Downregulation of MIP-1α/CCL3 with praziquantel treatment in Schistosoma haematobium and HIV-1 co-infected individuals in a rural community in Zimbabwe

Background  

Chemokines have been reported to play an important role in granulomatous inflammation during Schistosoma mansoni infection. However there is less information on their role in Schistosoma haematobium infection, or on the effect of concurrent HIV-1 infection, as a potential modifying influence.     

Measuring physical and mental health using the SF-12: implications for community surveys of mental health

OBJECTIVE: The effects of using different approaches to scoring the SF-12 summary scales of physical and mental health were examined with a view to informing the design and interpretation of community-based survey research. METHOD: Data from a population-based study of 7485 participants in three cohorts aged 20-24, 40-44 and 60-64 years were used to examine relationships among measures of physical and mental health calculated from the same items using the SF-12 and RAND-12 approaches to scoring, and other measures of chronic physical conditions and psychological distress. RESULTS: A measure of physical health constructed using the RAND-12 scoring showed a monotonic negative association with psychological distress as measured by the Goldberg depression and anxiety scales. However, a non-monotonic association was evident in the relationship between SF-12 physical health scores and distress, with very high SF-12 physical health scores corresponding with high levels of distress. These relationships highlight difficulties in interpretation that can arise when using the SF-12 summary scales in some analytical contexts. CONCLUSIONS: It is recommended that community surveys that measure physical and mental functioning using the SF-12 items generate summary scores using the RAND-12 protocol in addition to the SF-12 approach. In general, researchers should be wary of using factor scores based on orthogonal rotation, which assumes that measures are uncorrelated, to represent constructs that have an actual association.     

A case of selective impairment of encyclopaedic numerical knowledge or 'when December 25th is no longer Christmas day, but '20+5' is still 25'

This study investigates encyclopaedic numerical knowledge in a patient with a presumed left temporal dysfunction, associated with temporal lobe epilepsy. Encyclopaedic numbers are those used as nominal labels (such as in 'British Broadcasting Corporation - BBC 1' or 'Levis 501') to express familiar or historical dates (e.g., our birthday or the French revolution, 1789) and to indicate other general or autobiographical numerical information (e.g., Personal Identification numbers - PINs, post-codes, telephone numbers). We showed a dissociation between impaired processing of encyclopaedic numbers and preserved processing of non-encyclopaedic numbers (e.g., the larger between 54 and 65 or the result of '6 x 9'). This dissociation complements the existing data showing the reverse pattern of performance, namely an advantage for encyclopaedic compared to non-encyclopaedic numbers. These data add important information on an aspect of numerical processing that has not yet been systematically explored and reinforce the distinction between numerical and non-numerical knowledge in the semantic system.     

A mechanism-based cancer risk assessment for 1,4-dichlorobenzene

1,4-Dichlorobenzene (DCB) induced liver cancer in male and female B6C3F(1) mice in a gavage bioassay and in male and female BDF(1) mice in an inhalation bioassay. The weight of the evidence convincingly indicates that the mouse liver tumors induced by 1,4-DCB were via a nongenotoxic-mitogenic/promotional mode of action by forcing the growth of spontaneous precancerous lesions. Doses insufficient to exhibit mitogenic or promotional activity would not be expected to increase the risk of cancer. Benchmark dose modeling of the tumor response was conduced for the combined inhalation and oral gavage bioassay data sets based on an absorbed dose basis to establish the dose or airborne concentration corresponding to 1% extra risk. Assuming that as a point of departure and dividing by an uncertainty factor of 300, yielded a value of 0.1 ppm, representing a rational estimate of an airborne concentration for the human population below which there is unlikely to be any increased risk of cancer during a lifetime. In contrast, the default model that assumes a genotoxic mode of action estimates a one in one-million increased lifetime risk of cancer at an airborne concentration of 0.00004 ppm, some 2500-fold lower than the mechanism-based model and 1,875,000-fold lower than the no observed effect concentration for induced cancer of 75 ppm in the inhalation bioassay.     

Patient perception of wound photography

The objectives of this study were to provide an assessment of photographic documentation of the wound from the patients' perspective and to evaluate whether this could improve patients' understanding of and involvement in their wound care. Our results revealed that most patients visiting the wound care clinic have difficult‐to‐see wounds (86%). Only 20% of patients monitor their wounds and instead rely on clinic or nurse visits to track the healing progress. There was a significant association between patients' ability to see their wound and their subsequent memory of the wound's appearance. This was especially true for patients who had recently begun visiting the wound care clinic. This relationship was not present in patients who had visited the clinic for 3 or more years. Patients reported that the inability to see their wounds resulted in feeling a loss of autonomy. The majority of patients reported that photographing their wounds would help them to track the wound progress (81%) and would afford them more involvement in their own care (58%). This study provides a current representation of wound photography from the patients' perspective and reveals that it can motivate patients to become more involved in the management of their wounds – particularly for patients with difficult‐to‐see wounds.