Tirol Kiniken GmbH

Students at the age of 14-16 years will be randomized to one intervention arm or one control arm in a 1:1 ratio. Participants of both groups receive a fitness tracker to count the amount of their steps taken. The participants of the intervention arm will commit themselves to a personal goal of steps taken by means of a commitment contract. Achievement of the goal will be rewarded with financial incentives to fulfill the requirements of proper reward medium, according to the Induced Value Theory (Smith, 1976).
The duration of the intervention will be 1 year; incentives are provided for 6 months, the remaining 6 months are the follow-up period.
The hypothesis is that intensified motivational strategies like the provision of commitment contracts and nudges are effective in increasing the number of steps taken per month compared to a control group.

The goal of this clinical study is to learn about disease-risk and age-associated changes in DNA methylation patterns associated with disease risk or age in healthy women aged 30-60 in response to health-promoting lifestyle intervention (intermittent fasting or smoking cessation). The main questions the study aims to answer are:
Are the scores of DNA methylation in epigenetic signatures associated with age, women's cancer risk, or risk exposure reduced after 6 months of lifestyle intervention compared to baseline?
What are the dynamics of DNA methylation changes during or following intervention, and do differences in changes between different sample types exist?
Which other biomarkers of health and disease, including metabolic changes, microbiome, clinical, mental, or inflammatory parameters, are altered following intervention?
The investigators also aim to explore whether DNA methylation changes are associated with changes in other biomarkers mentioned above.
Participants will be allocated to intermittent fasting or smoking cessation based on inclusion criteria. Intermittent fasting encompasses a 16:8 intermittent fasting schedule. Food intake is limited to an 8 h window per day with fasting for the remaining 16 h. Within the intermittent fasting study, participants are randomised to receive a ketogenic supplement (medium-chain triglyceride fibre) or not. Participants in the smoking cessation study will be guided to stop smoking. All participants will receive 1:1 personal coaching throughout the study, and will be provided with an optional exercise programme. All participants will also receive nutritional advice from a professional dietician throughout the study. Participants are invited to donate samples every 2 months for 6 months.
Researchers will compare signatures at the start and after 6 months of intervention. Within the intermittent fasting group, researchers will compare effects in individuals that received the ketogenic supplement to those that did not.

This is a single-center observational study on adolescents to determine predictors of the early steps of the formation of atherosclerosis and to quantify their influence on Intima-Media-Thickness of the carotid artery and the aorta and on the Pulse-Wave Velocity.
A long-term follow-up by means of record linkage is furthermore planned to evaluate the effect of early atherosclerosis and the cardiovascular risk profile on future morbidity with a special focus cardio- and cerebrovascular events.