SUMMARY: Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a chronic inflammatory skin disease with a large impact on quality of life of the patients and their families. In most cases, the diagnosis of AD can easily be made based on (family) history and clinical examination. If necessary, a practical set of diagnostic criteria ...

Lymph node staging provides critical information in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Lymphangiogenesis may be an important contributor to the pathophysiology of lymphatic metastases. We hypothesized that the presence of lymph node micrometastases positively correlates with vascular endothelial growth factors (VEGFs) A, C, and D as well as ...

Food allergies have become a significant medical and legal concern for children worldwide, as there is a rising incidence of potentially fatal hypersensitivity reactions. The most common foods implicated include cow milk, wheat, egg, soy, peanut, tree nuts such as walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds, cashews, pecans, and pistachios, fish and shellfish. ...

Using evidence-based strategies within U.S. local health departments (LHDs) to provide community services can increase the likelihood of success and efficient use of resources. Dissemination of such strategies, a necessary precursor to implementation, occurs through networks of relationships and can be facilitated by weak network ties, whereas implementation is associated ...

Over the last 30 years there has been a massive change in both the clinical and pathologic aspects of malignant lymphomas. Pathologists are now able to evaluate cellular phenotypes and lineages of tumor cells using a wide variety of biomarkers and molecular techniques. The ability to identify tumor cell phenotypes ...

Previous research has shown that gastric acid suppression by antacid drugs can promote allergic reactions to acid-labile food proteins. No data are available about whether antacid drugs can promote drug hypersensitivity reactions. The most potent and longer lasting inhibition of gastric secretion is provided by proton pump inhibitors (PPIs). We ...

The purpose of this pilot project was to determine first-time expectant parents' perceptions of a parent education intervention, their education needs, and preferred sources and modes of such education. The intervention was carried out during the last class of a public health prenatal education series. A total of 31 first-time ...

Recent studies with genetic deletion of P2Y1 receptor (P2Y1-/-) have clinched its role in enteric purinergic inhibitory neurotransmission and suggested that β-NAD may be the purinergic inhibitory neurotransmitter in the colon. In this issue of the Journal, Gil and colleagues extend their earlier observations to the cecum and gastric antrum, ...

Systematic reviews of public health interventions are useful for identifying effective strategies for informing policy and practice. The goals of this review were to (1) update a previous systematic review of physical activity interventions in Latin America which found that only school-based physical education had sufficient evidence to recommend widespread ...

Despite its long history, the renin-angiotensin system remains an active area of research. New components and interactions between novel and established components continue to be discovered. These developments are providing fresh insight into the role of the renin-angiotensin system in cardiovascular health and disease and new therapeutic targets for the ...

Obesity has become a major health and economic problem with increasing prevalence. Unfortunately, no country can act as public health exemplar for reduction of obesity. The finding of associations between sedentary behaviors and obesity, independent of the level of physical activity, may offer new insights to prevent this burdensome problem. ...

The early 1990s saw the first clinical testing of several therapeutic cancer vaccines. There was great optimism that these vaccines could be used as an alternative therapy for patients who had failed to respond to conventional cancer therapies. This article provides a personal perspective on the cancer vaccine field after ...

Oral supplementation with probiotic bacteria can protect against the development of allergic and inflammatory diseases. The aim of this study was to investigate potential immunomodulatory and allergy-protective effects of processed Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG (LGG)-derived supernatants early in life in neonatal mice. In vitro, RAW264.7 mouse macrophages were stimulated with viable ...

This feature looks at changing the format of a well-established information skills session for first-year biochemistry students at UCL, to improve its design, delivery and the overall learning experience for the students. After reviewing current literature, active learning methods were explored and an idea of a research-based quiz based on ...

To clarify the perioperative and oncologic outcome of pulmonary resection for a metachronous second primary lung cancer (MSPLC) following resection of an initial non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Retrospective chart review identified 161 patients (88 men and 73 women) with a median age of 70 years (range, 34-88 years) who ...

ABSTRACT: Traumatic injury ranks as the number one cause of death for the younger than 44 years age group and fifth leading cause of death overall (www.nationaltraumainstitute.org/home/trauma_statistics.html). Although improved resuscitation of trauma patients has dramatically reduced immediate mortality from hemorrhagic shock, long-term morbidity and mortality continue to be unacceptably high ...

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is increasing in young patients. We aimed to assess the trends of CRC and its corresponding clinical presentation in the young. Cancer registry patients were divided into 3 groups according to age:<50, 50-75, and >75 years. Charts were reviewed for average-risk patients <50 years of age to assess ...

Several efforts are under way to conduct quality-improvement initiatives in pediatric cardiology and cardiac surgery. Our goal was to develop an objective prioritization scheme for such initiatives based on encounter frequency and relative contribution of quality measures of morbidity (and associated variances), particularly in the setting of low mortality. We ...

Two decades after the discovery that 20% of familial amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) cases were linked to mutations in the superoxide dismutase-1 (SOD1) gene, a substantial proportion of the remainder of cases of familial ALS have now been traced to an expansion of the intronic hexanucleotide repeat sequence in C9orf72. ...

Although infection may be suggested by signs and symptoms such as fever, pain, general malaise, and abnormal laboratory results, imaging tests often are used to confirm its presence. Morphologic imaging tests identify structural alterations of tissues or organs that result from a combination of microbial invasion and the inflammatory response ...

Various radiopharmaceuticals are available for imaging pediatric patients in an acute care setting. This article focuses on the common applications used on a pediatric patient in acute care. To confirm the clinical diagnosis of brain death, brain scintigraphy is considered accurate and has been favorably compared with other methods of ...

From 1992 to 1999, an average of more than 18,000 unintentional home injury deaths occurred in the U.S. annually. The objective of this study was to provide current prevalence estimates of fatal unintentional injury in the home. Data from the 2000-2008 National Vital Statistics System were used in 2011 to ...

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death worldwide and non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) is the most common type of lung carcinomas. In adenocarcinomas, the most frequent histologic type of NSCLC, dendritic cells (DCs) are localized in close contact with tumor cells, and tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) are observed ...

Few studies have focused on pollen exposure and asthma in children. None have examined associations between persistent exposure to pollen in infancy and aeroallergen sensitisation and asthma in childhood. To examine the association between higher ambient levels of pollen in the first 3-6 months of life and risk of eczema, sensitization ...

This is the 5th in a series of articles exploring international trends in health science librarianship in Latin America and the Caribbean in the first decade of the 21st century. The invited authors are from Argentina, Bermuda and Mexico. Future issues will track trends in Central Europe and the Middle ...

Change efforts in healthcare sometimes have an ambitious, whole-system remit and seek to achieve fundamental changes in norms and organisational culture rather than (or as well as) restructuring the service. Long-term evaluation of such initiatives is rarely undertaken. We report a secondary analysis of data from an evaluation of a profound institutional ...

Electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) initially emerged in 2003 and have since become widely available globally, particularly over the Internet. Data on ENDS usage patterns are limited. The current paper examines patterns of ENDS awareness, use, and product-associated beliefs among current and former smokers in four countries. Data come from ...

Plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs) infiltrate sites of acute Th2-dominant inflammation, but their role in allergic asthma remains unclear. To characterize circulating pDCs from patients with allergic asthma outside their respective allergen season. Adhesion molecules, co-stimulatory molecules, immunoglobulin receptors and chemokine receptors were quantified on blood pDCs from 20 patients with ...

Background  Psoriasis is an immune-mediated, chronic, inflammatory skin disease which affects approximately 2% of the world's population. It has a major impact on the patient's quality of life (QoL), influencing career, social activities, family relationships, and all other aspects of life. Many studies have described the various ways in which ...

Epigenetic modifications may have a role in asthma susceptibility. To investigate whether epigenetic modification at birth of a CpG site necessary for the regulation of IL-2 transcription (IL-2 Site1) is associated with the development of asthma during childhood. Methylation of IL-2 Site1 was assessed in cord blood from 303 children ...

Breast imaging is currently at a cross-road: it is evolving in a very standardized world, surrounded by recommendations, guidelines, quality control etc. Bi-Rads categorization, with a new version expected for 2013, is one very good example of those guidelines worldwide used in breast imaging. To summarize, only a few other ...

Ischemia and reperfusion injury is critical in allograft vasculopathy (AV) development. We have shown that neutrophil-mediated medial smooth muscle cell (SMC) loss precedes AV and that prolonged cold ischemia (CI) impairs medial SMC recovery and accelerates AV development. We hypothesize that neutrophils (NØs) are responsible for failed medial SMC recovery ...

In multi-level theory, individual behavior flows from cognitive habits, either directly through social referencing, rules of thumb, or automatic behaviors; or indirectly through the shaping of rationality itself by framing or heuristics. Although behavior does not arise from individually rational optimization, it generally appears to be rational, because the cognitive ...

Intestinal failure (IF) occurs when a person's functional intestinal mass is insufficient. Patients with IF are placed on parenteral nutrition (PN) while efforts are made to restore intestinal function through surgical or medical intervention. Patients who fail standard IF therapies may be candidates for intestinal transplantation (IT). Clinical outcomes for ...

The grey squirrel, Sciurus carolinensis Gmelin, was introduced into sites in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland from the United States and Canada between 1876 and 1929. Soon after its introduction there were reports of damage to trees by seasonal bark stripping activity. Surveys in state and private forests since 1954 ...

The authors report the fluorescein angiography findings in a 3-month-old patient with phacomatosis cesioflammea, which revealed venous-venous anastomoses in addition to previously undescribed features of peripheral retinal vascular nonperfusion. The authors encourage physicians to consider phacomatosis pigmentovascularis in the differential diagnosis of patients presenting with facial port-wine stain and to ...

The authors describe a case of combined full-thickness retinal and pigment epithelium macular hole that spontaneously developed in the right eye of an 86-year-old woman with age-related macular degeneration (AMD). One year prior, the patient had been diagnosed with drusenoid pigment epithelium detachment (PED) in the right eye and geographic ...

Up to now, seven viruses that infect humans have been identified as oncogenic and are closely associated with different human cancers. Most of them encode oncogenes whose products play important roles in the development of cancers in the context of environmental and genetic factors; others may act via indirect mechanisms. ...

BACKGROUND: Although several predictors of an electrical storm (ES) are indicated in patients with idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy (IDCM), whether the severity of the myocardial tissue damage (SMTD) evaluated by myocardial perfusion SPECT (MPS) has an association with an ES remains unclear. The purpose of this study was to elucidate the ...

During routine monitoring of yellow-crowned parakeets in the Poulter Valley of the South Island of New Zealand, a dead parakeet chick was discovered in a nest. Known parrot-infecting viruses, such as beak and feather disease virus (BFDV), avian polyomavirus (APV), and parrot hepatitis B virus (PHBV), were not detected in ...

The success of gene transfer has been demonstrated in many of vertebrate species, whereas the efficiency of producing transgenic animals remains pretty low due to the random integration of foreign genes into a recipient genome. The Sleeping Beauty (SB) transposon is able to improve the efficiency of gene transfer in ...

The local intestinal mucosa, the largest mucosal immune system in animals, plays an important role in resistance against intestinal pathogen infection. However, the molecular antiviral mechanisms of the intestinal mucosa remain poorly understood. In this study, we screened and identified differentially expressed transcripts in (PSV) porcine intestinal epithelial cells (IPEC-J2) ...

The authors describe the development and preliminary evaluation of the Lifestyle and Habits Questionnaire-brief version (LHQ-B). Three hundred seventy-seven undergraduate students (ages 18-25) participated. Responses were collected through either a web-based or face-to-face survey. Data reductive procedures were used with a preexisting lifestyle inventory to create an abbreviated measure. The ...

While the relationship between weather and human health has been studied from various perspectives, this study examines an alternative method of analysis by examining weather conditions on specific high-mortality days during the winter season. These high-mortality days, by definition, represent days with dramatic increases in mortality and the days with ...

The role of human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) in lung transplantation (LT) and drawbacks related to viral quantification in bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) underline the potential usefulness of investigating other specimens. Thirty-three LT recipients were prospectively studied by HCMV quantitative real time PCR on matched transbronchial biopsy (TBB), BAL, and whole blood specimens. ...

PURPOSE: To analyze neurovascular coupling in the retina of untreated primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG) and ocular hypertension (OHT) patients. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Maximal vessel dilation in response to flicker light was analyzed with Retinal Vessel Analyzer (RVA) in temporal superior/inferior arterioles and veins in 51 POAG patients, 46 OHT and ...

The purpose of this ex post facto correlational study was to compare exit examination scores and NCLEX-RN® pass rates of baccalaureate nursing students who differed in level of participation in a standardized test package. Three cohort groups emerged as a standardized test package was introduced: (a) students who did not ...

The use of a membrane contactor combined with a hydrophobic porous membrane and an amine absorbent has attracted considerable attention for the capture of CO(2) because of its extensive use, low operational costs, and low energy consumption. The hydrophobic porous membrane interface prevents the passage of the amine absorbent but ...

Dendritic cell-specific intercellular adhesion molecule-3-grabbing nonintegrin (DC-SIGN) and Langerin are C-type lectins of dendritic cells (DCs) that share a specificity for mannose and are involved in pathogen recognition. HIV is known to use DC-SIGN on DCs to facilitate transinfection of T-cells. Langerin, on the contrary, contributes to virus elimination; therefore, ...

The spectrum of cognitive symptoms in Parkinson's disease (PD) can span various domains, including executive function, language, attention, memory, and visuospatial skills. These symptoms may be attributable to the degradation of projection fibers associated with the underlying neurodegenerative process. The primary purpose of this study is to find microstructural correlates ...