War Experiences and General Health Among People in Bosnia‐Herzegovina and Kosovo

War experiences may have an extensive impact on the health status of the exposed populations. This population‐based study aimed to examine the relationship between war experiences and self‐reported general health in representative sample surveys from Bosnia‐Herzegovina (n = 3,313) and Kosovo (n = 1,000). Data were collected with face‐to‐face interviews fielded in the winter of 2003–2004. Logistic regression analysis was used to compute unadjusted and adjusted odds ratios (ORs). The adjusted effects of the extensiveness of war experiences on poor health were positive in both countries, but they were statistically significant only for Bosnia‐Herzegovina: OR = 1.04, 95% CI [1.00, 1.08] for Bosnia‐Herzegovina and OR = 1.03, 95% CI [0.98, 1.09] for Kosovo. The strongest observed effect was found for Kosovo only: The extensiveness of war experiences was relatively strongly related to longstanding health problems, OR = 1.09, 95% CI [1.03, 1.15]. We found that war experiences may contribute to increased poorer health in the exposed populations; however, the effects 4–9 years after the war ended were modest. Hence, war experiences seemed to be more strongly related to war‐related distress and posttraumatic stress disorder than to self‐reported general health.     

The prevalence of retinopathy in subjects with and without type 2 diabetes mellitus

Purpose:  To evaluate the prevalence of and risk factors for, retinopathy in a geographically defined population with type 2 diabetes mellitus compared with a control group of subjects without diabetes, matched by age, sex and residence in order to find the retinopathy attributable to type 2 diabetes. Methods:  The study populations are, on one hand, a prevalence cohort of subjects with type 2 diabetes resident in the community of Laxå, Sweden, and on the other a control group, matched by age, gender and residence with those with a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes mellitus. Retinopathy was graded from fundus photographs using a modification of the Early Treatment Retinopathy Study (ETDRS) adaptation of the modified Airlie House classification of diabetic retinopathy (DR). Results:  Any retinopathy was found in 34.6% in the type 2 diabetes cohort and in 8.8% in the control group without diabetes. Among the diabetic patients, any retinopathy was significantly associated with duration of diabetes (p = 0.0001), HbA1c (p = 0.0056), systolic blood pressure (p = 0.0091) and lower serum cholesterol (p = 0.0197) in multivariate logistic regression analyses. Having retinopathy in the control group was associated only with systolic blood pressure (p = 0.0014) in logistic regression analysis. Conclusions:  The prevalence of retinopathy among patients with type 2 diabetes in Laxå, Sweden, was similar or somewhat lower compared with other studies in the Nordic countries. The prevalence of retinopathy in a control group without diabetes equalled numbers from population studies worldwide. Our study indicates that the retinopathy that can be attributed to hyperglycaemia in the diabetic state is less common than is usually accounted for. A considerable fraction of retinopathy in subjects with diabetes may instead be due to other factors such as hypertension and should thus be treated correspondingly.     

Cocaine profiling method retrospectively developed with nontargeted discovery of markers using liquid chromatography with time-of-flight mass spectrometry data

Illicit drug profiling performed by forensic laboratories assists law enforcement agencies through providing information about chemical and/or physical characteristics of seized specimens. In this article, a model was developed for the comparison of seized cocaine based on retrospective analysis of data generated from ultrahigh performance liquid chromatography with time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UHPLC-TOF-MS) comprehensive drug screening. A nontargeted approach to discover target compounds was employed, which generated 53 potential markers using data from cocaine positive samples. Twelve marker compounds were selected for the development of the final profiling model. The selection included a mixture of commonly used cocaine profiling targets and other cocaine-related compounds. Combinations of pretreatments and comparison metrics were assessed using receiver operating characteristic curves to determine the combination with the best discrimination between linked and unlinked populations. Using data from 382 linked and 34,519 unlinked distances, a classification model was developed using a combination of the standardization and normalization transformations with Canberra distance, resulting in a linked cut-off with a 0.5% false positive rate. The present study demonstrates the applicability of retrospectively developing a cocaine profiling model using data generated from UHPLC-TOF-MS nontargeted drug screening without pre-existing information about cocaine impurities. The developed workflow was not specific to cocaine and thus could potentially be applied to any seized drug in which there are both sufficient data and impurities present.     

Congenital CMV infection: prevalence in newborns and the impact on hearing deficit

Congenital cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection is asymptomatic in 90% of infected newborns but approximately 10-20% of these infants are at risk of developing sequelae later, mostly hearing deficit. The aims of the study were to investigate the prevalence of congenital CMV infection in a Swedish population of newborns and investigate the relative risk of hearing deficit in newborns with congenital CMV infection. The dried blood spot (DBS) samples of 6060 newborns in southern Stockholm during 12 months (October 2003-June 2004; August 2004-October 2004) were analysed for CMV DNA by TaqMan based real-time PCR. Hearing deficit was assessed by otoacoustic emission (OAE) within a newborn screening programme. 12 infants out of 6060 or 0.2% (95% CI 0.1-0.3%) had congenital CMV infection. One boy among the 12 infected infants had unilateral hearing loss, indicating that the risk of hearing loss is greatly increased (about 20 times) in CMV infected infants. No child developed ocular complications such as chorioretinopathy during 3 y of follow-up. Congenital CMV has an impact on child health but can easily be overlooked due to lack of signs in the neonatal period. Surveillance for congenital CMV is important in addition to programmes for prevention and treatment.     

Functional capacity vs side effects: treatment attributes to consider when individualising treatment for patients with rheumatoid arthritis

Clinical Rheumatology - Individualisation of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) treatment needs to take account of individual patients’ preferences to increase patient-centeredness in treatment...     

Long-term risk of adverse cardiovascular outcomes associated with cutaneous lupus erythematosus: a nationwide cohort study

Clinical Rheumatology - Autoimmune diseases, including systemic lupus erythematosus, have been associated with a substantial risk of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. However, data on the...