Cultural Adaptation and Reliability of the Compliance with Standard Precautions Scale (CSPS) for Nurses in Brazil

ABSTRACT Objective: this study aimed to carry of the cultural adaptation and to evaluate the reliability of the Compliance with Standard Precautions Scale (CSPS) for nurses in Brazil. Method: the adaptation process entailed translation, consensus among judges, back-translation, semantic validation and pretest. The reliability was evaluated by internal consistency (Cronbach alpha) and stability (test-retest). The instrument was administered to a sample group of 300 nurses who worked in a large hospital located in the city of São Paulo/SP, Brazil. Results: through the semantic validation, the items from the scale were considered understandable and deemed important for the nurse´s clinical practice. The CSPS Brazilian Portuguese version (CSPS-PB) revealed excellent interpretability. The Cronbach`s alpha was 0.61 and the intraclass correlation coefficient was 0.85. Conclusion: the initial study showed that CSPS-PB is appropriate to assess compliance with standard precautions among nurses in Brazil. The reliability was considered acceptable. Furhter study is necessary to evaluate its comprehensive psychometric properties

Trends in Notifiable Infectious Diseases in China: Implications for Surveillance and Population Health Policy

This study aimed to analyse trends in notifiable infectious diseases in China, in their historical context. Both English and Chinese literature was searched and diseases were categorised according to the type of disease or transmission route. Temporal trends of morbidity and mortality rates were calculated for eight major infectious diseases types. Strong government commitment to public health responses and improvements in quality of life has led to the eradication or containment of a wide range of infectious diseases in China. The overall infectious diseases burden experienced a dramatic drop during 1975–1995, but since then, it reverted and maintained a gradual upward trend to date. Most notifiable diseases are contained at a low endemic level; however, local small-scale outbreaks remain common. Tuberculosis, as a bacterial infection, has re-emerged since the 1990s and has become prevalent in the country. Sexually transmitted infections are in a rapid, exponential growth phase, spreading from core groups to the general population. Together human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), they account for 39% of all death cases due to infectious diseases in China in 2008. Zoonotic infections, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), rabies and influenza, pose constant threats to Chinese residents and remain the most deadly disease type among the infected individuals. Therefore, second-generation surveillance of behavioural risks or vectors associated with pathogen transmission should be scaled up. It is necessary to implement public health interventions that target HIV and relevant coinfections, address transmission associated with highly mobile populations, and reduce the risk of cross-species transmission of zoonotic pathogens

A systematic review of grandparents’ influence on grandchildren’s cancer risk factors

Many lifestyle patterns are established when children are young. Research has focused on the potential role of parents as a risk factor for non communicable disease in children, but there is limited investigation of the role of other caregivers, such as grandparents. The aim of this review was to identify and synthesise evidence for any influence grandparents’ care practices may have on their grandchildren’s long term cancer risk factors. A systematic review was carried out with searches across four databases (MEDLINE, Embase, Web of Science, PsycINFO) as well as searches of reference lists and citing articles, and Google Scholar. Search terms were based on six areas of risk that family care could potentially influence–weight, diet, physical activity, tobacco, alcohol and sun exposure. All study designs were included, as were studies that provided an indication of the interaction of grandparents with their grandchildren. Studies were excluded if grandparents were primary caregivers and if children had serious health conditions. Study quality was assessed using National Institute for Health and Care Excellence checklists. Grandparent impact was categorised as beneficial, adverse, mixed or as having no impact. Due to study heterogeneity a meta-analysis was not possible. Qualitative studies underwent a thematic synthesis of their results. Results from all included studies indicated that there was a sufficient evidence base for weight, diet, physical activity and tobacco studies to draw conclusions about grandparents’ influence. One study examined alcohol and no studies examined sun exposure. Evidence indicated that, overall, grandparents had an adverse impact on their grandchildren’s cancer risk factors. The theoretical work in the included studies was limited. Theoretically underpinned interventions designed to reduce these risk factors must consider grandparents’ role, as well as parents’, and be evaluated robustly to inform the evidence base further

Molecular mechanisms of cell death: recommendations of the Nomenclature Committee on Cell Death 2018.

Over the past decade, the Nomenclature Committee on Cell Death (NCCD) has formulated guidelines for the definition and interpretation of cell death from morphological, biochemical, and functional perspectives. Since the field continues to expand and novel mechanisms that orchestrate multiple cell death pathways are unveiled, we propose an updated classification of cell death subroutines focusing on mechanistic and essential (as opposed to correlative and dispensable) aspects of the process. As we provide molecularly oriented definitions of terms including intrinsic apoptosis, extrinsic apoptosis, mitochondrial permeability transition (MPT)-driven necrosis, necroptosis, ferroptosis, pyroptosis, parthanatos, entotic cell death, NETotic cell death, lysosome-dependent cell death, autophagy-dependent cell death, immunogenic cell death, cellular senescence, and mitotic catastrophe, we discuss the utility of neologisms that refer to highly specialized instances of these processes. The mission of the NCCD is to provide a widely accepted nomenclature on cell death in support of the continued development of the field

Solution crystallization kinetics of 6-aminopenicillanic acid

Semisynthetic penicillins, derived from 6-aminopenicillanic acid (APA), constitute an important group of antibiotics. APA is produced by enzymatic hydrolysis of penicillin G (PenG). This study concerns the determination of the crystallization kinetics of APA in the presence of other components that may be present after the PenG hydrolysis, i.e., remaining PenG and the byproduct phenylacetic acid. This evaluation is based on the analyses of growth rate and crystal size distribution, at pH 4 and 5. The results show that the impurities have no significant influence on the APA crystallization, within the range of pH and impurity concentrations evaluated. A mathematical model, based on the population balance, gives a good prediction of the crystallization rate and crystal size distribution with a single set of parameters.45206740674

Magnetic Resonance Elastography with Twin Pneumatic Drivers for Wave Compensation

MR Elastography is a new technique using conventional MRI system to assess the elastic properties of tissues. When using pneumatic driver, usually one driver was put at one place of tissue. But the shear wave generated by one pneumatic driver cannot illuminate the large area due to the attenuation. So we use two pneumatic drivers driven synchronously to generate interference shear wave in our experiments. The results from the phantom study show the interference wave pattern generated by the twin pneumatic drivers can compensate the attenuation of the shear wave when propagating in phantom. Also, a finite element modeling was used to simulate twin pneumatic driver datasets. It is hoped that by twin pneumatic drivers, we can illuminate the whole brain; the liver and large areas in-vivo. Further study will be conducted with the twin pneumatic drivers in ex-vivo and invivo studies. © 2007 IEEE.link_to_subscribed_fulltex

Self-reported Oral Health and Quality of Life: A Latent Growth Curve Analysis

Background: The longitudinal associations between oral health (OH) and physical and mental health-related quality of life (HRQoL) are unclear. Purpose: This study examined the relationship of self-reported OH with the trajectories of physical and mental HRQoL in Hong Kong at 3, 9, and 15 months after the measurement period using a latent growth curve model. Methods: This study included 5,710 participants recruited in the FAMILY project cohort study during March-October 2009. Self-report OH was measured using a five-point single-item scale, and HRQoL was measured using the physical component scale (PCS) and mental component scale (MCS) of Short Form 12. Latent growth curve model was used to compute the relationship of self-reported OH with the trajectories on HRQoL over time, adjusted for age and sex. Results: The latent growth curve model gave good fit to both the PCS (normed fit index (NFI)=0.98, comparative fit index (CFI)=0.99, and standardized root mean square residual (SRMR)=0.03) and MCS (NFI=0.97, CFI=0.98, and SRMR=0.03). Better self-reported OH was associated with higher PCS and MCS at the baseline. The longitudinal association with PCS remained constant over time (coefficient=-0.02, p=0.07) but that with MCS diminished over time with baseline oral health status (coefficient=-0.04, p=0.002). Conclusion: Better self-reported OH status was associated with higher level of physical and mental HRQoL, and with negative change in mental HRQoL