Focus points of health tourism in the view point of changing costumer values

In our study, effecting role of values on consumer’s buying decisions is going to be introduced in accordance with health tourism. Investigation of values has a highlighted role to predict future trends, because trends of consumer behavior are formed by values in several aspects. Furthermore, individual values reflect to subject’s lifestyle, purchasing behavior and decisions in connection with free time activities. Since the end of ‘80s results of social studies pointed out that, status fortifying and demonstrative aspect of consumption have been getting stronger. So, the changes of buying decisions are not based on the social stratums any more, but it represents the values of the individual with the growing effect of subject. Hence, values, expressing the subjective judgments of consumers, are the most precise predictors of long term social changes. In our study mainstreams of health tourism are going to be evaluated on the basis of secondary data. Furthermore, we identify place of health among individual values and its role in consumer decisions. During the analysis, we use data of national representative research to determine the Hungarian society’s opinion and judgments in the viewpoint of health. Uni- and multivariate statistical methods are going to be used to get a wide view in accordance with the investigated topic. Among our most important result, we define those consumer groups, in which health has a highlighted role in consumer decisions. We introduce lifestyle characters of these segments and determine them special needs in connection with purchased goods and services. This type of characterization makes it real to organizations of health tourism to develop a more effective marketing communication strategy and improve service features according to consumer needs

FOOD PURCHASE HABITS IN FIELD OF DIRECT SALES

The growing popularity of direct sales is promoted and caused by increasing numbers of factors. A trend, for instance, is that as a result of alleged and real food scandals of recent years, trust of consumers in modern food industry has started shrinking. Consequently, on a consumer side, the demand for safety and transparency is rising. Consumers would like to have information on the origin of the product they purchase. This need is possible to be satisfied by direct sales. A research on consumer habits connected to direct sales is in the centre of the study. Influencing factors in food purchase are being examined and consumer groups defined by a cluster analysis based on the importance of influencing factors in food purchase are also being introduced. Amongst others, behaviour of individual consumer groups in a direct sales context is being highlighted, too

Genetic covariance between central corneal thickness and anterior chamber volume: a hungarian twin study.

BACKGROUND: Few, and inconsistent, studies have showed high heritability of some parameters of the anterior segment of the eye; however, no heritability of anterior chamber volume (ACV) has been reported, and no study has been performed to investigate the correlation between the ACV and central corneal thickness (CCT). METHODS: Anterior segment measurements (Pentacam, Oculus) were obtained from 220 eyes of 110 adult Hungarian twins (41 monozygotic and 14 same-sex dizygotic pairs; 80% women; age 48.6 +/- 15.5 years) obtained from the Hungarian Twin Registry. RESULTS: Age- and sex-adjusted heritability of ACV was 85% (bootstrapped 95% confidence interval; CI: 69% to 93%), and 88% for CCT (CI: 79% to 95%). Common environmental effects had no influence, and unshared environmental factors were responsible for 12% and 15% of the variance, respectively. The correlation between ACV and CCT was negative and significant (r ph = -0.35, p < .05), and genetic factors accounted for the covariance significantly (0.934; CI: 0.418, 1.061) based on the bivariate Cholesky decomposition model. CONCLUSION: These findings support the high heritability of ACV and central corneal thickness, and a strong genetic covariance between them, which underscores the importance of identification of the specific genetic factors and the family risk-based screening of disorders related to these variables, such as open-angle and also angle closure glaucoma and corneal endothelial alterations

The inheritance of corneal endothelial cell density

BACKGROUND: Although it is known that some corneal diseases and degenerations have a significant heritable background, heritability on corneal endothelial cell density (ECD) has never been clearly determined. Our aim was to determine the heritability of corneal ECD. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Corneal ECD of 114 eyes (66 eyes of 33 monozygotic and 48 eyes of 24 dizygotic pairs; mean age 49.0 +/- 15.5 years) was investigated by Konan Noncon Robo NSP-9900 specular microscopy. Structural equation modeling (ACE model) was applied. RESULTS: Endothelial corneal cell density was highly heritable (82.0%, 95%CI, 70.0-92.0%), whereas the unique environmental contribution was 18.0% (95%CI, 8.0-29.0%). Shared environmental factors had no influence on the endothelial corneal cell density. DISCUSSION: In this twin study, we established first that the density of the corneal endothelial cells is strongly heritable, which should stimulate future genetic studies to identify genes and pathways that are involved in determining ECD which might in turn lead to future treatments to prevent EC loss

Abnormal expression of the b cell homing chemokine receptor blr1 during the progression of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome

The putative chemokine receptor BLR1 has been identified as the first G-protein-coupled receptor involved in B-cell migration and in microenvironmental homing to B-cell follicles and to germinal centers. In healthy individuals, expression of BLR1 is restricted to all mature recirculating B cells and to a subpopulation of T-helper memory cells. In the present study, we analyzed the distribution of BLR1 on defined lymphocyte subsets during the progression of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. It is shown that the proportion of T-helper memory cells coexpressing BLR1 continuously decreases during the infection, whereas a high proportion of gamma/delta T cells expressing BLR1 can be found in peripheral blood. The latter subpopulation is restricted to lymphoid tissues in healthy individuals. Most interestingly, in 75% of all human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)+ individuals, peripheral blood B cells were identified as not expressing BLR1 and phenotypically resembling germinal center cells of lymphoid tissue. Using BLR1 as a marker molecule, this study identifies peripheral blood lymphocytes in HIV+ individuals that are usually restricted to lymphoid tissue in healthy individuals. Because HIV infection is active in lymphoid tissue even at the clinically latent stage, aberrant expression of the B-cell homing chemokine receptor BLR1 might be an early indicator for the onset of destruction of lymphoid tissue