The BSAC guidelines on treatment of infectious endocarditis (IE) were last published in 2004. The guidelines presented here have been updated and extended to reflect developments in diagnostics, new trial data and the availability of new antibiotics. The aim of these guidelines, which cover both native valve and prosthetic valve ...

Protecting the health of the public-particularly the most vulnerable groups, such as children-requires rethinking current approaches to reducing environmental risks. We review the evolving understanding of the relationship between exposure to chemicals in the environment and disease, as well as the current state of managing those chemicals. We present recommendations ...

OBJECTIVES: Carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning represents a significant public health burden. CO incidents require multiple responders, including the Health Protection Agency (HPA). However, best practice guidance does not yet exist in the UK for chemicals. Since CO is a good template for chemical incidents, the authors aimed to develop an ...

This essay examines the toxic legacy of American and Canadian sea disposal of mustard gas after World War II. Military ocean dumping of mustard gas and other chemical warfare material has created an enduring and global environmental and public health problem.

Despite an unprecedented number of publications on all aspects of type B aortic dissections, it remains a formidable disease with barely changed long-term survival over the last decade. In this review, the bewildering amount of information is summarized to distill some practical recommendations for the practitioner faced with one of ...

Aims  Some European countries with high levels of unrecorded alcohol consumption have anomalously high rates of death attributable to liver cirrhosis. Hepatotoxic compounds in illegally produced spirits may be partly responsible. Based on a review of the evidence on the chemical composition and potential harm from unrecorded alcohol, the Alcohol ...

The financial collapse of 2007 provides an opportunity for a cross-discipline comparison of risk assessments. Flaws in financial risk assessments bear part of the blame for the financial collapse. There may be a potential for similar flaws to be made in radiological risk assessments. Risk assessments in finance and health ...

Brucellosis is an important public health problem in the Mediterranean countries, including our country. Furthermore, because of different symptoms and clinical findings, the disease could be confused with several other diseases. In this article, three unusual findings of brucellosis are presented: pancytopenia, endocarditis and meningitis.

In 2007, the Minister of Health of the Netherlands requested the CAM (Coordination point Assessment and Monitoring new drugs) to assess the overall risk of magic mushrooms. The present paper is an updated redraft of the review, written to support the assessment by CAM experts. It summarizes the literature on ...

The European Union's 2006 Registration, Evaluation, Authorization, and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) legislation represents a new wave in regulating chemicals and has set far-reaching goals for protecting and enhancing public health, the environment, and markets. Despite substantial public debate during the development and passage of the REACH legislation, in interviews ...

Continuous exposure to many chemicals, including through air, water, food, or other media and products results in health impacts which have been well assessed, however little is known about the total disease burden related to chemicals. This is important to know for overall policy actions and priorities. In this article ...

This article analyzes the content of articles in major newspapers in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom that discuss legislative and policy measures to control obesity. The aim was to identify and compare measures that attract media attention in the three jurisdictions: the tone of print media coverage, ...

Applications of nanotechnology are touching almost every aspect of modern life. The increased use of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) in consumer products, chemical and medical equipment, information technology, and energy, among others, has increased the number of publications (informative and scientific) on ENMs. By the 1950s, very few papers were committed ...

Arthritis is a large and growing public health problem in the United States, resulting in costs of $128 billion annually, and continues to be the most common cause of disability. With the aging of the U.S. population, even assuming that the prevalence of obesity and other risk factors remain unchanged, ...

Overweight and obesity are major public health concerns that are neither evenly distributed among the population nor between regions. Many studies suggest that beyond individual characteristics, the place where one lives influences lifestyle choices that underpin overweight and obesity. We observed such a situation in the province of Quebec (Canada), ...

In 2008, The Council of Australian Governments set a target to increase by 5% the proportion of Australian adults at a healthy body weight by 2017, over a 2009 baseline. Target setting is a critical component of public health policy for obesity prevention; however, there is currently no context within ...

In response to a nationwide rise in obesity, several states have passed legislation to improve school health environments. Among these was Arkansas's Act 1220 of 2003, the most comprehensive school-based childhood obesity legislation at that time. We used the Multiple Streams Framework to analyze factors that brought childhood obesity to ...

We sought to determine whether there is an association between perceived neighborhood safety and body mass index (BMI), accounting for endogeneity. A random sample of 2255 adults from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey 2000-2001 was analyzed using instrumental variables. The main outcome was BMI using self-reported height and ...

The primary aim of this article is to review environmental determinates on eating and physical activity behaviors that lead to overweight status in the pediatric population. Selected articles on pediatric obesity and overweight and federal government publications addressing pediatric overweight, physical activity, and dietary habits. Obesity is one of the ...

The precautionary principle has influenced environmental and public health policy. It essentially states that complete evidence of a potential risk is not required before action is taken to mitigate the effects of the potential risk. The application of precaution to public health issues is not straightforward and could paradoxically cause ...

We estimate assimilation of immigrants' body mass index (BMI) to the host population of Australia over one generation, conducting separate analyses for immigrants from 7 regions of Europe and Asia. We use quantile regressions to allow for differing impact of generational status across 19 quantiles of BMI from under-weight to ...

Obesity has humbled one research group after another. Some of the field's brightest scientists have attempted to subdue obesity by treating it, but now, after decades of work, treatment gains remain small, maintenance is poor, and the field produces effects far below what patients want or expect. This can be ...

Environmental chemicals with hormone-like activity can disrupt programming of endocrine signaling pathways during development and result in adverse effects, some of which may not be apparent until much later in life. Recent reports link exposure to environmental endocrine disrupting chemicals during development with adverse health consequences, including obesity and diabetes. ...

Scientists working on an obesity intervention project were asked questions, via questionnaire and interviews, relating to ethical and public-policy aspects of tackling childhood obesity. The main areas of enquiry concerned elements responsible for the rise in childhood obesity, key ethical areas of obesity interventions, helpfulness and effectiveness of policy measures, ...

Obesity that is associated with a high consumption of slimming substances is considered a public health problem around the world. In this context, the increasing consumption of phytotherapeutic formulations as alternative obesity treatments has revealed the presence of synthetic pharmaceuticals as adulterants. The illegally added adulterants are frequently anorexic, anxiolytic, ...

Weight discrimination is pervasive in American society and impairs quality of life for obese persons. With approximately two-thirds of Americans now overweight or obese, vast numbers of people are vulnerable to weight prejudice and its consequences. Currently, no laws exist to prohibit weight discrimination. This study conducted an online survey ...

Good health for all has become an accepted international goal. Arguably there have been broad gains in life expectancy over the past century. However, the escalating epidemic of adult obesity, estimated at more than 1 billion worldwide, has become a major public health concern. Obesity affects people of all ages ...

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: This review is an update on recent findings regarding early growth patterns and later obesity. These data are important because the potential programming of obesity in early life provides hope for new prevention strategies targeting early growth for long-term benefits. RECENT FINDINGS: Recent findings regarding the association ...

Venous thromboembolism (VTE), defined as deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, or both, affects an estimated 300,000-600,000 individuals in the U.S. each year, causing considerable morbidity and mortality. It is a disorder that can occur in all races and ethnicities, all age groups, and both genders. With many of the known ...

Recommendations to tackle major health problems such as childhood obesity may not be appropriate if they fail to take account of the prevailing socio-political, cultural and economic context. We describe the development and application of a qualitative risk analysis approach to identify non-scientific considerations framing the policy response to obesity ...

Overcoming the childhood obesity epidemic will require changes on the scale of a social movement similar to the shift in attitudes and regulations toward smoking and tobacco. Tobacco control became a successful public health movement because of shifts in social norms and because cigarette companies came to be perceived by ...

Obesity is a public health problem that has become epidemic worldwide. Substantial literature has emerged to show that overweight and obesity are major causes of co-morbidities, including type II diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, various cancers and other health problems, which can lead to further morbidity and mortality. The related health care ...

The objective was to evaluate the feasibility of delivering a pediatric weight management intervention adapted for low-income families. Academic researchers, a Medicaid health plan, a State Medicaid agency, and community pediatric providers partnered in the project. Participants were 48 families with 52 overweight/obese children aged 4 to 12 recruited from ...

Tea (Camellia sinensis, Theaceae) and tea polyphenols have been studied for the prevention of chronic diseases, including obesity. Obesity currently affects >20% of adults in the United States and is a risk factor for chronic diseases such as type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. Given this increasing public health ...

Stigma and discrimination toward obese persons are pervasive and pose numerous consequences for their psychological and physical health. Despite decades of science documenting weight stigma, its public health implications are widely ignored. Instead, obese persons are blamed for their weight, with common perceptions that weight stigmatization is justifiable and may ...

If the H1N1 pandemic worsens, there may not be enough ventilated beds to care for all persons with respiratory failure. To date, researchers who explicitly discuss the ethics of intensive care unit admission and the allocation of ventilators during an influenza pandemic have based criteria predominantly on the principles of ...

Secondary metabolites are chemical compounds that are not directly involved in the normal growth, development or reproduction of organisms. Due to the toxicity shown by some of these compounds, their presence can represent a threat to human health. Reliable detection systems able to control their presence are required, as a ...

BACKGROUND: There is considerable expertise in the obesity field in identifying, appraising, and synthesising evidence to develop guidelines and recommendations for policy and practice. The recommendations, while based on evidence, are not formulated in a way that readily leads to implementation. This paper analyses the recent UK recommendations on obesity ...

This paper draws together contributions to a scientific table discussion on obesity at the European Science Open Forum 2008 which took place in Barcelona, Spain. Socioeconomic dimensions of global obesity, including those factors promoting it, those surrounding the social perceptions of obesity and those related to integral public health solutions, ...

We are a society that is fixated on the health consequences of 'being fat'. Public health agencies play an important role in 'alerting' people about the risks that obesity poses both to individuals and to the broader society. Quantitative studies suggest people comprehend the physical health risks involved but underestimate ...

Previous studies of public perceptions of obesity interventions have been quantitative and based on general population surveys. This study aims to explore the opinions and attitudes of obese individuals towards population and individual interventions for obesity in Australia. Qualitative methods using in-depth semi-structured telephone interviews with a community sample of ...

Geographic information systems have advanced the ability to both visualize and analyze point data. While point-based maps can be aggregated to differing areal units and examined at varying resolutions, two problems arise 1) the modifiable areal unit problem and 2) any corresponding data must be available both at the scale ...

The current obesity epidemic has affected even the youngest children in our societies, including those in the first months of life. Animal experiments suggest that the early postnatal period may be critical to development of healthful energy homeostasis and thus prevention of obesity. In humans, observational studies and follow-up of ...

Overweight/obesity represent a significant public health problem in Canada and abroad. The objective of this paper is to identify potential associations between overweight/obesity and individual as well as socio-environmental determinants. The data sources used are the 2003 Canadian Community Health Survey and the Desktop Mapping Technologies Incorporated database. Geographical Information ...

ISSUE ADDRESSED: Debate on obesity spans complex health and social issues drawing on varying representations of fat bodies. This paper seeks to determine whether the recent public health focus on social inequalities is reflected in broader policy debate on obesity. METHODS: We reviewed public submissions to the 2008 Australian House ...

Obesity is a major public health problem and notoriously difficult to treat. There are many parallels between obesity/overeating and addictions to alcohol and drugs. This paper discusses similarities between obesity and addictive disorders, including common personality characteristics, disruptive behavior syndromes, and brain mechanisms. Although there are important differences between overeating ...

The issue of maternal obesity has become a major public health problem. Internationally, the diagnosis of obesity is based on body mass index (BMI) that is, weight in kg/height in m2. While epidemiological associations have been shown between different BMI categories and adverse clinical outcomes, there is also a growing ...

This article describes a bibliometric review of the publications on obesity research in PubMed over the last 20 years. We used Medline via the PubMed online service of the US National Library of Medicine from 1988 to 2007. The search strategy was: ([obesity] in MesH). A total of 58,325 references ...

Public health advocates and scientists working on obesity prevention policy face challenges in balancing legal rights, individual freedom, and societal health goals. In particular, the US Constitution and the 50 state constitutions place limits on the ability of government to act, even in the best interests of the public. To ...

Obesity prevention trials are designed to promote healthy weight. The success of these trials is often assessed using one of three metrics--means, incidence or prevalence. In this study, we point out conceptual shortcomings of these metrics and introduce an alternative that we call 'excess gain'. A mathematical demonstration using simulated ...