The role of functional health literacy in long-term treatment outcomes in psychosocial care for adolescents

Although among adolescents with psychosocial problems low health literacy may increase the risk of poor treatment outcomes, the contributing mechanisms within treatment remain unclear. A better understanding of these mechanisms could contribute to improved treatment processes and outcomes. This study aims to examine the relationship between functional health literacy, treatment processes (treatment adherence, learning processes), and treatment outcome (level of psychosocial problems) in adolescents in psychosocial care. We used data from a prospective cohort study among adolescents aged 12-18 (N = 390), collected in four successive measurements: at entry into care, and 3, 12, and 24 months thereafter. We used a mixed effect model to investigate the association between level of functional health literacy (adequate vs. inadequate) and treatment processes (treatment adherence, learning processes) and treatment outcome (level of psychosocial problems). Between adolescents with adequate and inadequate functional health literacy, we found no differences or change over time in adherence or learning processes. The level of psychosocial problems significantly declined over time (β = - 1.70, 95% CI [- 2.72, - 0.69], p = .001) to a similar degree in both groups, though, in all measurements, the level was consistently higher for adolescents with inadequate health literacy. We conclude that health literacy levels did not affect change in treatment processes nor in outcomes of psychosocial treatment. However, the consistently higher level of psychosocial problems among adolescents with inadequate health literacy suggests an unaddressed need in psychosocial care

Епоха "пост": людина в перспективі "нової духовності"

Розглянуто основні проблеми сучасного суспільства, пов’язані із антропологічною кризою, кардинальними змінами у темпоральності, способі буття людини. Проаналізовано ситуацію заміни попередніх гуманістичних ціннісних систем на більш “технізовані”, що призводить до виникнення нового типу людини – “постлюдини”. Посилюється вплив на людей “світу віртуальної реальності”. Нове штучне середовище “сканує”, приймає лише інформаційний аспект людини, вводячи її як цілісну істоту в стан кризи. Доведено актуальність відповідей на смислові запитання епохи, пов’язані із світоглядом, духовністю та цінностями.The main problems of modern society, related to the anthropological crisis, fundamental changes in temporality, ways of human being are considered. There is an analysis of situation of replacing the previous humanistic value systems on a more “technicized”, which causes a new type of man – “posthuman”. The impact on “the world of virtual reality” people is growing. New artifi cial environment “scans”, takes only informational aspect of human, introducing it as complete being in a state of crisis. The urgency of responses to semantic question of the epoch, related to the outlook, spirituality and values is justifi ed

Антибіотикопрофілактика в хірургії

Наук. кер.: М.Г. КононенкоГнійно-запальні післяопераційні ускладнення за останні десятиріччя набувають все більшої актуальності. Це вже стає проблемою. Такі ускладнення необхідно попереджувати. Для забезпечення тканин операційного поля антибіотиком у ефективній (бактерицидній) концентрації на весь період хірургічного втручання проводять антибіотикопрофілактику (АБП). Вона є складовою частиною комплексної профілактики гнійно-запальних ускладнень. При цитуванні документа, використовуйте посилання http://essuir.sumdu.edu.ua/handle/123456789/2734

Incidence of osteonecrosis after renal transplantation

The incidence of osteonecrosis was 24% in 248 patients who had received 262 kidney transplants 1971-1982. However, based only on patients at risk, i.e. alive with functioning transplants, the incidence at 1, 3 and 6 years was found to be 13, 27 and 36%; after six years no new cases were found. the relative increase in body-weight at 180 days was predictive as regards risk for osteonecrosis, while the cumulative dose of steroids was not. This suggests that individual sensitivity to steroids rather than the absolute cumulative dose is involved in the development of osteonecrosis

Efficacy of an inactivated whole-cell injection vaccine for nile tilapia, Oreochromis niloticus (L), against multiple isolates of Francisella noatunensis subsp. orientalis from diverse geographical regions

Francisellosis, induced by Francisella noatunensis subsp. orientalis (Fno), is an emerging bacterial disease representing a major threat to the global tilapia industry. There are no commercialised vaccines presently available against francisellosis for use in farmed tilapia, and the only available therapeutic practices used in the field are either the prolonged use of antibiotics or increasing water temperature. Recently, an autogenous whole cell-adjuvanted injectable vaccine was developed that gave 100% relative percent survival (RPS) in tilapia challenged with a homologous isolate of Fno. In this study, we evaluated the efficacy of this vaccine against challenge with heterologous Fno isolates. Healthy Nile tilapia, Oreochromis niloticus (∼15 g) were injected intraperitoneally (i.p.) with the vaccine, adjuvant-alone or phosphate buffer saline (PBS) followed by an i.p. challenge with three Fno isolates from geographically distinct locations. The vaccine provided significant protection in all groups of vaccinated tilapia, with a significantly higher RPS of 82.3% obtained against homologous challenge, compared to 69.8% and 65.9% with the heterologous challenges. Protection correlated with significantly higher specific antibody responses, and western blot analysis demonstrated cross-isolate antigenicity with fish sera post-vaccination and post-challenge. Moreover, a significantly lower bacterial burden was detected by qPCR in conjunction with significantly greater expression of IgM, IL-1 β, TNF-α and MHCII, 72 h post-vaccination (hpv) in spleen samples from vaccinated tilapia compared to fish injected with adjuvant-alone and PBS. The Fno vaccine described in this study may provide a starting point for development a broad-spectrum highly protective vaccine against francisellosis in tilapia

Contributing Determinants to Hearing Loss in Elderly Men and Women: Results from the Population-Based Rotterdam Study

To contribute to a better understanding of the etiology in age-related hearing loss, we carried out a cross-sectional study of 3,315 participants (aged 52-99 years) in the Rotterdam Study, to analyze both low- and high-frequency hearing loss in men and women. Hearing thresholds with pure-tone audiometry were obtained, and other detailed information on a large number of possible determinants was collected. Hearing loss was associated with age, education, systolic blood pressure, diabetes mellitus, body mass index, smoking and alcohol consumption (inverse correlation). Remarkably, different associations were found for low- and high-frequency loss, as well as between men and women, suggesting that different mechanisms are involved in the etiology of age-related hearing loss

A Polyphasic Approach for Phenotypic and Genetic Characterization of the Fastidious Aquatic Pathogen Francisella noatunensis subsp. orientalis

Francisella noatunensis subsp. orientalis (Fno) is the causative agent of piscine francisellosis, an emerging infectious disease in Asia and Latin America. In this study two outbreaks of francisellosis were diagnosed in the UK on the basis of histopathology, electron microscopy, PCR, bacterial isolation and fulfilment of Koch’s postulates. Furthermore, a phenotypic fingerprint based on biochemical analyses, metabolic activity, chemotaxonomic composition and antimicrobial assays was generated for the novel isolates, the Fno type strain Ehime-1 from Asia and other Fno from Latin America. The genetic relatedness between the novel Fno and other Francisellaceae species was investigated by sequencing and comparing 8 housekeeping genes and the 16S rRNA-ITS-23S rRNA sequence. The phenotypic profiling indicated a high degree of similarity between the Fno taxon as all were able to metabolise dextrin, N-acetyl-D glucosamine, D-fructose, α-D-glucose, D-mannose, methyl pyruvate, acetic acid, α-keto butyric acid, L-alaninamide, L-alanine, L-alanylglycine, L-asparagine, L-glutamic acid, L-proline, L-serine, L-threonine, inosine, uridine, glycerol, D L-α-glycerol phosphate, glucose-1-phosphate and glucose-6-phosphate. The chemotaxonomic analyses indicated that 24:1 (20.3%), 18:1n-9 (16.9%), 24:0 (13.1%) 14:0 (10.9%), 22:0 (7.8%), 16:0 (7.6%) and 18:0 (5.5%) were the predominant structural fatty acids in Fno. The antimicrobial assays showed little variation between the isolates and high susceptibility to enrofloxacin, gentamicin, neomycin, streptomycin, amikacin, ciprofloxacin, gatifloxacin, nitrofurantoin, tobramycin, kanamycin, tetracycline, oxytetracycline, florfenicol, oxolinic acid and streptomycin in all the Fno analysed. In all the phylogenetic trees the Fno strains clustered together in independent branches confirming a high degree of homogeneity. Interestingly in five of the individual trees i.e mutS, putA, rpoB, the concatenated sequence and 16S rRNA-ITS-23S rRNA genes the two Francisella noatunensis ssp. diverged more from each other than from the closely related human pathogen Francisella philomiragia (Fp). The phenotypic and genetic characterisation confirmed the Fno isolates represent a solid phylo-phenetic taxon that in the current context of the genus seems to be misplaced within the species Fn. We propose the use of the present polyphasic approach in future studies to characterise strains of Fnn and Fp and verify their current taxonomic rank of Fno