A value-based comparison of the management of ambulatory respiratory diseases in walk-in clinics, primary care practices, and emergency departments : protocol for a multicenter prospective cohort study

Background: In Canada, 30%-60% of patients presenting to emergency departments are ambulatory. This category has been labeled as a source of emergency department overuse. Acting on the presumption that primary care practices and walk-in clinics offer equivalent care at a lower cost, governments have invested massively in improving access to these alternative settings in the hope that patients would present there instead when possible, thereby reducing the load on emergency departments. Data in support of this approach remain scarce and equivocal. Objective: The aim of this study is to compare the value of care received in emergency departments, walk-in clinics, and primary care practices by ambulatory patients with upper respiratory tract infection, sinusitis, otitis media, tonsillitis, pharyngitis, bronchitis, influenza-like illness, pneumonia, acute asthma, or acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Methods: A multicenter prospective cohort study will be performed in Ontario and Québec. In phase 1, a time-driven activity-based costing method will be applied at each of the 15 study sites. This method uses time as a cost driver to allocate direct costs (eg, medication), consumable expenditures (eg, needles), overhead costs (eg, building maintenance), and physician charges to patient care. Thus, the cost of a care episode will be proportional to the time spent receiving the care. At the end of this phase, a list of care process costs will be generated and used to calculate the cost of each consultation during phase 2, in which a prospective cohort of patients will be monitored to compare the care received in each setting. Patients aged 18 years and older, ambulatory throughout the care episode, and discharged to home with one of the aforementioned targeted diagnoses will be considered. The estimated sample size is 1485 patients. The 3 types of care settings will be compared on the basis of primary outcomes in terms of the proportion of return visits to any site 3 and 7 days after the initial visit and the mean cost of care. The secondary outcomes measured will include scores on patient-reported outcome and experience measures and mean costs borne wholly by patients. We will use multilevel generalized linear models to compare the care settings and an overlap weights approach to adjust for confounding factors related to age, sex, gender, ethnicity, comorbidities, registration with a family physician, socioeconomic status, and severity of illness. Results: Phase 1 will begin in 2021 and phase 2, in 2023. The results will be available in 2025. Conclusions: The end point of our program will be for deciders, patients, and care providers to be able to determine the most appropriate care setting for the management of ambulatory emergency respiratory conditions, based on the quality and cost of care associated with each alternative

Au-delà de l'injonction religieuse : les pratiques pieuses des Égyptiennes musulmanes en Italie

Depuis peu, l'Italie s'est ouvert à l'immigration et accueille de plus en plus de mains-d'œuvre étrangères provenant de l'Afrique du Nord. Les Égyptiens prennent part à cette immigration et forment une communauté transnationale dans le Nord du pays, plus particulièrement à Milan. Or, l'Italie subit des tensions économiques et politiques qui ne présagent pas de meilleures conditions d'accueil pour les immigrants musulmans. Comment conjuguer les exigences du pays d'accueil et habiter les normes auxquelles on adhère? Afin d'explorer la relation entre le sujet agissant et la dimension religieuse, l'étude se dégage de la perspective oppressive et cherche à comprendre comment les Égyptiennes de foi musulmane expriment leur piété à la fois dans leur pratique et dans leur propos, et ce, dans un contexte de migration en Italie. Ces femmes habitent les normes musulmanes et cela implique une manière d'être et d'agir inspirant tous les actes religieux et quotidiens

Supra-spinal FAAH is required for the analgesic action of paracetamol in an inflammatory context

International audienceParacetamol (acetaminophen) is the most commonly used analgesic in the world. Recently, a new view of its action has emerged: that paracetamol would be a pro-drug that should be metabolized by the FAAH enzyme into AM404, its active metabolite. However, this hypothesis has been demonstrated only in naive animals, a far cry from the clinical pathologic context of paracetamol use. Moreover, FAAH is a ubiquitous enzyme expressed both in the central nervous system and in the periphery. Thus, we explored: (i) the involvement of FAAH in the analgesic action of paracetamol in a mouse model of inflammatory pain; and (ii) the contributions of central versus peripheral FAAH in this action. The analgesic effect of paracetamol was evaluated in thermal hyperalgesia, mechanical allodynia and hyperalgesia induced by an intra-plantar injection of carrageenan (3%) in FAAH knock-out mice or their littermates. Moreover, the contribution of the central and peripheral enzymes was explored by comparing the effect of a global FAAH inhibitor (URB597) to that of a peripherally restricted FAAH inhibitor (URB937) on paracetamol action. Here, we show that in a model of inflammatory pain submitted to different stimuli, the analgesic action of paracetamol was abolished when FAAH was genetically or pharmacologically inhibited. Whereas a global FAAH inhibitor, URB597 (0.3 mg/kg), reduced the anti-hyperalgesic action of paracetamol, a brain-impermeant FAAH inhibitor, URB937 (0.3 mg/kg), had no influence. However, administered intracerebroventricularly, URB937 (5 μg/mouse) reduced the action of paracetamol. These results demonstrate that the supra-spinally-located FAAH enzyme is necessary for the analgesic action of paracetamol

Microarray-based Identification of Individual HERV Loci Expression: Application to Biomarker Discovery in Prostate Cancer

International audienceThe prostate-specific antigen (PSA) is the main diagnostic biomarker for prostate cancer in clinical use, but it lacks specificity and sensitivity, particularly in low dosage values 1. 'How to use PSA' remains a current issue, either for diagnosis as a gray zone corresponding to a concentration in serum of 2.5-10 ng/ml which does not allow a clear differentiation to be made between cancer and noncancer 2 or for patient follow-up as analysis of post-operative PSA kinetic parameters can pose considerable challenges for their practical application 3,4. Alternatively, noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs) are emerging as key molecules in human cancer, with the potential to serve as novel markers of disease, e.g. PCA3 in prostate cancer 5,6 and to reveal uncharacterized aspects of tumor biology. Moreover, data from the ENCODE project published in 2012 showed that different RNA types cover about 62% of the genome. It also appears that the amount of transcriptional regulatory motifs is at least 4.5x higher than the one corresponding to protein-coding exons. Thus, long terminal repeats (LTRs) of human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) constitute a wide range of putative/candidate transcriptional regulatory sequences, as it is their primary function in infectious retroviruses. HERVs, which are spread throughout the human genome, originate from ancestral and independent infections within the germ line, followed by copy-paste propagation processes and leading to multicopy families occupying 8% of the human genome (note that exons span 2% of our genome). Some HERV loci still express proteins that have been associated with several pathologies including cancer 7-10. We have designed a high-density microarray, in Affymetrix format, aiming to optimally characterize individual HERV loci expression, in order to better understand whether they can be active, if they drive ncRNA transcription or modulate coding gene expression. This tool has been applied in the prostate cancer field (Figure 1)

Cita en París. Nº 21/68

Casas de campo en Francia, decoración -- Paseando por París, la puerta de Saint Denis -- Entrevista a F. Mallet Joris, con motivo de la publicación de su libro sobre las brujas "Tres edades de la noche" -- Se habla de Jacques Dutronc, canta "il est cinq heures"Programa de entretenimiento dedicado al público femenino ; Disco propiedad de Radio Alcoy cedido para su difusión y conservació

The scalp hair collar and tuft signs: A retrospective multicenter study of 78 patients with a systematic review of the literature

International audienceBACKGROUND:Hair collar sign (HCS) and hair tuft of the scalp (HTS) are cutaneous signs of an underlying neuroectodermal defect, but most available data are based on case reports.OBJECTIVE:We sought to define the clinical spectrum of HCS and HTS, clarify the risk for underlying neurovascular anomalies, and provide imaging recommendations.METHODS:A 10-year multicenter retrospective and prospective analysis of clinical, radiologic, and histopathologic features of HCS and HTS in pediatric patients was performed.RESULTS:Of the 78 patients included in the study, 56 underwent cranial and brain imaging. Twenty-three of the 56 patients (41%) had abnormal findings, including the following: (1) cranial/bone defect (30.4%), with direct communication with the central nervous system in 28.6%; (2) venous malformations (25%); or (3) central nervous system abnormalities (12.5%). Meningeal heterotopia in 34.6% (9/26) was the most common neuroectodermal association. Sinus pericranii, paraganglioma, and combined nevus were also identified.LIMITATIONS:The partial retrospective design and predominant recruitment from the dermatology department are limitations of this study.CONCLUSIONS:Infants with HCS or HTS are at high risk for underlying neurovascular anomalies. Magnetic resonance imaging scans should be performed in order to refer the infant to the appropriate specialist for management.Copyright © 2016 American Academy of Dermatology, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved