Smoking and health-related quality of life in English general population: Implications for economic evaluations

Copyright @ 2012 Vogl et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Background: Little is known as to how health-related quality of life (HRQoL) when measured by generic instruments such as EQ-5D differ across smokers, ex-smokers and never-smokers in the general population; whether the overall pattern of this difference remain consistent in each domain of HRQoL; and what implications this variation, if any, would have for economic evaluations of tobacco control interventions. Methods: Using the 2006 round of Health Survey for England data (n = 13,241), this paper aims to examine the impact of smoking status on health-related quality of life in English population. Depending upon the nature of the EQ-5D data (i.e. tariff or domains), linear or logistic regression models were fitted to control for biology, clinical conditions, socio-economic background and lifestyle factors that an individual may have regardless of their smoking status. Age- and gender-specific predicted values according to smoking status are offered as the potential 'utility' values to be used in future economic evaluation models. Results: The observed difference of 0.1100 in EQ-5D scores between never-smokers (0.8839) and heavy-smokers (0.7739) reduced to 0.0516 after adjusting for biological, clinical, lifestyle and socioeconomic conditions. Heavy-smokers, when compared with never-smokers, were significantly more likely to report some/severe problems in all five domains - mobility (67%), self-care (70%), usual activity (42%), pain/discomfort (46%) and anxiety/depression (86%) -. 'Utility' values by age and gender for each category of smoking are provided to be used in the future economic evaluations. Conclusion: Smoking is significantly and negatively associated with health-related quality of life in English general population and the magnitude of this association is determined by the number of cigarettes smoked. The varying degree of this association, captured through instruments such as EQ-5D, may need to be fed into the design of future economic evaluations where the intervention being evaluated affects (e.g. tobacco control) or is affected (e.g. treatment for lung cancer) by individual's (or patients') smoking status

Induction of vasculogenesis in breast cancer models

Recently, there have been reports of postnatal vasculogenesis in cases of ischaemia models. The aim of the present study is to provide evidence of postnatal vasculogenesis in breast-cancer–bearing mice. Based on cell surface antigen expression, we isolated endothelial precursor cells from bone marrow, peripheral blood and tumour-infiltrating cells from mice that had received six human breast cancer xenografts. In all three areas (bone marrow, peripheral blood and tumour-infiltrating cells), endothelial precursor cell population was elevated in all transplanted mice. Differentiation and migration activities of endothelial precursor cells were measured by comparing levels of the endothelial precursor cell maturation markers Flk-1, Flt-1, Tie2, VE-cadherin and CD31 among these three areas. The endothelial precursor cell population was 14% or greater in the gated lymphocyte-size fraction of the inflammatory breast cancer xenograft named WIBC-9, which exhibits a hypervascular structure and de novo formation of vascular channels, namely vasculogenic mimicry (Shirakawa et al, 2001). In vitro, bone marrow-derived endothelial precursor cells from four human breast cancer xenografts proliferated and formed multiple clusters of spindle-shaped attaching cells on a vitronectin-coated dish. The attaching cells, which incorporated DiI-labelled acetylated low-density lipoprotein (DiI-acLDL) and were negative for Mac-1. The putative bone marrow derived endothelial precursor cell subset, which was double positive of CD34 and Flk-1, and comparative bone marrow derived CD34 positive with Flk-1 negative subset were cultured. The former subset incorporated DiI-acLDL and were integrated with HUVECs. Furthermore, they demonstrated significantly higher levels of murine vascular endothelial growth factor and interleukin-8 in culture supernatant on time course by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. These findings constitute direct evidence that breast cancer induces postnatal vasculogenesis in vivo

Effects of Triazole Derivatives on Strigolactone Levels and Growth Retardation in Rice

We previously discovered a lead compound for strigolactone (SL) biosynthesis inhibitors, TIS13 (2,2-dimethyl-7-phenoxy-4-(1H-1,2,4-triazol-1-yl)heptan-3-ol). Here, we carried out a structure-activity relationship study of TIS13 to discover more potent and specific SL biosynthesis inhibitor because TIS13 has a severe side effect at high concentrations, including retardation of the growth of rice seedlings. TIS108, a new TIS13 derivative, was found to be a more specific SL biosynthesis inhibitor than TIS13. Treatment of rice seedlings with TIS108 reduced SL levels in both roots and root exudates in a concentration-dependent manner and did not reduce plant height. In addition, root exudates of TIS108-treated rice seedlings stimulated Striga germination less than those of control plants. These results suggest that TIS108 has a potential to be applied in the control of root parasitic weeds germination

Conversion of Iodide to Hypoiodous Acid and Iodine in Aqueous Microdroplets Exposed to Ozone

Halides are incorporated into aerosol sea spray, where they start the catalytic destruction of ozone (O3) over the oceans and affect the global troposphere. Two intriguing environmental problems undergoing continuous research are (1) to understand how reactive gas phase molecular halogens are directly produced from inorganic halides exposed to O3 and (2) to constrain the environmental factors that control this interfacial process. This paper presents a laboratory study of the reaction of O3 at variable iodide (I–) concentration (0.010–100 μM) for solutions aerosolized at 25 °C, which reveal remarkable differences in the reaction intermediates and products expected in sea spray for low tropospheric [O3]. The ultrafast oxidation of I– by O3 at the air–water interface of microdroplets is evidenced by the appearance of hypoiodous acid (HIO), iodite (IO2–), iodate (IO3–), triiodide (I3–), and molecular iodine (I2). Mass spectrometry measurements reveal an enhancement (up to 28%) in the dissolution of gaseous O3 at the gas–liquid interface when increasing the concentration of NaI or NaBr from 0.010 to 100 μM. The production of iodine species such as HIO and I2 from NaI aerosolized solutions exposed to 50 ppbv O3 can occur at the air–water interface of sea spray, followed by their transfer to the gas-phase, where they contribute to the loss of tropospheric ozone

Generation and Characterization of Conditional Heparin-Binding EGF-Like Growth Factor Knockout Mice

Recently, neurotrophic factors and cytokines have been shown to be associated in psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression. Heparin-binding epidermal growth factor-like growth factor (HB-EGF) is a member of the EGF family, serves as a neurotrophic molecular and plays a significant role in the brain. We generated mice in which HB-EGF activity is disrupted specifically in the ventral forebrain. These knockout mice showed (a) behavioral abnormalities similar to those described in psychiatric disorders, which were ameliorated by typical or atypical antipsychotics, (b) altered dopamine and serotonin levels in the brain, (c) decreases in spine density in neurons of the prefrontal cortex, (d) reductions in the protein levels of the NR1 subunit of the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor and post-synaptic protein-95 (PSD-95), (e) decreases in the EGF receptor, and in the calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMK II) signal cascade. These results suggest the alterations affecting HB-EGF signaling could comprise a contributing factor in psychiatric disorder

Particle tracking for polydisperse sedimenting droplets in phase separation

When a binary fluid demixes under a slow temperature ramp, nucleation, coarsening and sedimentation of droplets lead to an oscillatory evolution of the phase separating system. The advection of the sedimenting droplets is found to be chaotic. The flow is driven by density differences between the two phases. Here, we show how image processing can be combined with particle tracking to resolve droplet size and velocity simultaneously. Droplets are used as tracer particles, and the sedimentation velocity is determined. Taking these effects into account, droplets with radii in the range of 4 -- 40 micrometers are detected and tracked. Based on this data we resolve the oscillations in the droplet size distribution which are coupled to the convective flow.Comment: 13 pages; 16 figures including 3 photographs and 3 false-color plot