Complexity of understanding the role of dietary and erythrocyte docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) on the cognitive performance of school-age children
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Early childhood is a period of rapid brain development, with increases in synapses rich in the omega-3 (ω-3) fatty acid, DHA (22:6ω-3) continuing well beyond infancy.Despite the importance of DHA to neural phospholipids, the requirement of dietary DHA for neurodevelopment remains unclear.Objectives: The aim was to assess the dietary DHA and DHA status of young children, and determine the association with cognitive performance.Methods: This was a cross-sectional study of healthy children (5-6 y), some of whom were enrolled in a follow-up of a clinical trial (NCT00620672).Dietary intake data (n = 285) were assessed with a food-frequency questionnaire (FFQ) and three 24-h recalls.Family characteristics were collected by questionnaire, and anthropometric data measured.Venous blood was collected, cognitive performance assessed using several age-appropriate tools including the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children.The relation between dietary DHA, RBC DHA, and child neurodevelopment test scores was determined using Pearson's correlation or Spearman's rho, and quintiles of test scores compared by Mann-Whitney U test.Results: Child DHA intakes were highly variable, with a stronger association between RBC DHA and DHA intake assessed by FFQ (rho = 0.383, P < 0.001) compared with one or three 24-h recalls.Observed ethnic differences in DHA intake status as well as neurodevelopmental test scores led to analysis of the association between DHA intake and status with neurodevelopment test scores for White children only (n = 190).Child RBC DHA status was associated with neurodevelopment test scores, including language (rho = 0.211, P = 0.009) and short-term memory (rho = 0.187, P = 0.019), but only short-term memory was associated with dietary DHA (rho = 0.221, P = 0.003).Conclusions: Child RBC DHA but not dietary DHA was associated with multiple tests of cognitive performance.In addition, DHA intake was only moderately associated with RBC DHA, raising complex questions on the relation between diet, DHA transfer to membrane lipids, and neural function.
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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 | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 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".