Wildfires and deforestation potentially have direct effects on multiple health outcomes as well as indirect consequences for climate change. Tropical rainforest areas are characterised by high rainfall, humidity and temperature, and they are predominantly found in low-income and middle-income countries. This study aims to synthesise the methods, data and health outcomes reported in scientific papers on wildfires and deforestation in these locations.

We will carry out a scoping review according to the Joanna Briggs Institute’s (JBI) manual for scoping reviews and the framework proposed by Arksey and O’Malley, and Levac et al. The search for articles was performed on 18 August 2023, in 16 electronic databases using Medical Subject Headings terms and adaptations for each database from database inception. The search for local studies will be complemented by the manual search in the list of references of the studies selected to compose this review. We screened studies written in English, French, Portuguese and Spanish. We included quantitative studies assessing any human disease outcome, hospitalisation and vital statistics in regions of tropical rainforest. We exclude qualitative studies and quantitative studies whose outcomes do not cover those of interest. The text screening was done by two independent reviewers. Subsequently, we will tabulate the data by the origin of the data source used, the methods and the main findings on health impacts of the extracted data. The results will provide descriptive statistics, along with visual representations in diagrams and tables, complemented by narrative summaries as detailed in the JBI guidelines.

The study does not require an ethical review as it is meta-research and uses published, deidentified secondary data sources. The submission of results for publication in a peer-reviewed journal and presentation at scientific and policymakers’ conferences is expected.

Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/pnqc7/).

Recently published studies support the beneficial effects of consuming fibre-rich legumes, such as cooked dry beans, to improve metabolic health and reduce cancer risk. In participants with overweight/obesity and a history of colorectal polyps, the Fibre-rich Foods to Treat Obesity and Prevent Colon Cancer randomised clinical trial will test whether a high-fibre diet featuring legumes will simultaneously facilitate weight reduction and suppress colonic mucosal biomarkers of colorectal cancer (CRC).

This study is designed to characterise changes in (1) body weight; (2) biomarkers of insulin resistance and systemic inflammation; (3) compositional and functional profiles of the faecal microbiome and metabolome; (4) mucosal biomarkers of CRC risk and (5) gut transit. Approximately 60 overweight or obese adults with a history of noncancerous adenomatous polyps within the previous 3 years will be recruited and randomised to one of two weight-loss diets. Following a 1-week run-in, participants in the intervention arm will receive preportioned high-fibre legume-rich entrées for two meals/day in months 1–3 and one meal/day in months 4–6. In the control arm, entrées will replace legumes with lean protein sources (eg, chicken). Both groups will receive in-person and written guidance to include nutritionally balanced sides with energy intake to lose 1–2 pounds per week.

The National Institutes of Health fund this ongoing 5-year study through a National Cancer Institute grant (5R01CA245063) awarded to Emory University with a subaward to the University of Pittsburgh. The study protocol was approved by the Emory Institutional Review Board (IRB approval number: 00000563).

NCT04780477.

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a major public health issue and there is rationale for the early diagnosis of AF before the first complication occurs. Previous AF screening research is limited by low yields of new cases and strokes prevented in the screened populations. For AF screening to be clinically and cost-effective, the efficiency of identification of newly diagnosed AF needs to be improved and the intervention offered may have to extend beyond oral anticoagulation for stroke prophylaxis. Previous prediction models for incident AF have been limited by their data sources and methodologies.

We will investigate the application of random forest and multivariable logistic regression to predict incident AF within a 6-month prediction horizon, that is, a time-window consistent with conducting investigation for AF. The Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD)-GOLD dataset will be used for derivation, and the Clalit Health Services (CHS) dataset will be used for international external geographical validation. Analyses will include metrics of prediction performance and clinical utility. We will create Kaplan-Meier plots for individuals identified as higher and lower predicted risk of AF and derive the cumulative incidence rate for non-AF cardio-renal-metabolic diseases and death over the longer term to establish how predicted AF risk is associated with a range of new non-AF disease states.

Permission for CPRD-GOLD was obtained from CPRD (ref no: 19_076). The CPRD ethical approval committee approved the study. CHS Helsinki committee approval 21-0169 and data usage committee approval 901. The results will be submitted as a research paper for publication to a peer-reviewed journal and presented at peer-reviewed conferences.

A systematic review to guide the overall project was registered on PROSPERO (registration number CRD42021245093). The study was registered on ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT05837364).

This scoping review aims to identify and synthesise existing statistical methods used to assess the progress of HIV treatment programmes in terms of the HIV cascade and continuum of care among people living with HIV (PLHIV).

Systematic scoping review.

Published articles were retrieved from PubMed, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) Complete and Excerpta Medica dataBASE (EMBASE) databases between April and July 2022. We also strategically search using the Google Scholar search engine and reference lists of published articles.

This scoping review included original English articles that estimated and described the HIV cascade and continuum of care progress in PLHIV. The review considered quantitative articles that evaluated either HIV care cascade progress in terms of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS targets or the dynamics of engagement in HIV care.

The first author and the librarian developed database search queries and screened the retrieved titles and abstracts. Two independent reviewers and the first author extracted data using a standardised data extraction tool. The data analysis was descriptive and the findings are presented in tables and visuals.

This review included 300 articles. Cross-sectional study design methods were the most commonly used to assess the HIV care cascade (n=279, 93%). In cross-sectional and longitudinal studies, the majority used proportions to describe individuals at each cascade stage (276/279 (99%) and 20/21 (95%), respectively). In longitudinal studies, the time spent in cascade stages, transition probabilities and cumulative incidence functions was estimated. The logistic regression model was common in both cross-sectional (101/279, 36%) and longitudinal studies (7/21, 33%). Of the 21 articles that used a longitudinal design, six articles used multistate models, which included non-parametric, parametric, continuous-time, time-homogeneous and discrete-time multistate Markov models.

Most literature on the HIV cascade and continuum of care arises from cross-sectional studies. The use of longitudinal study design methods in the HIV cascade is growing because such methods can provide additional information about transition dynamics along the cascade. Therefore, a methodological guide for applying different types of longitudinal design methods to the HIV continuum of care assessments is warranted.