Family Health Policy Formulation: A Problematic Definitional Process

The family has become a focus of much concern over the past two decades as a variety of family related problems have become major social issues. These social-psychological problems are considered to have negative consequences at three analytical levels: individual, family and society. Therefore, considerable discussion has been raised about the establishment of family policy. Family policy is discussed in this paper as a definitional problematic process. Several problems of a conceptual and logistical nature are cited and some guidelines for family policy construction are made

Psychological responses to the proximity of climate change

A frequent suggestion to increase individuals’ willingness to take action on climate change and to support relevant policies is to highlight its proximal consequences. However, previous studies that have tested this proximising approach have not revealed the expected positive effects on individual action and support for addressing climate change. We present three lines of psychological reasoning that provide compelling arguments as to why highlighting proximal impacts of climate change might not be as effective a way to increase individual mitigation and adaptation efforts as is often assumed. Our contextualisation of the proximising approach within established psychological research suggests that, depending on the particular theoretical perspective one takes to this issue, and on specific individual characteristics suggested by these perspectives, proximising can bring about the intended positive effects, can have no (visible) effect, or can even backfire. Thus, the effects of proximising are much more complex than is commonly assumed. Revealing this complexity contributes to a refined theoretical understanding of the role psychological distance plays in the context of climate change and opens up further avenues for future research and for interventions

Improved imputation of low-frequency and rare variants using the UK10K haplotype reference panel

Imputing genotypes from reference panels created by whole-genome sequencing (WGS) provides a cost-effective strategy for augmenting the single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) content of genome-wide arrays. The UK10K Cohorts project has generated a data set of 3,781 whole genomes sequenced at low depth (average 7x), aiming to exhaustively characterize genetic variation down to 0.1% minor allele frequency in the British population. Here we demonstrate the value of this resource for improving imputation accuracy at rare and low-frequency variants in both a UK and an Italian population. We show that large increases in imputation accuracy can be achieved by re-phasing WGS reference panels after initial genotype calling. We also present a method for combining WGS panels to improve variant coverage and downstream imputation accuracy, which we illustrate by integrating 7,562 WGS haplotypes from the UK10K project with 2,184 haplotypes from the 1000 Genomes Project. Finally, we introduce a novel approximation that maintains speed without sacrificing imputation accuracy for rare variants

The Changing Landscape for Stroke\ua0Prevention in AF: Findings From the GLORIA-AF Registry Phase 2

Background GLORIA-AF (Global Registry on Long-Term Oral Antithrombotic Treatment in Patients with Atrial Fibrillation) is a prospective, global registry program describing antithrombotic treatment patterns in patients with newly diagnosed nonvalvular atrial fibrillation at risk of stroke. Phase 2 began when dabigatran, the first non\u2013vitamin K antagonist oral anticoagulant (NOAC), became available. Objectives This study sought to describe phase 2 baseline data and compare these with the pre-NOAC era collected during phase 1. Methods During phase 2, 15,641 consenting patients were enrolled (November 2011 to December 2014); 15,092 were eligible. This pre-specified cross-sectional analysis describes eligible patients\u2019 baseline characteristics. Atrial fibrillation disease characteristics, medical outcomes, and concomitant diseases and medications were collected. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results Of the total patients, 45.5% were female; median age was 71 (interquartile range: 64, 78) years. Patients were from Europe (47.1%), North America (22.5%), Asia (20.3%), Latin America (6.0%), and the Middle East/Africa (4.0%). Most had high stroke risk (CHA2DS2-VASc [Congestive heart failure, Hypertension, Age  6575 years, Diabetes mellitus, previous Stroke, Vascular disease, Age 65 to 74 years, Sex category] score  652; 86.1%); 13.9% had moderate risk (CHA2DS2-VASc = 1). Overall, 79.9% received oral anticoagulants, of whom 47.6% received NOAC and 32.3% vitamin K antagonists (VKA); 12.1% received antiplatelet agents; 7.8% received no antithrombotic treatment. For comparison, the proportion of phase 1 patients (of N = 1,063 all eligible) prescribed VKA was 32.8%, acetylsalicylic acid 41.7%, and no therapy 20.2%. In Europe in phase 2, treatment with NOAC was more common than VKA (52.3% and 37.8%, respectively); 6.0% of patients received antiplatelet treatment; and 3.8% received no antithrombotic treatment. In North America, 52.1%, 26.2%, and 14.0% of patients received NOAC, VKA, and antiplatelet drugs, respectively; 7.5% received no antithrombotic treatment. NOAC use was less common in Asia (27.7%), where 27.5% of patients received VKA, 25.0% antiplatelet drugs, and 19.8% no antithrombotic treatment. Conclusions The baseline data from GLORIA-AF phase 2 demonstrate that in newly diagnosed nonvalvular atrial fibrillation patients, NOAC have been highly adopted into practice, becoming more frequently prescribed than VKA in Europe and North America. Worldwide, however, a large proportion of patients remain undertreated, particularly in Asia and North America. (Global Registry on Long-Term Oral Antithrombotic Treatment in Patients With Atrial Fibrillation [GLORIA-AF]; NCT01468701

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

La « maladie environnementale » comme épistémologie pratique

« Écoute le patient, il te dira la cause de sa maladie. Écoute plus attentivement et il y a de grandes chances qu’il te dise comment le guérir ». J’ai entendu cela une fois en faculté de médecine. (Le médecin de famille du premier auteur) La confusion qui caractérise l’hypersensibilité chimique multiple (MCS) est perceptible dans la multiplication des termes pour la décrire : maladie environnementale, sensibilité chimique, allergie cérébrale, désordre immunitaire induit par des produits chimi..

Sur la piste environnementale

Repérer des victimes, confondre des suspects : les mobilisations dans le domaine de la santé environnementale se présentent désormais comme de véritables enquêtes policières. À la différence près que, dans ce domaine, les investigations ne sont pas menées uniquement par des enquêteurs professionnels. Les « profanes » cherchent eux aussi à rendre visibles les menaces auxquelles ils pensent être exposés et à établir la réalité des dommages dont ils s’estiment les victimes. Cet ouvrage rassemble une série de travaux anglo-saxons pionniers sur des affaires célèbres qui illustrent le rôle crucial joué par les non-spécialistes dans les controverses portant sur les liens entre l’environnement et la santé

One thousand plant transcriptomes and the phylogenomics of green plants

Abstract: Green plants (Viridiplantae) include around 450,000–500,000 species1, 2 of great diversity and have important roles in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Here, as part of the One Thousand Plant Transcriptomes Initiative, we sequenced the vegetative transcriptomes of 1,124 species that span the diversity of plants in a broad sense (Archaeplastida), including green plants (Viridiplantae), glaucophytes (Glaucophyta) and red algae (Rhodophyta). Our analysis provides a robust phylogenomic framework for examining the evolution of green plants. Most inferred species relationships are well supported across multiple species tree and supermatrix analyses, but discordance among plastid and nuclear gene trees at a few important nodes highlights the complexity of plant genome evolution, including polyploidy, periods of rapid speciation, and extinction. Incomplete sorting of ancestral variation, polyploidization and massive expansions of gene families punctuate the evolutionary history of green plants. Notably, we find that large expansions of gene families preceded the origins of green plants, land plants and vascular plants, whereas whole-genome duplications are inferred to have occurred repeatedly throughout the evolution of flowering plants and ferns. The increasing availability of high-quality plant genome sequences and advances in functional genomics are enabling research on genome evolution across the green tree of life