The impact of poverty on educational outcomes for children

Over the past decade, the unfortunate reality is that the income gap has widened between Canadian families. Educational outcomes are one of the key areas influenced by family incomes. Children from low-income families often start school already behind their peers who come from more affluent families, as shown in measures of school readiness. The incidence, depth, duration and timing of poverty all influence a child’s educational attainment, along with community characteristics and social networks. However, both Canadian and international interventions have shown that the effects of poverty can be reduced using sustainable interventions. Paediatricians and family doctors have many opportunities to influence readiness for school and educational success in primary care settings.     

Contraceptive potential of a mifepristone-nomegestrol acetate sequential regimen in women

The effectiveness of a sequential regimen consisting of mifepristone, 10 mg/day for 15 days, followed by nomegestrol acetate (NOMA), 5 mg/day for the next 13 days, for inhibiting ovulation and maintaining regular bleeding cycles was assessed in 10 surgically sterilized volunteers who were followed for one pretreatment and three treated cycles. Hormonal determinations in blood and urine, ovarian ultrasonography, bleeding records in all cycles and an endometrial biopsy taken on day 22-25 of the third treatment cycle were used to monitor the effects of treatment. During treatment, 24 monophasic (no sustained progesterone rise above 12 nmol/l) and six biphasic cycles were recorded. Nine follicular ruptures were detected echographically in these 30 treated cycles, five of which occurred in monophasic cycles. All follicular ruptures occurred on days 1-7 of NOMA treatment. Echographic and endocrine features of ovulatory cycles were both present in only four treated cycles (13.3%). Development of a secretory endometrium was achieved in all cases, but it was always irregular. Regular withdrawal bleeding occurred in all subjects and no adverse reactions were recorded. The ovarian and endometrial effects of this regimen justify testing its contraceptive effectiveness in phase 2 clinical trials.      

Reliability of the acetabular teardrop as a landmark

Summary This study investigated the effect of tilt and observer reliability on radiographic measurements of the position of a prosthetic acetabular cup in seven dry bone pelves using the teardrop as a landmark. Coronal or sagittal tilt of more than five degrees was easily recognisable and there was effectively no observer variation in the measurements up to this limit. In addition, 90 out of 100 randomly selected antero-posterior pelvic radiographs from an outpatient department were not significantly rotated and 93 demonstrated a clearly defined teardrop. Measurements about the teardrop on routine radiographs are therefore sufficiently accurate to allow assessment of prosthetic position.

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La valeur du sourcil cotyloidien comme repère d'analyse radiologique

Résumé Cette étude, conduite sur 7 bassins secs, apprécie l'effet de l'inclinaison du bassin sur la qualité de l'analyse radiographique de la position d'une cupule prothétique de hanche en utilisant le sourcil cotyloïdien comme repère. Une inclinaison du bassin dans les plans coronal et sagittal est aisément détectable et il n'existe pas de variation d'analyse entre les différents observateurs en dessous de 5° d'inclinaison. De plus, sur 100 radiographies antéro-postérieures de bassin choisies au hasard dans les dossiers de consultation, 90 avaient été réalisées sans incidence particulièrement adaptée et l'on pouvait repérer facilement le sourcil sur 93% d'entre elles. Les mesures faites sur des radios de routine sont donc suffisamment précises pour permettre l'évaluation de la position d'une prothèse à partir du sourcil cotyloïdien.

     

Comparative Analysis of Apoptosis and Inflammation Genes of Mice and Humans

Apoptosis (programmed cell death) plays important roles in many facets of normal mammalian physiology. Host-pathogen interactions have provided evolutionary pressure for apoptosis as a defense mechanism against viruses and microbes, sometimes linking apoptosis mechanisms with inflammatory responses through NFκB induction. Proteins involved in apoptosis and NFκB induction commonly contain evolutionarily conserved domains that can serve as signatures for identification by bioinformatics methods. Using a combination of public (NCBI) and private (RIKEN) databases, we compared the repertoire of apoptosis and NFκB-inducing genes in humans and mice from cDNA/EST/genomic data, focusing on the following domain families: (1) Caspase proteases; (2) Caspase recruitment domains (CARD); (3) Death Domains (DD); (4) Death Effector Domains (DED); (5) BIR domains of Inhibitor of Apoptosis Proteins (IAPs); (6) Bcl-2 homology (BH) domains of Bcl-2 family proteins; (7) Tumor Necrosis Factor (TNF)-family ligands; (8) TNF receptors (TNFR); (9) TIR domains; (10) PAAD (PYRIN; PYD, DAPIN); (11) nucleotide-binding NACHT domains; (12) TRAFs; (13) Hsp70-binding BAG domains; (14) endonuclease-associated CIDE domains; and (15) miscellaneous additional proteins. After excluding redundancy due to alternative splice forms, sequencing errors, and other considerations, we identified cDNAs derived from a total of 227 human genes among these domain families. Orthologous murine genes were found for 219 (96%); in addition, several unique murine genes were found, which appear not to have human orthologs. This mismatch may be due to the still fragmentary information about the mouse genome or genuine differences between mouse and human repertoires of apoptotic genes. With this caveat, we discuss similarities and differences in human and murine genes from these domain families.     

Rapid isolation of human kininogens

A rapid, two-step procedure is described for the isolation of both "high molecular weight" (H-) and "low molecular weight" (L-) plasma kininogens from a single sample of plasma. Affinity chromatography on carboxymethyl-papain-Sepharose is used, together with high-resolution anion exchange chromatography.     

Independent prognostic importance of microvessel density in endometrial carcinoma.

Angiogenesis is thought to be an important factor for tumour growth and metastatic spread, and microvessel counts may provide useful prognostic information for several tumour types. To investigate the prognostic impact of angiogenesis in endometrial carcinoma patients, the intratumour microvessel density, which was determined immunohistochemically, has been related to survival. Sixty patients with endometrial carcinoma with long (median 19 years) and complete follow-up have been studied. Patients with increased mean microvessel density (MVDmean > 68 mm2) had a significantly shorter 5-year survival compared with the rest (57% vs 90%, P = 0.004). In multivariate survival analyses, MVDmean had an independent prognostic impact (P = 0.03) when FIGO stage, histological type, histological grade as well as nuclear p53 protein expression was adjusted for. These findings indicate that intratumour microvessel density may contribute additional prognostic information to that obtained from the known risk factors and may be helpful in identifying endometrial carcinoma patients at high risk for disease progression.