Meteorological characteristics and potential causes of the 2007 flood in sub-Saharan Africa

In August and September 2007 media and aid organizations reported on a severe flood in large parts of sub-Saharan Africa caused by a sequence of extreme rain events. However, the reporting was partly controversial and much was speculated about how unusual the flood event was. Here, we analyse various observational data sets in order to assess and to compare the spatio-temporal characteristics and intensity of the flood and the associated rain events. The return times are estimated from daily precipitation time series at fine spatial resolution, and the potential causes are disclosed in a global and regional context. Satellite data reveal that the flood was not large scale but confined to the main river basins in sub-Saharan West Africa. Nonetheless, abundant rainfall prevailed over large parts of Western Africa extending north into the Western Sahara, particularly during the second half of August and the beginning of September 2007. In detail, various precipitation data sets differ considerably in terms of the monthly anomalies, demonstrating the difficulty to delineate meteorological extreme events even at a sub-continental scale and during the most recent past. Return times typically range between 1 and 50 years with high spatial heterogeneity but amount to 1200 years in the regional mean over the Upper Volta Basin. Among the potential causes we identify a La Nina event in the tropical Pacific, anomalous heating in the tropical Atlantic coming along with a greater depth of the monsoonal westerlies, and enhanced activity of African easterly waves, both evident in 2-6 day zonal wind and outgoing longwave radiation variance anomalies. Copyright. (C) 2010 Royal Meteorological Societ

Overweight is associated to a better prognosis in metastatic colorectal cancer: A pooled analysis of FFCD trials

IF 7.191 (2017)International audienceBACKGROUND:Previous studies showed that high and low body mass index (BMI) was associated with worse prognosis in early-stage colorectal cancer (CRC), and low BMI was associated with worse prognosis in metastatic CRC (mCRC). We aimed to assess efficacy outcomes according to BMI.PATIENTS AND METHODS:A pooled analysis of individual data from 2085 patients enrolled in eight FFCD first-line mCRC trials from 1991 to 2013 was performed. Comparisons were made according to the BMI cut-off: Obese (BMI ≥30), overweight patients (BMI ≥ 25), normal BMI patients (BMI: 18.5-24) and thin patients (BMI <18.5). Interaction tests were performed between BMI effect and sex, age and the addition of antiangiogenics to chemotherapy.RESULTS:The rate of BMI ≥25 patients was 41.5%, ranging from 37.6% (1991-1999 period) to 41.5% (2000-2006 period) and 44.8% (2007-2013 period). Comparison of overweight patients versus normal BMI range patients revealed a significant improvement of median overall survival (OS) (18.5 versus 16.3 months, HR = 0.88 [0.80-0.98] p = 0.02) and objective response rate (ORR) (42% versus 36% OR = 1.23 [1.01-1.50] p = 0.04) but a comparable median progression-free survival (PFS) (7.8 versus 7.2 months, HR = 0.96 [0.87-1.05] p = 0.35). Subgroup analyses revealed that overweight was significantly associated with better OS in men. OS and PFS were significantly shorter in thin patients.CONCLUSION:Overweight patients had a prolonged OS compared with normal weight patients with mCRC. The association of overweight with better OS was only observed in men. The pejorative prognosis of BMI <18.5 was confirmed.Copyright © 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserve