolate (n=9), it approached the limit of detection and hence was variable. In future studies, inclusion of a pre-study protocol whereby subjects consume a daily folate supplement to saturate tissue stores may be worthwhile. A better understanding of the input side of folate nutrition will help develop dietary strategies that achieve optimal health.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".