Preventive Intervention to Improve Children's Discrimination of the Persuasive Tactics in Televised Advertising

Television viewing is causally related to obesity and poor dietaryhabits in children. A contributing factor to this relationshipis the sugared breakfast cereals and snack food advertisementsrepeatedly presented on children's television. Past researchsuggests the advertising on television may have an unfair persuasiveeffect on children. In the present study, children in an afterschool day care center effectively learned to discriminate informationand persuasive techniques presented in commercial televisedadvertising, while children in an experimenter contact controlgroup did not show such learning. The importance of such discriminationfor educated consumer behavior is discussed and specific futureresearch directions are described.     

Immunological characteristic of children vertically infected with HIV: a case-control study

HIV infection in children causes a serious immunodeficiency with special characteristics that distinguish it from the adult, causing a global immune deficit. This is a case-control study between Cuban paediatric patients infected with HIV by vertical transmission and a control group of supposedly healthy children. Both groups were characterized from the clinical point of view and markers were used for evaluating the immunologic and virologycal state. Clinically 75% of patients present a pattern of precocious progression; from the total, only two stayed asymptomatic. All HIV-infected children receive antirretroviral treatment and three of them present values of viral load bigger than 100,000 cp/mL. The immune alterations found in the HIV-infected children compared with healthy children were: a cellular immune depletion with diminished counts of lymphocyte subsets T CD4+, CD16+/CD56+ and CD19+, an increase in subsets of CD3+, CD8+, CD8+/CD38+, CD3+/ CD95+ and a hypergammaglobulinemia due to prevalence of immunoglobulin gamma IgG (p < 0.05). On the other hand, there were not significantly differences in the serum levels of both C3 and C4, as well as in the haemolytic activity of the classic and alternate activation pathways of the complement system. This finding allowed better attention and treatment of paediatric HIV patients.     

Quantifying Tissue Damage from Childhood Injury: The Minor Injury Severity Scale

Described an instrument designed to quantify the extent of tissueseverity damage following a minor childhood injury event. Fewtools exist to allow objective assessment of injury and thosewhich do exist are oriented toward major injuries necessitatingmedical intervention. The Minor Injury Severity Scale (MISS)does not require specialized medical experience to apply. Ityields a 0–7 score which indexes objective parameterssuch as depth and length of lesion for 22 different kinds ofinjuries. The data reported here suggest good coder reliability,excellent test-retest stability, and acceptable correspondencebetween mothers' and children's reports. Data are presentedon divergent validity to show that tissue damage is relatedto but is not the same as injury outcomes such as pain, fear,and disability. Limitations of the scale and challenges to futureresearch are also discussed.     

Paraganglioma in pregnancy: interdisciplinary management during pregnancy

Paragangliomas are tumors that originate from the extra-adrenal neural crest, the incidence of which during pregnancy is not more than two to eight cases per million people per year and are known to be highly morbid. The purpose of this report is to describe the experience and results obtained during management of a primigravida diagnosed with paraganglioma on week 21.2 and received both medical and surgical management with good maternal and perinatal outcomes. This case report evidences the importance of practicing interdisciplinary management of patients with clinical suspicion of paragangliomas or pheochromocytomas during pregnancy at high-complexity centers even in a medium-income country.     

Vision-related quality-of-life in Jamaican glaucoma patients at Kingston Public Hospital

AIM: To determine the vision-related quality-of-life of glaucoma patients and the association between clinical and socioeconomic factors, and vision-related quality-of-life. METHODS: This was a cross-sectional study. Consecutive patients with glaucoma were interviewed using a modified 25-item National Eye Institute Visual Function Questionnaire (VFQ-25) by a single interviewer. Statistical analysis was done to find associations between patient variables and vision-related quality-of-life scores. Confidentiality and anonymity were maintained. RESULTS: Ninety-six participants were recruited in the study. There were 44 males and the mean age for males and females was 65.7 and 69.5y, respectively. The mean composite score was 71.2 (with a maximum possible score of 100), with the highest mean score in the colour vision subscale (89.8) and the lowest mean score in the driving subscale (34.0). Worse visual acuity (P<0.001), longer duration of glaucoma (P<0.001) and higher number of glaucoma medications (P<0.001) were associated with a worse composite score. Female participants and those who lived in urban areas had significantly better scores than male participants (P=0.002) and those who lived in rural areas (P=0.017), respectively. CONCLUSION: The vision-related quality-of-life in Jamaican glaucoma patients is comparable to that of glaucoma patients in the Barbados Eye Study and other international studies using the VFQ-25 questionnaire. Worse quality-of-life scores are associated with poorer visual acuity, longer duration of glaucoma, more glaucoma medications, and sociodemographic factors such as male gender and rural residence.     

“I’d feel like someone was watchin’ me… watching for a good reason”: perceptions of data privacy,access, and sharing in the context of real-time PrEP adherence monitoring among HIV-negative MSM with substance use

AIDS and Behavior - Once-daily oral tenofovir/emtricitabine is highly effective as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) against HIV but is dependent on adherence, which may be challenging for men who...