Katarina Bälter - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Katarina Bälter

Nutrients, Jan 13, 2017

The development of easy-to-use and accurate methods to assess the intake of energy, foods and nut... more The development of easy-to-use and accurate methods to assess the intake of energy, foods and nutrients in pre-school children is needed. KidMeal-Q is an online food frequency questionnaire developed for the LifeGene prospective cohort study in Sweden. The aims of this study were to compare: (i) energy intake (EI) obtained using KidMeal-Q to total energy expenditure (TEE) measured via doubly labelled water and (ii) the intake of certain foods measured using KidMeal-Q to intakes acquired by means of 24 h dietary recalls in 38 children aged 5.5 years. The mean EI calculated using KidMeal-Q was statistically different (p < 0.001) from TEE (4670 ± 1430 kJ/24 h and 6070 ± 690 kJ/24 h, respectively). Significant correlations were observed for vegetables, fruit juice and candy between KidMeal-Q and 24 h dietary recalls. Only sweetened beverage consumption was significantly different in mean intake (p < 0.001), as measured by KidMeal-Q and 24 h dietary recalls. In conclusion, KidMeal-...

Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention

Participants We used a large-scale population-based case-control population in Sweden, named Canc... more Participants We used a large-scale population-based case-control population in Sweden, named Cancer of the Prostate in Sweden. The case participants were recruited from four of six regional cancer registries that cover the entire population of Sweden. Reporting of ...

JMIR Research Protocols, 2015

Valid physical activity assessment in epidemiological studies is essential to study associations ... more Valid physical activity assessment in epidemiological studies is essential to study associations with various health outcomes. To validate the Web-based physical activity questionnaire Active-Q by comparing results of time spent at different physical activity levels with results from the GENEA accelerometer and to assess the reproducibility of Active-Q by comparing two admissions of the questionnaire. A total of 148 men (aged 33 to 86 years) responded to Active-Q twice and wore the accelerometer during seven consecutive days on two occasions. Time spent on six different physical activity levels including sedentary, light (LPA), moderate (MPA), and vigorous (VPA) as well as additional combined categories of sedentary-to-light and moderate-to-vigorous (MVPA) physical activity was assessed. Validity of Active-Q was determined using Spearman correlation coefficients with 95% confidence intervals (CI) and the Bland-Altman method. Reproducibility was assessed using intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) comparing two admissions of the questionnaire. The validity correlation coefficients were statistically significant for time spent at all activity levels; sedentary (r=0.19, 95% CI: 0.04-0.34), LPA (r=0.15, 95% CI: 0.00-0.31), sedentary-to-light (r=0.35, 95% CI: 0.19-0.51), MPA (r=0.27, 95% CI: 0.12-0.42), VPA (r=0.54, 95% CI: 0.42-0.67), and MVPA (r=0.35, 95% CI: 0.21-0.48). The Bland-Altman plots showed a negative mean difference for time in LPA and positive mean differences for time spent in MPA, VPA and MVPA. The ICCs of test-retest reliability ranged between r=0.51-0.80 for the different activity levels in Active-Q. More moderate and vigorous activities and less light activities were reported in Active-Q compared to accelerometer measurements. Active-Q shows comparable validity and reproducibility to other physical activity questionnaires used today.

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The Prostate, Jan 30, 2015

Body Mass index (BMI) has been shown to affect risk and mortality of several cancers. Prostate ca... more Body Mass index (BMI) has been shown to affect risk and mortality of several cancers. Prostate cancer and obesity are major public health concerns for middle-aged and older men. Previous studies of pre-diagnostic BMI have found an increased risk of prostate cancer mortality in obese patients. To study the associations between BMI at time of prostate cancer diagnosis and prostate cancer specific and overall mortality. BMI was analyzed both as a continuous variable and categorized into four groups based on the observed distribution in the cohort (BMI < 22.5, 22.5 < 25, 25 < 27.5 and ≥27.5 kg/m(2) ). The association between BMI and mortality was assessed using stratified Cox proportional hazards models and by fitting regression splines for dose response analysis in 3,161 men diagnosed with prostate cancer. After 11 years of follow up via linkage to the population-based cause of death registry, we identified 1,161 (37%) deaths off which 690 (59%) were due to prostate cancer. Hi...

JMIR mHealth and uHealth, 2015

Childhood obesity is an increasing health problem globally. Obesity may be established already at... more Childhood obesity is an increasing health problem globally. Obesity may be established already at pre-school age. Further research in this area requires accurate and easy-to-use methods for assessing the intake of energy and foods. Traditional methods have limited accuracy, and place large demands on the study participants and researchers. Mobile phones offer possibilities for methodological advancements in this area since they are readily available, enable instant digitalization of collected data, and also contain a camera to photograph pre- and post-meal food items. We have recently developed a new tool for assessing energy and food intake in children using mobile phones called the Tool for Energy Balance in Children (TECH). The main aims of our study are to (1) compare energy intake by means of TECH with total energy expenditure (TEE) measured using a criterion method, the doubly labeled water (DLW) method, and (2) to compare intakes of fruits and berries, vegetables, juice, and ...

Cancer epidemiology, biomarkers & prevention : a publication of the American Association for Cancer Research, cosponsored by the American Society of Preventive Oncology, 2015

Few studies have investigated the association between post-diagnosis physical activity and mortal... more Few studies have investigated the association between post-diagnosis physical activity and mortality among men diagnosed with prostate cancer. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of physical activity after a prostate cancer diagnosis on both overall and prostate cancer-specific mortality in a large cohort. Data from 4,623 men diagnosed with localized prostate cancer 1997-2002 and followed-up until 2012 were analyzed. HRs with 95% confidence intervals (CI) were estimated using Cox proportional hazards models to examine the association between post-diagnosis recreational MET-h/d, time spent walking/bicycling, performing household work or exercising, and time to overall and prostate cancer-specific death. All models were adjusted for potential confounders. During the follow-up, 561 deaths of any cause and 194 deaths from prostate cancer occurred. Statistically significantly lower overall mortality rates were found among men engaged in ≥5 recreational MET-h/d (HR, 0.63; ...

Cancer causes & control : CCC, 2014

Body mass index (BMI) is a modifiable lifestyle factor that has been associated with an increased... more Body mass index (BMI) is a modifiable lifestyle factor that has been associated with an increased risk of fatal prostate cancer and biochemical recurrence. The main purpose of the present study was to investigate the association between the exposure BMI at the time of a prostate cancer diagnosis and weight change after diagnosis, and the outcomes of prostate cancer progression and mortality in a large cohort study. Data from 4,376 men diagnosed with clinically localized prostate cancer between 1997 and 2002 were analyzed. BMI and weight change were self-reported in 2007. Hazard ratios (HRs) with 95 % confidence intervals (CIs) were estimated in complete-case analysis (n = 3,214) using Cox proportional hazards models. Progression was experienced among 639 (14.6 %) of the study participants, and in total, 450 (10.3 %) deaths of any cause and 134 (3.1 %) prostate cancer-specific deaths were recorded during follow-up. Obese men had a 47 % increased rate of overall mortality compared to ...

Pediatric reports, Jan 6, 2012

Accurate assessment of children's physical activity is critical in determining associations b... more Accurate assessment of children's physical activity is critical in determining associations between childhood physical activity and health later in life. We have developed a web-based questionnaire, KidActive-Q, to assess physical activity in early childhood. The feasibility and reproducibility of KidActive-Q were assessed in a sample of 20 children aged 2 to 6 years. The questionnaire was distributed to parents via e-mail on two occasions. The median time required to complete KidActive-Q was 2.5 minutes. All the parents reported that the questionnaire was easy or very easy to fill. The intraclass correlations for test-retest reliability were 0.60 (95% confidence interval: 0.31-0.88) for daily time spent outdoors, and 0.85 (95% confidence interval: 0.72-0.97) for daily time watching television. Our results suggest that KidActive-Q is a user-friendly tool for assessing physical activity in early childhood. To our knowledge, this is the first web-based questionnaire specifically d...

British journal of cancer, Jan 22, 2005

IL1-RN is an important anti-inflammatory cytokine that modulate the inflammation response by bind... more IL1-RN is an important anti-inflammatory cytokine that modulate the inflammation response by binding to IL1 receptors, and as a consequence inhibits the action of proinflammatory cytokines IL1alpha and IL1beta. In this study, we hypothesise that sequence variants in the IL1-RN gene are associated with prostate cancer risk. The study population, a population-based case-control study in Sweden, consisted of 1383 prostate cancer case patients and 779 control subjects. We first selected 18 sequence variants covering the IL1-RN gene and genotyped these single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 96 control subjects. Gene-specific haplotypes of IL1-RN were constructed and four haplotype-tagging single-nucleotide polymorphisms (htSNPs) were identified (rs878972, rs315934, rs3087263 and rs315951) that could uniquely describe >95% of the haplotypes. All study subjects were genotyped for the four htSNPs. No significant difference in genotype frequencies between cases and controls were observ...

The American journal of clinical nutrition, 2004

Epidemiologic studies have suggested a lower risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) at higher intak... more Epidemiologic studies have suggested a lower risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) at higher intakes of fruit, vegetables, and whole grain. Whether this association is due to antioxidant vitamins or some other factors remains unclear. We studied the relation between the intake of antioxidant vitamins and CHD risk. A cohort study pooling 9 prospective studies that included information on intakes of vitamin E, carotenoids, and vitamin C and that met specific criteria was carried out. During a 10-y follow-up, 4647 major incident CHD events occurred in 293 172 subjects who were free of CHD at baseline. Dietary intake of antioxidant vitamins was only weakly related to a reduced CHD risk after adjustment for potential nondietary and dietary confounding factors. Compared with subjects in the lowest dietary intake quintiles for vitamins E and C, those in the highest intake quintiles had relative risks of CHD incidence of 0.84 (95% CI: 0.71, 1.00; P=0.17) and 1.23 (1.04, 1.45; P=0.07), respec...

Journal of Nutritional Science, 2013

Several individual components of the Mediterranean diet have been shown to offer protection again... more Several individual components of the Mediterranean diet have been shown to offer protection against prostate cancer. The present study is the first to investigate the association between adherence to the Mediterranean diet and the relative risk of prostate cancer. We also explored the usefulness of the Mediterranean Diet Score (MDS) in a non-Mediterranean population. FFQ data were obtained from 1482 incident prostate cancer patients and 1108 population-based controls in the Cancer of the Prostate in Sweden (CAPS) study. We defined five MDS variants with different components or using either study-specific intakes or intakes in a Greek reference population as cut-off values between low and high intake of each component. Unconditional logistic regression was used to estimate the relative risk of prostate cancer for high and medium v. low MDS, as well as potential associations with the individual score components. No statistically significant association was found between adherence to the Mediterranean diet based on any of the MDS variants and prostate cancer risk (OR range: 0·96-1·19 for total prostate cancer, comparing high with low adherence). Overall, we found little support for an association between the Mediterranean diet and prostate cancer in this Northern European study population. Despite potential limitations inherent in the study or in the build-up of a dietary score, we suggest that the original MDS with study-specific median intakes as cut-off values between low and high intake is useful in assessing the adherence to the Mediterranean diet in non-Mediterranean populations.

104 Study of the effect of Sep15 and GPx4 gene polymorphisms on prostate cancer risk Indira Vishn... more 104 Study of the effect of Sep15 and GPx4 gene polymorphisms on prostate cancer risk Indira Vishnubhatla1), Margaret Rayman1), Hans-Olov Adami2), Katarina Bälter2), Henrik Grönberg3), Fiona R Green1) 1) School of Biomedical and Molecular Sciences, ...

It is widely hypothesized that interactions of multiple major and modifier genes influence indivi... more It is widely hypothesized that interactions of multiple major and modifier genes influence individual risk to prostate cancer. However, current efforts at identifying prostate cancer risk genes primarily rely on single gene approaches. In an attempt to fill this gap, we carried out a study to ...

Background: Saturated fatty acid (SFA) intake increases plasma LDL-cholesterol concentrations; th... more Background: Saturated fatty acid (SFA) intake increases plasma LDL-cholesterol concentrations; therefore, intake should be re- duced to prevent coronary heart disease (CHD). Lower habitual intakes of SFAs, however, requires substitution of other macronu- trients to maintain energy balance. Objective: We investigated associations between energy intake from monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs), polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), and carbohydrates and risk of CHD

interactive Journal of Medical Research, 2014

Knowledge about factors influencing physical activity behavior is needed in order to tailor physi... more Knowledge about factors influencing physical activity behavior is needed in order to tailor physical activity interventions to the individual. The aim of this study was to explore and describe the perceived reasons, barriers, and incentives to increased physical activity, as well as preferable activities, among elderly men in Sweden. In total, 150 men aged 50-86 years responded to a Web-based questionnaire. Men who reported that they exercised sometimes or often received questions about reasons for physical activity (n=104), while men who reported that they never or seldom exercised received questions about barriers (n=46). The most frequent perceived reason for being physically active was health (82%), followed by enjoyment (45%), and a desire to lose/maintain weight (27%). Lack of interest/motivation was identified as the primary perceived barrier (17%). Incentives for increasing the level of activity included becoming more motivated and having a training partner. Walking was the most preferred activity. Enjoyment and maintaining a good health were important reasons for engaging in physical activity among Swedish elderly men.