54 research outputs found
Premature mortality in refractory partial epilepsy: does surgical treatment make a difference?
Background: Epilepsy carries an increased risk of premature death. For some people with intractable focal epilepsy, surgery offers hope for a seizure-free life. The authors aimed to see whether epilepsy surgery influenced mortality in people with intractable epilepsy. Methods: The authors audited survival status in two cohorts (those who had surgery and those who had presurgical assessment but did not have surgery). Results: There were 40 known deaths in the non-surgical group (3365 person years of follow-up) and 19 in the surgical group (3905 person-years of follow-up). Non-operated patients were 2.4 times (95% CI 1.4 to 4.2) as likely to die as those who had surgery. They were 4.5 times (95% CI 1.9 to 10.9) as likely to die a probable epilepsy-related death. In the surgical group, those with ongoing seizures 1 year after surgery were 4.0 (95% CI 1.2 to 13.7) times as likely to die as those who were seizure-free or who had only simple partial seizures. Time-dependent Cox analysis showed that the yearly outcome group did not significantly affect mortality (HR 1.3, 95% CI 0.9 to 1.8). Conclusion: Successful epilepsy surgery was associated with a reduced risk of premature mortality, compared with those with refractory focal epilepsy who did not have surgical treatment. To some extent, the reduced mortality is likely to be conferred by inducing freedom from seizures. It is not certain whether better survival is attributable only to surgery, as treatment decisions were not randomised, and there may be inherent differences between the groups.<br/
A genome-wide gene-environment interaction study of breast cancer risk for women of European ancestry
Background
Genome-wide studies of gene–environment interactions (G×E) may identify variants associated with disease risk in conjunction with lifestyle/environmental exposures. We conducted a genome-wide G×E analysis of ~ 7.6 million common variants and seven lifestyle/environmental risk factors for breast cancer risk overall and for estrogen receptor positive (ER +) breast cancer.
Methods
Analyses were conducted using 72,285 breast cancer cases and 80,354 controls of European ancestry from the Breast Cancer Association Consortium. Gene–environment interactions were evaluated using standard unconditional logistic regression models and likelihood ratio tests for breast cancer risk overall and for ER + breast cancer. Bayesian False Discovery Probability was employed to assess the noteworthiness of each SNP-risk factor pairs.
Results
Assuming a 1 × 10–5 prior probability of a true association for each SNP-risk factor pairs and a Bayesian False Discovery Probability < 15%, we identified two independent SNP-risk factor pairs: rs80018847(9p13)-LINGO2 and adult height in association with overall breast cancer risk (ORint = 0.94, 95% CI 0.92–0.96), and rs4770552(13q12)-SPATA13 and age at menarche for ER + breast cancer risk (ORint = 0.91, 95% CI 0.88–0.94).
Conclusions
Overall, the contribution of G×E interactions to the heritability of breast cancer is very small. At the population level, multiplicative G×E interactions do not make an important contribution to risk prediction in breast cancer
Asian and Euro-American parents’ ethnotheories of play and learning: Effects on preschool children’s home routines and school behaviour
Age, geographical distribution and taphonomy of an unusual occurrence of mummified crabeater seals on James Ross Island, Antarctica
An unusually dense collection of some 150 dead crabeater seals (Family Phocidae), in various stages of decay, occurs in the Brandy Bay hinterland, north-western James Ross Island, northern Antarctic Peninsula. Throughout the past 100 years, the presence of shelf ice (no longer present today) and sea ice in Prince Gustav Channel, between James Ross Island and the Antarctic Peninsula, has prevented seals from readily accessing the western side of James Ross Island. However, open water pools, some over one kilometre in diameter, remain accessible throughout the winter months, allowing seals to haul out onto the ice. It is likely that some of these seals may become disorientated as they wander away from the pools and instead head toward Brandy Bay and onto low-lying and snow-covered Abernethy Flats, easily mistaken for sea ice in early winter, where they perish. The large number of variably-decayed animals present suggests that this has probably happened on numerous occasions. However, some of the dead seals also probably perished during a documented mass dying event of crabeater seals in Prince Gustav Channel caused by an unidentified epidemic, possibly phocine distemper virus (PDV), during the spring of 1955
Comment on “Formation of chenier plain of the Doñana marshland (SW Spain): Observations and geomorphic model” by A. Rodríguez-Ramírez and C.M. Yáñez-Camacho [Marine Geology 254 (2008) 187–196]
Rodríguez-Ramírez and Yáñez-Camacho (2008), Rodríguez-Vidal et al. (2009) and Rodríguez-Ramírez et al.
(2009) have kept an ongoing discussion about the validity of radiocarbon ages in reconstructing Holocene
palaeogeographical models in the Gulf of Cadiz. The discussion considered the validity and correctness of the ΔR
value to beused in the area to calibrate radiocarbon ages ofmarine samples. These papers suggest that theΔR value
proposed by Lario (1996) and Dabrio et al. (1999, 2000) is erroneous, and consequently, that all the evolutionary
models based on radiocarbon ages from marine samples that have been proposed in this area since 1996 must be
revised.However, the papers commentedhere use erroneously the R, regional R andΔR values.After reviewing the
published data, it is apparent that the most reliable values of ΔR in the Gulf of Cadiz for middle-late Holocene
samples range between ΔR=35±85 yr and ΔR=95±15 yr. This means that the values used in Lario (1996) and
Dabrio et al. (1999, 2000) fall in this range, and also that the calibrated ages used by several authors adopting these
values are fully reliable. Calibrations using ΔR values inside this range do not yield significant differences in terms
of geological age owing to the magnitude of errors resulting from the methods employed
Tanzanian and United States Mothers' Beliefs about Parents' and Teachers' Roles in Children's Knowledge Acquisition
Annual and seasonal variation in the frequency of beta-haemolytic streptococcal infections.
Application of the Broad Energy Germanium detector: A technique for elucidating β -decay schemes which involve daughter nuclei with very low energy excited states
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