Background: Early childhood caries (ECC) remains a major global public health concern, influenced by complex socioeconomic and biological factors. Although deviations in fetal growth, including being small for gestational age (SGA) or large for gestational age (LGA), have been linked to various long-term health outcomes, evidence regarding their association with ECC remains inconsistent. This study examined the influence of SGA and LGA on the cumulative experience of ECC and severe ECC (S-ECC) using a large-scale nationwide birth cohort.

Methods: This prospective cohort study utilized data from the Japan Environment and Children’s Study, a nationwide investigation of approximately 100,000 mother–child dyads. After applying exclusion criteria, 79,006 children were included in the final analysis. SGA and LGA were defined according to Japanese reference standards. Information on ECC experience was obtained from caregiver-reported questionnaires administered at 4 and 5 years postpartum. Based on established criteria, S-ECC was defined as any caries experience by 3 years of age, and ECC as any experience by 5 years of age. A generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) was used to estimate risk ratios (RRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for longitudinal ECC trajectories. Sensitivity analyses using Poisson regression with multiple imputation were conducted to assess the robustness of findings.

Results: Longitudinal trajectories demonstrated distinct differences in ECC risk across the birth weight spectrum. In fully adjusted GLMMs, children born LGA had significantly higher risks of both S-ECC and ECC than those born appropriate for gestational age (S-ECC: RR = 1.13, 95% CI: 1.08–1.18; ECC: RR = 1.13, 95% CI: 1.10–1.15). In contrast, children born SGA exhibited significantly lower risks (S-ECC: RR = 0.91, 95% CI: 0.86–0.96; ECC: RR = 0.94, 95% CI: 0.92–0.97). These associations remained consistent in sensitivity analyses addressing missing data.

Conclusions: Children born LGA demonstrated a relatively higher prevalence of ECC, consistent with findings from previous studies. Conversely, the lower prevalence observed among children born SGA may reflect greater parental vigilance or enhanced medical monitoring. Birth weight for gestational age may therefore serve as a useful indicator for identifying children who could benefit from targeted oral health interventions.

Background: Previous studies have limited longitudinal data with inconsistent relationships between workplace stress and problem drinking. This study aimed to investigate the association between work-related stress and the development of problem drinking among Japanese workers.

Methods: A cohort study was conducted using data from a nationwide internet survey in Japan in 2022 and 2023. A total of 8,157 participants (55% men; mean age: 47.2 years) were categorized based on their Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) scores into non-problem drinking (0–7) and problem drinking (8–40). Work-related stress was assessed using the New Brief Job Stress Questionnaire (BJSQ), which includes 17 items across nine work-related stresses categories such as relationship stress, job demand (quantity and quality), physical demand, environmental stress, job control, skills utilization, suitability, and satisfaction.

Results: From 2022 to 2023, 499 participants (360 males, 139 females) transitioned from non-problem to problem drinking. After adjusting for sociodemographic factors, living conditions, self-rated health, smoking and nine work-related strass mutually, male individuals with high relationship stress were more likely to develop problem drinking (adjusted OR: 1.77; 95% CI: 1.20–2.61), and similar but marginal association was observed in female (adjusted OR: 1.74; 95% CI: 1.00–3.04). In addition, male individuals with high physical demand were more likely to develop problem drinking (adjusted OR: 1.39; 95% CI: 1.00–1.94), but not in female.

Conclusion: Among nine work-related stresses categories, high relationship stress at the workplace in male and female and high physical demand in male was associated with an increased risk of developing problem drinking.

Background: Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is a growing global health concern, and lifestyle interventions are important for preventing MetS and its progression to chronic diseases. Although short-term lifestyle interventions (typically within 12 months) have shown some improvements, clinically meaningful improvements in MetS and cardiovascular disease are achieved only in a subset of participants, indicating that many participants derive insufficient benefit. This study aimed to examine the effectiveness of repeated interventions for individuals who do not achieve sufficient weight loss with a short-term lifestyle intervention, using real-world data from Japan’s health screening system, Specific Health Checkup (SHC) and Specific Health Guidance (SHG), by comparing outcomes between individuals who did not achieve sufficient improvement after the initial intervention and received and did not receive health guidance again in the following year.

Methods: This longitudinal observational study used 2018–2020 individual-level data of men aged 40–65 years from a Japanese health insurance database. Modified Poisson regression was used to investigate whether repeated SHG interventions for individuals who did not achieve sufficient improvement despite receiving SHG in fiscal year 2018 increased the probability of achieving ≥3% weight loss between 2019 and 2020.

Results: The repeated and single intervention groups comprised 952 and 1,373 participants, respectively. No significant difference was observed between the groups in terms of ≥3% weight loss between 2019 and 2020 (16.0% vs. 13.5%; risk ratio [RR] = 1.18; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.97–1.44, adjusted). Analyses stratified by stage of change showed a significant difference in the contemplation stage between the two groups (≥3% weight loss 2019–2020, 19.7% vs. 13.7%; RR = 1.47; 95% CI, 1.04–2.08).

Conclusions: No significant association was observed between repeated interventions and achieving ≥3% weight loss overall. An exploratory subgroup analysis suggested a possible benefit among individuals in the contemplation stage. These findings should be interpreted cautiously and confirmed in future studies.

Background: Single-nucleotide polymorphism in aldehyde dehydrogenase 2 (ALDH2) is associated with metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD). However, this association in alcohol-abstinent individuals remains unknown. We assessed SLD and genotype-inferred ALDH2 activity (ALDH2 activity) in alcohol-abstinent adolescents to explore the association between ALDH2 activity and metabolism-related factors stratified by SLD status.

Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 253 university students (<20 years; 162 males, 91 females) underwent first-year health screening including abdominal ultrasonography and genotyping for ALDH2 rs671, categorized as a high-activity genotype (GG) or reduced-activity genotype (non-GG). The associations of metabolism-related parameters were analyzed across SLD and ALDH2 genotype groups, and predictive performance was assessed using ROC analysis.

Results: We focused on significant changes in metabolism-related parameters, particularly in adolescent males, due to their higher prevalence of SLD. Increased preperitoneal fat and aspartate aminotransferase levels and decreased high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) levels were observed in the non-SLD group, with high ALDH2 activity; low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels in the SLD group increased in high ALDH2 activity. In stratified analyses, univariate and multivariate logistic regression revealed that, among adolescents without SLD, those with the GG genotype had significantly lower HDL-C levels (odds ratio [OR], 0.95; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.91–0.99, p = 0.016). Conversely, among adolescents with SLD, the high-activity GG genotype was associated with significantly higher LDL-C levels (OR, 1.03; 95% CI, 1.01–1.05, p = 0.001). Exploratory cutoffs for HDL-C (<64 mg/dL) and LDL-C (≥114 mg/dL) showed moderate discriminatory ability (AUC 0.727 and 0.701, respectively) and showed modest genotype-classification performance in an independent cohort.

Conclusions: The association between ALDH2 rs671 genotype and lipid profiles differed according to SLD status under non-alcoholic conditions. Combined assessment of SLD and lipid changes may provide an exploratory approach for estimating ALDH2 genotype-inferred alcohol-metabolizing capacity in adolescents.

Background and aims: Evidence regarding the association between the tendency to overeat and prediabetes or diabetes is still limited. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the association between the tendency to overeat and the incidence of prediabetes among young and middle-aged Japanese working population.

Methods: The baseline survey was conducted among 2886 local government workers, aged 20–65 in central Japan in 2013. Participants were asked, “Do you tend to overeat?” and self-reported as either “Yes” or “No” in the survey. Prediabetes was defined as fasting blood glucose ≥100 mg/dL, or participants starting diabetes medication or having reported a new history of diabetes until 2018. Cox model was used to obtain hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) adjusted for socio-demographic, lifestyle and baseline metabolic factors.

Results: During a mean follow-up period of 4.2 years, 541 prediabetes incidences were reported. The tendency to overeat, compared to not overeating, was associated with a significantly higher incidence of prediabetes (HR: 1.33, 95% CI: 1.09–1.62). This association was similar in both sexes but was attenuated in females (male: HR; 1.32; 95% CI, 1.06–1.64; females: HR 1.38; 95% CI, 0.86–2.23) in model 2.

Conclusion: Tendency to overeat was significantly associated with the increased incidence of prediabetes in young and middle-aged Japanese workers. Therefore, targeted screening for this might contribute to effective prevention strategies for reducing incidence of prediabetes among this population.