Message from the General Chairs

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Motivating smokers at outdoor public smoking hotspots to have a quit attempt with a nicotine replacement therapy sample: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

© 2016 Cheung et al.Background: About half of the daily smokers in Hong Kong have never tried and have no intention to quit smoking. More than one-third (37.9 %) of daily smokers have attempted to quit but failed. Nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) is a safe and effective pharmacotherapy to increase abstinence by reducing withdrawal symptoms during the early stage of smoking abstinence. However, the prevalence of NRT use in Hong Kong is lower than in most developed countries. The proposed study aims to assess the effectiveness of providing free NRT samples to smokers on increasing quit attempts and the quit rate. Methods: Trained university undergraduate students as ambassadors will invite smokers at outdoor public smoking hotspots to participate in the randomized controlled trial, in which eligible smokers will be randomized to receive a 1-week free NRT sample and medication counselling (intervention) or advice to purchase NRT on their own (control). The primary outcome is self-reported quit attempts (no smoking for at least 24 hours) in the past 30 days at 1-month and 3-month telephone follow-up. Discussion: The findings will inform the effectiveness of delivering free NRT samples at outdoor public smoking hotspots to increase quit attempts and abstinence. The study will also provide information on smokers' adherence to the NRT sample, side effects and safety issues related to the usage. This will improve the design of a large trial to test the effect of the NRT sample. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02491086. Registered on 7 July 2015.published_or_final_versio

Marital satisfaction among Hong Kong couples

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Treatment of dural sinus thrombosis with low-molecular-weight heparin

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Marital satisfaction among Hong Kong couples

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Amelioration of soils contaminated with radionuclides:Exploiting biodiversity to minimise or maximise soilto plant transfer

Objective: Computed Tomography (CT) is the leading contributor to medical exposure to ionizing radiation. Although the use of CT brain scans for patients with head injuries and convulsions has shown a tremendous growth, it has raised substantial concerns in the general public because of the risk of radiation-induced cataracts: the current available strategies to reduce the radiation dose to the eye lens region are limited. Therefore, the present research project was initiated with the aim of evaluating the potential benefit of the combined use of bolus and a bismuth shield on reducing the radiation dose to the eye lens region during CT brain examination.Materials and methods: We conducted a series of phantom studies to measure the entrance surface dose (ESD) that is delivered to the eye lens region during CT brain examination under the effect of different scanning and shielding setups.Results: Our results indicated, during CT brain examination: (1) a drastic reduction of 92.5% in the ESD to the eye lens region was found when the CT gantry was tilted from 0 degrees (overall ESD = 30.7 mGy) to 30 degrees cranially (overall ESD = 2.4 mGy), and (2) when the CT gantry was positioned at 0 degrees (the common practice in the clinical setting), the setups with the application of a) a bismuth shield, b) a bismuth shield with a face shield (air gap), c) a bismuth shield with bolus, and d) a bismuth shield with bolus and an air gap can result in an acceptable level of image quality with a smaller overall ESD delivered to the eye lens region (overall ESD = 23.2 mGy, 24 mGy, 21 mGy and 19.9 mGy, respectively) than the setup without the bismuth shield applied (overall ESD = 30.7 mGy).Conclusion: When the primary beam scanning through the eye lens region is unavoidable during CT brain examination, the combined use of a bismuth shield with bolus and a face shield is an easy-to-use and inexpensive shielding setup to reduce the radiation dose delivered to the eye lens region while maintaining the correct CT number and a low degree of image noise in the resultant image.Department of Health Technology and Informatic

Influence of dietary pattern on the development of overweight in a Chinese population

Objective: To examine dietary factors predisposing to overweight and obesity, taking into account age, gender, education level and physical activity. Design: Longitudinal population study. Setting: Community living subjects in Hong Kong. Subjects: One thousand and ten Chinese subjects participating in a territory wide dietary and cardiovascular risk factor prevalence survey in 1995-1996 were followed up for 5-9 years. Measurements: Body mass index (BMI) was measured. Information was collected on factors predisposing to development of overweight and obesity (age, gender, education level, physical activity, macronutrient intake, Mediterranean diet score and food variety), and the predisposing dietary factors examined, adjusted for other confounding factors, using logistic regression. Results: The 5-9-year incidence of overweight is 22.6% (BMI ≥ 23 kg/ m 2, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 15.0-30.1%) or 11.5% (BMI ≥ 25 kg/m 2, 95% CI = 7.3-15.7%), and for obesity (BMI ≥ 30 kg/m 2) is 0.6% (95% CI = -0.2-1.4%). The corresponding figures for women were 14.1% (95% CI = 8.8-19.5%), 9.7% (95% CI = 6.0-13.4%) and 3% (95% CI = 1.3-4.8%). After adjusting for confounding factors (age, sex, education and physical activity), increased variety of snack consumption was associated with increased risk of developing overweight (BMI ≥ 23 kg/m 2) in the Hong Kong Chinese population over a 5-9-year period. Conclusion: Increased variety of snack consumption may predispose to weight gain over a 5-9-year period.postprin

Effectiveness of smoking reduction intervention for hardcore smokers

© 2015 Lam et al.; licensee BioMed Central.Background: The prevalence and correlates of hardcore smokers, who have high daily cigarette consumption, no quitting history and no intention to quit, have been studied in several western developed countries, but no previous trials of smoking cessation have tested intervention effectiveness for these smokers. The current study examined if hardcore smokers can benefit from smoking reduction intervention to achieve cessation, and explored the underlying reasons. Methods: A posteriori analysis was conducted on data from a randomized controlled trial of smoking reduction intervention on 1,154 smokers who did not want to quit. Odds ratios of 7-day point prevalence of abstinence, smoking reduction by at least 50% and quit attempt at the 6-month follow-up comparing subgroups of smokers were analyzed. Results: In hardcore smokers, the odds ratio comparing the quit rate between the intervention and control group was 4.18 (95% CI: 0.51-34.65), which was greater than non-hardcore smokers (OR = 1.58, 95% CI: 0.98-2.54). The number needed to treat for hardcore and non-hardcore smokers was 8.33 (95% CI: 5.56-16.67) and 16.67 (95% CI: 8.33-233.64), respectively. In smokers who did not have quit attempt experience and those who smoked more than 15 cigarettes daily, the odds ratio comparing intervention and control group was 3.29 (95% CI: 0.72-14.98) and 1.36 (95% CI: 0.78-2.36), respectively. Conclusions: The a posteriori analysis provided pilot results that smoking reduction intervention may be effective to help hardcore smokers to quit and reduce smoking. Having no previous quit attempt was identified as more important than having large cigarette consumption in explaining the greater effectiveness of the intervention.published_or_final_versio

Increasing prevalence of hypertension in Hong Kong Cardiovascular Risk Factor Prevalence Study: role of general and central obesity

Introduction: General obesity and central obesity are well-known risk factors of hypertension. We investigated the change in the prevalence of hypertension in the population-based prospective Hong Kong Cardiovascular Risk Factor Prevalence Study (CRISPS) and the relationship of change in blood pressure with change in body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference over a follow-up period of 11.9 years. Methods: A total of 2888, 1942 and 1798 subjects in CRISPS-1 (1995-1996), CRISPS-2 (2000-2004) and CRISPS-3 (2005-2008) were included in this analysis respectively. Hypertension was defined as blood pressure ≥140/90 mm Hg or taking anti-hypertensive medication. General obesity was defined as BMI ≥27.5 kg/m2 and central obesity was defined as waist circumference ≥90 cm in men or ≥80 cm in women. Results: The prevalence of hypertension increased from 18.1% to 39.4% (P<0.001 after adjusting for age and sex). The prevalence of central obesity increased from 25.4% to 41.4%, but that of general obesity decreased from 16.8% to 14.8% (both P<0.001 after adjusting for age and sex). Among 1347 subjects who did not take any anti-hypertensive medication at both CRISPS-1 and CRISPS-3, the change in waist circumference, but not that in BMI, was associated with the changes in both systolic and diastolic blood pressures (beta=0.087, P=0.015 and beta=0.122, P<0.001 respectively). Conclusions: The increase in prevalence of hypertension might be explained by the increase in central obesity. Our findings further confirm the importance of waist circumference in this population; calculating the BMI alone may give a false sense of security. Acknowledgement: This study was funded by Hong Kong Research Grant Council grants (HKU7229/01M and HKU7626/07M) and the Sun Chieh Yeh Heart Foundation.published_or_final_versio

Association of genetic variants in gene encoding lipocalin-2 with plasma alanine aminotransferase and aspartate aminotransferase

published_or_final_versionThe 16th Annual Research Conference of the Department of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 22 January 2011. In Hong Kong Medical Journal, 2011, v. 17, suppl. 1, p. 17, abstract no. 1