120 research outputs found

    Correction: Effectiveness of home-based records on maternal, newborn and child health outcomes: A systematic review and meta-analysis

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    [This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0209278. Errors in funding section and references]

    Prevention and assessment of infectious diseases among children and adult migrants arriving to the European Union/European Economic Association: a protocol for a suite of systematic reviews for public health and health systems.

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    INTRODUCTION: The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control is developing evidence-based guidance for voluntary screening, treatment and vaccine prevention of infectious diseases for newly arriving migrants to the European Union/European Economic Area. The objective of this systematic review protocol is to guide the identification, appraisal and synthesis of the best available evidence on prevention and assessment of the following priority infectious diseases: tuberculosis, HIV, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, poliomyelitis (polio), Haemophilus influenza disease, strongyloidiasis and schistosomiasis. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: The search strategy will identify evidence from existing systematic reviews and then update the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness evidence using prospective trials, economic evaluations and/or recently published systematic reviews. Interdisciplinary teams have designed logic models to help define study inclusion and exclusion criteria, guiding the search strategy and identifying relevant outcomes. We will assess the certainty of evidence using the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) approach. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: There are no ethical or safety issues. We anticipate disseminating the findings through open-access publications, conference abstracts and presentations. We plan to publish technical syntheses as GRADEpro evidence summaries and the systematic reviews as part of a special edition open-access publication on refugee health. We are following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses for Protocols reporting guideline. This protocol is registered in PROSPERO: CRD42016045798

    Global cooling as a driver of diversification in a major marine clade

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    Climate is a strong driver of global diversity and will become increasingly important as human influences drive temperature changes at unprecedented rates. Here we investigate diversification and speciation trends within a diverse group of aquatic crustaceans, the Anomura. We use a phylogenetic framework to demonstrate that speciation rate is correlated with global cooling across the entire tree, in contrast to previous studies. Additionally, we find that marine clades continue to show evidence of increased speciation rates with cooler global temperatures, while the single freshwater clade shows the opposite trend with speciation rates positively correlated to global warming. Our findings suggest that both global cooling and warming lead to diversification and that habitat plays a role in the responses of species to climate change. These results have important implications for our understanding of how extant biota respond to ongoing climate change and are of particular importance for conservation planning of marine ecosystems

    The value of CCTV surveillance cameras as an investigative tool: an empirical analysis

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    There has been extensive research on the value of closed-circuit television (CCTV) for preventing crime, but little on its value as an investigative tool. This study sought to establish how often CCTV provides useful evidence and how this is affected by circumstances, analysing 251,195 crimes recorded by British Transport Police that occurred on the British railway network between 2011 and 2015. CCTV was available to investigators in 45% of cases and judged to be useful in 29% (65% of cases in which it was available). Useful CCTV was associated with significantly increased chances of crimes being solved for all crime types except drugs/weapons possession and fraud. Images were more likely to be available for more-serious crimes, and less likely to be available for cases occurring at unknown times or in certain types of locations. Although this research was limited to offences on railways, it appears that CCTV is a powerful investigative tool for many types of crime. The usefulness of CCTV is limited by several factors, most notably the number of public areas not covered. Several recommendations for increasing the usefulness of CCTV are discussed

    Mechanisms of cerebellar tonsil herniation in patients with Chiari malformations as guide to clinical management

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    Background The pathogenesis of Chiari malformations is incompletely understood. We tested the hypothesis that different etiologies have different mechanisms of cerebellar tonsil herniation (CTH), as revealed by posterior cranial fossa (PCF) morphology. Methods In 741 patients with Chiari malformation type I (CM-I) and 11 patients with Chiari malformation type II (CM-II), the size of the occipital enchondrium and volume of the PCF (PCFV) were measured on reconstructed 2D-CT and MR images of the skull. Measurements were compared with those in 80 age- and sex-matched healthy control individuals, and the results were correlated with clinical findings. Results Significant reductions of PCF size and volume were present in 388 patients with classical CM-I, 11 patients with CM-II, and five patients with CM-I and craniosynostosis. Occipital bone size and PCFV were normal in 225 patients with CM-I and occipitoatlantoaxial joint instability, 55 patients with CM-I and tethered cord syndrome (TCS), 30 patients with CM-I and intracranial mass lesions, and 28 patients with CM-I and lumboperitoneal shunts. Ten patients had miscellaneous etiologies. The size and area of the foramen magnum were significantly smaller in patients with classical CM-I and CM-I occurring with craniosynostosis and significantly larger in patients with CM-II and CM-I occurring with TCS. Conclusions Important clues concerning the pathogenesis of CTH were provided by morphometric measurements of the PCF. When these assessments were correlated with etiological factors, the following causal mechanisms were suggested: (1) cranial constriction; (2) cranial settling; (3) spinal cord tethering; (4) intracranial hypertension; and (5) intraspinal hypotension

    Active-site structure, binding and redox activity of the heme–thiolate enzyme CYP2D6 immobilized on coated Ag electrodes: a surface-enhanced resonance Raman scattering study

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    Surface-enhance resonance Raman scattering spectra of the heme–thiolate enzyme cytochrome P450 2D6 (CYP2D6) adsorbed on Ag electrodes coated with 11-mercaptoundecanoic acid (MUA) were obtained in various experimental conditions. An analysis of these spectra, and a comparison between them and the RR spectra of CYP2D6 in solution, indicated that the enzyme’s active site retained its nature of six-coordinated low-spin heme upon immobilization. Moreover, the spectral changes detected in the presence of dextromethorphan (a CYP2D6 substrate) and imidazole (an exogenous heme axial ligand) indicated that the immobilized enzyme also preserved its ability to reversibly bind a substrate and form a heme–imidazole complex. The reversibility of these processes could be easily verified by flowing alternately solutions of the various compounds and the buffer through a home-built spectroelectrochemical flow cell which contained a sample of immobilized protein, without the need to disassemble the cell between consecutive spectral data acquisitions. Despite immobilized CYP2D6 being effectively reduced by a sodium dithionite solution, electrochemical reduction via the Ag electrode was not able to completely reduce the enzyme, and led to its extensive inactivation. This behavior indicated that although the enzyme’s ability to exchange electrons is not altered by immobilization per se, MUA-coated electrodes are not suited to perform direct electrochemistry of CYP2D6

    PP13, Maternal ABO Blood Groups and the Risk Assessment of Pregnancy Complications

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    Placental Protein 13 (PP13), an early biomarker of preeclampsia, is a placenta-specific galectin that binds beta-galactosides, building-blocks of ABO blood-group antigens, possibly affecting its bioavailability in blood.We studied PP13-binding to erythrocytes, maternal blood-group effect on serum PP13 and its performance as a predictor of preeclampsia and intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR). Datasets of maternal serum PP13 in Caucasian (n = 1078) and Hispanic (n = 242) women were analyzed according to blood groups. In vivo, in vitro and in silico PP13-binding to ABO blood-group antigens and erythrocytes were studied by PP13-immunostainings of placental tissue-microarrays, flow-cytometry of erythrocyte-bound PP13, and model-building of PP13--blood-group H antigen complex, respectively. Women with blood group AB had the lowest serum PP13 in the first trimester, while those with blood group B had the highest PP13 throughout pregnancy. In accordance, PP13-binding was the strongest to blood-group AB erythrocytes and weakest to blood-group B erythrocytes. PP13-staining of maternal and fetal erythrocytes was revealed, and a plausible molecular model of PP13 complexed with blood-group H antigen was built. Adjustment of PP13 MoMs to maternal ABO blood group improved the prediction accuracy of first trimester maternal serum PP13 MoMs for preeclampsia and IUGR.ABO blood group can alter PP13-bioavailability in blood, and it may also be a key determinant for other lectins' bioavailability in the circulation. The adjustment of PP13 MoMs to ABO blood group improves the predictive accuracy of this test
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