Does the company's economic performance affect access to occupational health services?

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In Finland like in many other countries, employers are legally obliged to organize occupational health services (OHS) for their employees. Because employers bear the costs of OHS it could be that in spite of the legal requirement OHS expenditure is more determined by economic performance of the company than by law. Therefore, we explored whether economic performance was associated with the companies' expenditure on occupational health services.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We used a prospective design to predict expenditure on OHS in 2001 by a company's economic performance in 1999. Data were provided by Statistics Finland and expressed by key indicators for profitability, solidity and liquidity and by the Social Insurance Institution as employers' reimbursement applications for OHS costs. The data could be linked at the company level. Regression analysis was used to study associations adjusted for various confounders.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Nineteen percent of the companies (N = 6 155) did not apply for reimbursement of OHS costs in 2001. The profitability of the company represented by operating margin in 1999 and adjusted for type of industry was not significantly related to the company's probability to apply for reimbursement of the costs in 2001 (OR = 1.00, 95%CI: 0.99 to 1.01). Profitability measured as operating profit in 1999 and adjusted for type of industry was not significantly related to costs for curative medical services (Beta -0.001, 95%CI: -0.00 to 0.11) nor to OHS cost of prevention in 2001 (Beta -0.001, 95%CI: -0.00 to 0.00).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We did not find a relation between the company's economic performance and expenditure on OHS in Finland. We suppose that this is due to legislation obliging employers to provide OHS and the reimbursement system both being strong incentives for employers.</p

Quantitative bioimage analytics enables measurement of targeted cellular stress response induced by celastrol-loaded nanoparticles

The cellular stress response, which provides protection against proteotoxic stresses, is characterized by the activation of heat shock factor 1 and the formation of nuclear stress bodies (nSBs). In this study, we developed a computerized method to quantify the formation and size distribution of nSBs, as stress response induction is of interest in cancer research, neurodegenerative diseases, and in other pathophysiological processes. We employed an advanced bioimaging and analytics workflow to enable quantitative detailed subcellular analysis of cell populations even down to single-cell level. This type of detailed analysis requires automated single cell analysis to allow for detection of both size and distribution of nSBs. For specific induction of nSB we used mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) loaded with celastrol, a plant-derived triterpene with the ability to activate the stress response. To enable specific targeting, we employed folic acid functionalized nanoparticles, which yields targeting to folate receptor expressing cancer cells. In this way, we could assess the ability to quantitatively detect directed and spatio-temporal nSB induction using 2D and 3D confocal imaging. Our results demonstrate successful implementation of an imaging and analytics workflow based on a freely available, general-purpose software platform, BioImageXD, also compatible with other imaging modalities due to full 3D/4D and high-throughput batch processing support. The developed quantitative imaging analytics workflow opens possibilities for detailed stress response examination in cell populations, with significant potential in the analysis of targeted drug delivery systems related to cell stress and other cytoprotective cellular processes.</p

Fish Oil Enhances Recovery of Intestinal Microbiota and Epithelial Integrity in Chronic Rejection of Intestinal Transplant

The intestinal chronic rejection (CR) is the major limitation to long-term survival of transplanted organs. This study aimed to investigate the interaction between intestinal microbiota and epithelial integrity in chronic rejection of intestinal transplantation, and to find out whether fish oil enhances recovery of intestinal microbiota and epithelial integrity.. In addition, CR rats showed pronounced alteration of tight junction, depicted by marked changes in epithelial cell ultrastructure and redistribution of occuldin and claudins as well as disruption in TJ barrier function. Fish oil administration ameliorated disruption of epithelial integrity in CR, which was associated with an improvement of the mucosal structure leading to improved tight junctions.Our study have presented novel evidence that fish oil is involved in the maintenance of epithelial TJ integrity and recovery of gut microbiota, which may have therapeutic potential against CR in intestinal transplantation

Gut Microbiota, Probiotics and Diabetes

Diabetes is a condition of multifactorial origin, involving several molecular mechanisms related to the intestinal microbiota for its development. In type 2 diabetes, receptor activation and recognition by microorganisms from the intestinal lumen may trigger inflammatory responses, inducing the phosphorylation of serine residues in insulin receptor substrate-1, reducing insulin sensitivity. In type 1 diabetes, the lowered expression of adhesion proteins within the intestinal epithelium favours a greater immune response that may result in destruction of pancreatic β cells by CD8+ T-lymphocytes, and increased expression of interleukin-17, related to autoimmunity. Research in animal models and humans has hypothesized whether the administration of probiotics may improve the prognosis of diabetes through modulation of gut microbiota. We have shown in this review that a large body of evidence suggests probiotics reduce the inflammatory response and oxidative stress, as well as increase the expression of adhesion proteins within the intestinal epithelium, reducing intestinal permeability. Such effects increase insulin sensitivity and reduce autoimmune response. However, further investigations are required to clarify whether the administration of probiotics can be efficiently used for the prevention and management of diabetes

Addressing climate change with behavioral science: a global intervention tournament in 63 countries

Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an effortful tree-planting behavioral task. Across 59,440 participants from 63 countries, the interventions’ effectiveness was small, largely limited to nonclimate skeptics, and differed across outcomes: Beliefs were strengthened mostly by decreasing psychological distance (by 2.3%), policy support by writing a letter to a future-generation member (2.6%), information sharing by negative emotion induction (12.1%), and no intervention increased the more effortful behavior—several interventions even reduced tree planting. Last, the effects of each intervention differed depending on people’s initial climate beliefs. These findings suggest that the impact of behavioral climate interventions varies across audiences and target behaviors