Use of an Inner-city Well-baby Clinic

This prospective, longitudinal investigation examined factors that influenced the use of well-baby services among a low-income, minority, high-risk group. The health belief model was used as the theoretical framework. Data were collected from 44 primiparous, black mothers attending an urban maternal child health care clinic by interviews at the first and sixth months after the birth of their infants. Analysis focused on the cues component of the model and explored the kinds of cues that influenced the mothers to bring their babies to the well-baby clinic. One important finding was that for mothers influenced by health information from radio or television, FYI commercials on television were most often reported.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/72805/1/j.1525-1446.1987.tb00535.x.pd

Immune targets for therapeutic development in depression: towards precision medicine.

Over the past two decades, compelling evidence has emerged indicating that immune mechanisms can contribute to the pathogenesis of major depressive disorder (MDD) and that drugs with primary immune targets can improve depressive symptoms. Patients with MDD are heterogeneous with respect to symptoms, treatment responses and biological correlates. Defining a narrower patient group based on biology could increase the treatment response rates in certain subgroups: a major advance in clinical psychiatry. For example, patients with MDD and elevated pro-inflammatory biomarkers are less likely to respond to conventional antidepressant drugs, but novel immune-based therapeutics could potentially address their unmet clinical needs. This article outlines a framework for developing drugs targeting a novel patient subtype within MDD and reviews the current state of neuroimmune drug development for mood disorders. We discuss evidence for a causal role of immune mechanisms in the pathogenesis of depression, together with targets under investigation in randomized controlled trials, biomarker evidence elucidating the link to neural mechanisms, biological and phenotypic patient selection strategies, and the unmet clinical need among patients with MDD.Johnson and Johnso

[DDB2-associated incidence of squamous cell carcinoma in Haflingers: risk minimization by genotyping].

SCC (squamous cell carinomas) are among the most common eye neoplasms in horses. In recent studies Haflinger horses with a homozygous genotype for a missense variant in the DDB2 gene (damage specific DNA binding protein 2) had a significant increased risk of developing ocular SCC. The aims of this study were to determine the frequency of the SCC-associated risk allele in the DDB2 gene in Swiss and Austrian Haflinger populations and to validate the previously described phenotypic correlation. For this purpose, Haflingers presented at various horse clinics in Switzerland (n = 21, including 11 SCC cases), privately kept Haflingers (n = 52, including 1 SCC case), and Haflingers from a stud farm in the Austrian Tyrol (n = 53) were recruited. The individual DDB2 genotype of the animals was determined using a polymerase chain ceaction (PCR) test using hair follicle or whole blood samples. Of the 12 horses suffering from SCC, nine had ocular SCC and three had non-ocular SCC. Six of the nine Haflingers with ocular SCC and one of the three Haflingers with non-ocular SCC were homozygous for the DDB2 variant. Of the 113 clinically normal animals, 7/113 were homozygous (6 %) and 42/113 were heterozygous (37 %), which corresponds to an allele frequency of 24,8 % in the control cohort. The risk of ocular SCC occurring in Haflingers is significantly increased with the homozygous DDB2 genotype. However, not all animals with SCC carry this gene variant and not all DDB2 homozygous animals develop SCC, which can be explained by the multifactorial genesis of the disease. Due to the high frequency of the undesirable allele, we recommend taking the individual DDB2 genotype of breeding animals into account in order to avoid homozygous offspring with a greatly increased SCC risk by excluding high-risk matings

Eccrine porocarcinoma of the head: An important differential diagnosis in the elderly patient

Background: Eccrine porocarcinoma is a rare malignant tumor of the sweat gland, characterized by a broad spectrum of clinicopathologic presentations. Surprisingly, unlike its benign counterpart eccrine poroma, eccrine porocarcinoma is seldom found in areas with a high density of eccrine sweat glands, like the palms or soles. Instead, eccrine porocarcinoma frequently occurs on the lower extremities, trunk and abdomen, but also on the head, resembling various other skin tumors, as illustrated in the patients described herein. Observations: We report 5 cases of eccrine porocarcinoma of the head. All patients were initially diagnosed as having epidermal or melanocytic skin tumors. Only after histopathologic examination were they classified as eccrine porocarcinoma, showing features of epithelial tumors with abortive ductal differentiation. Characteristic clinical, histopathologic and immunohistochemical findings of eccrine porocarcinomas are illustrated. Conclusion: Eccrine porocarcinomas are potentially fatal adnexal malignancies, in which extensive metastatic dissemination may occur. Porocarcinomas are commonly overlooked, or misinterpreted as squamous or basal cell carcinomas as well as other common malignant and even benign skin tumors. Knowledge of the clinical pattern and histologic findings, therefore, is crucial for an early therapeutic intervention, which can reduce the risk of tumor recurrence and serious complications. Copyright (c) 2008 S. Karger AG, Basel

Parameter estimation in spatially extended systems: The Karhunen-Loeve and Galerkin multiple shooting approach

Parameter estimation for spatiotemporal dynamics for coupled map lattices and continuous time domain systems is shown using a combination of multiple shooting, Karhunen-Loeve decomposition and Galerkin's projection methodologies. The resulting advantages in estimating parameters have been studied and discussed for chaotic and turbulent dynamics using small amounts of data from subsystems, availability of only scalar and noisy time series data, effects of space-time parameter variations, and in the presence of multiple time-scales.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, 4 Tables Corresponding Author - V. Ravi Kumar, e-mail address: [email protected]

The effect of videokeratoscope faceplate design on radius of curvature maps

A computer model using finite ray tracing methods was developed to simulate a videokeratoscope analysing an average cornea. Different faceplate designs were tested using five points in the faceplate subtending angles between 15 and 75 in 15 intervals at the corneal vertex. Image quality was assessed by adding the geometrical blurs of the 5 image points. Differences (error) between accurate sagittal radius of curvature and sagittal radius of curvature calculated by the van Saarloos algorithm were calculated for selected surfaces at the same corneal points. The calculations were repeated for the tangential radius of curvature. Differences equal or bigger than 0.02 mm were regarded as clinically significant. The surface that provided the sharpest image for an average cornea was a cylinder with the base 120 mm away from the corneal vertex and a diameter of 26 mm. Changing the faceplate design results in clinically significant differences for an average cornea

A practical tool for assessing ecosystem services enhancement and degradation associated with invasive alien species

Current approaches for assessing the effects of invasive alien species (IAS) are biased toward the negative effects of these species, resulting in an incomplete picture of their real effects. This can result in an inefficient IAS management. We address this issue by describing the INvasive Species Effects Assessment Tool (INSEAT) that enables expert elicitation for rapidly assessing the ecological consequences of IAS using the ecosystem services (ES) framework. INSEAT scores the ecosystem service “gains and losses” using a scale that accounted for the magnitude and the reversibility of its effects. We tested INSEAT on 18 IAS in Great Britain. Here, we highlighted four case studies: Harmonia axyridis (Harlequin ladybird), Astacus leptodactylus (Turkish crayfish), Pacifastacus leniusculus (Signal crayfish) and Impatiens glandulifera (Himalayan balsam). The results demonstrated that a collation of different experts’ opinions using INSEAT could yield valuable information on the invasive aliens’ ecological and social effects. The users can identify certain IAS as ES providers and the trade-offs between the ES provision and loss associated with them. This practical tool can be useful for evidence-based policy and management decisions that consider the potential role of invasive species in delivering human well-being.</p

Long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the quality of life of people with dementia and their family carers

\ua9 The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Geriatrics Society. INTRODUCTION: Few studies have longitudinally mapped quality of life (QoL) trajectories of newly diagnosed people with dementia and their carers, particularly during coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19). METHODS: In a UK cohort study, 261 newly diagnosed people with dementia and 206 family carers were assessed prior to the pandemic (July 2019-March 2020), followed up after the first lockdown (July-October 2020) and then again a year and 2 years later. Latent growth curve modelling examined the level and change of QoL over the four time-points using dementia-specific QoL measures (DEMQOL and C-DEMQOL). RESULTS: Despite variations in individual change scores, our results suggest that generally people with dementia maintained their QoL during the pandemic and experienced some increase towards the end of the period. This contrasted with carers who reported a general deterioration in their QoL over the same period. \u27Confidence in future\u27 and \u27Feeling supported\u27 were the only carer QoL subscales to show some recovery post-pandemic. DISCUSSION: It is positive that even during a period of global disruption, decline in QoL is not inevitable following the onset of dementia. However, it is of concern that carer QoL declined during this same period even after COVID-19 restrictions had been lifted. Carers play an invaluable role in the lives of people with dementia and wider society, and our findings suggest that, post-pandemic, they may require greater support to maintain their QoL