Pesticide spraying for West Nile virus control and emergency department asthma visits in New York City, 2000

Pyrethroid pesticides were applied via ground spraying to residential neighborhoods in New York City during July–September 2000 to control mosquito vectors of West Nile virus (WNV). Case reports link pyrethroid exposure to asthma exacerbations, but population-level effects on asthma from large-scale mosquito control programs have not been assessed. We conducted this analysis to determine whether widespread urban pyrethroid pesticide use was associated with increased rates of emergency department (ED) visits for asthma. We recorded the dates and locations of pyrethroid spraying during the 2000 WNV season in New York City and tabulated all ED visits for asthma to public hospitals from October 1999 through November 2000 by date and ZIP code of patients’ residences. The association between pesticide application and asthma-related emergency visits was evaluated across date and ZIP code, adjusting for season, day of week, and daily temperature, precipitation, particulate, and ozone levels. There were 62,827 ED visits for asthma during the 14-month study period, across 162 ZIP codes. The number of asthma visits was similar in the 3-day periods before and after spraying (510 vs. 501, p = 0.78). In multivariate analyses, daily rates of asthma visits were not associated with pesticide spraying (rate ratio = 0.92; 95% confidence interval, 0.80–1.07). Secondary analyses among children and for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease yielded similar null results. This analysis shows that spraying pyrethroids for WNV control in New York City was not followed by population-level increases in public hospital ED visit rates for asthma

Primary Health Care: Potential Home for Family-Focused Preventive Interventions

Family-focused prevention programs have been shown to effectively reduce a range of negative behavioral health outcomes but have had limited reach. Three key barriers must be overcome to expand the reach of family-focused prevention programs and thereby achieve a significant public health impact. These barriers are (1) current social norms and perceptions of parenting programs; (2) concerns about the expertise and legitimacy of sponsoring organizations to offer parenting advice; and (3) a paucity of stable, sustainable funding mechanisms. Primary healthcare settings are well positioned to overcome these barriers. Recent changes within health care make primary care settings an increasingly favorable home for family-focused prevention and suggest possibilities for sustainable funding of family-focused prevention programs. This paper discusses the existing advantages of primary care settings and lays out a plan to move toward realizing the potential public health impact of family-focused prevention through widespread implementation in primary healthcare settings

Primary Health Care Potential Home for Family-Focused Preventive Interventions

Family-focused prevention programs have been shown to effectively reduce a range of negative behavioral health outcomes but have had limited reach. Three key barriers must be overcome to expand the reach of family-focused prevention programs and thereby achieve a significant public health impact. These barriers are (1) current social norms and perceptions of parenting programs; (2) concerns about the expertise and legitimacy of sponsoring organizations to offer parenting advice; and (3) a paucity of stable, sustainable funding mechanisms. Primary healthcare settings are well positioned to overcome these barriers. Recent changes within health care make primary care settings an increasingly favorable home for family-focused prevention and suggest possibilities for sustainable funding of family-focused prevention programs. This paper discusses the existing advantages of primary care settings and lays out a plan to move toward realizing the potential public health impact of family-focused prevention through widespread implementation in primary healthcare settings

Vitamin D levels and menopause-related symptoms.

Objective: To determine whether vitamin D levels are associated with menopause-related symptoms in older women. Methods: A randomly selected subset of 1,407 women, among 26,104 potentially eligible participants of the Women’s Health Initiative Calcium and Vitamin D (CaD) trial of postmenopausal women aged 51-80 years, had 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] levels measured at the CaD trial baseline visit. Information about menopause-related symptoms at baseline was obtained by questionnaire and included overall number of symptoms and composite measures of sleep disturbance, emotional well-being, and energy/fatigue, as well as individual symptoms. After exclusions for missing data, 530 women [mean age 66.2 years (SD 6.8)] were included in these analyses. Results: There were borderline significant associations between 25(OH)D levels and total number of menopausal symptoms (p values ranging from 0.05 to 0.06 for fully adjusted models); however, the effect was clinically insignificant and disappeared with correction for multiple testing. There were no associations between 25(OH)D levels and composite measures of sleep disturbance, emotional well-being, or energy/fatigue (p’s > 0.10 for fully adjusted models). Conclusions: There was no evidence of a clinically important association between serum 25(OH)D levels and menopause-related symptoms in postmenopausal women

Le Forum, Vol. 44 #4

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/francoamericain_forum/1106/thumbnail.jp

SPICES: Spectro-Polarimetric Imaging and Characterization of Exoplanetary Systems

SPICES (Spectro-Polarimetric Imaging and Characterization of Exoplanetary Systems) is a five-year M-class mission proposed to ESA Cosmic Vision. Its purpose is to image and characterize long-period extrasolar planets and circumstellar disks in the visible (450 - 900 nm) at a spectral resolution of about 40 using both spectroscopy and polarimetry. By 2020/22, present and near-term instruments will have found several tens of planets that SPICES will be able to observe and study in detail. Equipped with a 1.5 m telescope, SPICES can preferentially access exoplanets located at several AUs (0.5-10 AU) from nearby stars ($<$25 pc) with masses ranging from a few Jupiter masses to Super Earths ($\sim$2 Earth radii, $\sim$10 M$_{\oplus}$) as well as circumstellar disks as faint as a few times the zodiacal light in the Solar System

Serum neurofilament dynamics predicts neurodegeneration and clinical progression in presymptomatic Alzheimer's disease

Neurofilament light chain (NfL) is a promising fluid biomarker of disease progression for various cerebral proteopathies. Here we leverage the unique characteristics of the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer Network and ultrasensitive immunoassay technology to demonstrate that NfL levels in the cerebrospinal fluid (n = 187) and serum (n = 405) are correlated with one another and are elevated at the presymptomatic stages of familial Alzheimer's disease. Longitudinal, within-person analysis of serum NfL dynamics (n = 196) confirmed this elevation and further revealed that the rate of change of serum NfL could discriminate mutation carriers from non-mutation carriers almost a decade earlier than cross-sectional absolute NfL levels (that is, 16.2 versus 6.8 years before the estimated symptom onset). Serum NfL rate of change peaked in participants converting from the presymptomatic to the symptomatic stage and was associated with cortical thinning assessed by magnetic resonance imaging, but less so with amyloid-β deposition or glucose metabolism (assessed by positron emission tomography). Serum NfL was predictive for both the rate of cortical thinning and cognitive changes assessed by the Mini-Mental State Examination and Logical Memory test. Thus, NfL dynamics in serum predict disease progression and brain neurodegeneration at the early presymptomatic stages of familial Alzheimer's disease, which supports its potential utility as a clinically useful biomarker

Meta-analysis of SHANK Mutations in Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Gradient of Severity in Cognitive Impairments.

International audienceSHANK genes code for scaffold proteins located at the post-synaptic density of glutamatergic synapses. In neurons, SHANK2 and SHANK3 have a positive effect on the induction and maturation of dendritic spines, whereas SHANK1 induces the enlargement of spine heads. Mutations in SHANK genes have been associated with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), but their prevalence and clinical relevance remain to be determined. Here, we performed a new screen and a meta-analysis of SHANK copy-number and coding-sequence variants in ASD. Copy-number variants were analyzed in 5,657 patients and 19,163 controls, coding-sequence variants were ascertained in 760 to 2,147 patients and 492 to 1,090 controls (depending on the gene), and, individuals carrying de novo or truncating SHANK mutations underwent an extensive clinical investigation. Copy-number variants and truncating mutations in SHANK genes were present in ∼1% of patients with ASD: mutations in SHANK1 were rare (0.04%) and present in males with normal IQ and autism; mutations in SHANK2 were present in 0.17% of patients with ASD and mild intellectual disability; mutations in SHANK3 were present in 0.69% of patients with ASD and up to 2.12% of the cases with moderate to profound intellectual disability. In summary, mutations of the SHANK genes were detected in the whole spectrum of autism with a gradient of severity in cognitive impairment. Given the rare frequency of SHANK1 and SHANK2 deleterious mutations, the clinical relevance of these genes remains to be ascertained. In contrast, the frequency and the penetrance of SHANK3 mutations in individuals with ASD and intellectual disability-more than 1 in 50-warrant its consideration for mutation screening in clinical practice