Search results for "WHO"
showing 10 items of 829 documents
Gender-related differences in psychometric properties of WHO Disability Assessment Schedule 2.0
2019
Objective of this study was to investigate the gender-related differential item function of 12-item WHODAS 2.0 amongst patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain. This was a cross-sectional survey study among 1,988 patients at a university Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine outpatient clinic. To assess DIF, WHODAS 2.0 items were dichotomized as `none’ rated by respondents as `0’ versus `any limitation’ rated as `1,2,3 or 4’. The item response theory analysis was used to define discrimination and difficulty parameters of a questionnaire. The probit logistic regression was used to test uniformity of DIF between gender groups. The results of DIF analysis were presented and evaluated graphica…
Socio-economic factors and prevalence of underweight and overweight among female students in Poland.
2005
The aim of the work was to assess the prevalence of underweight among young women and to analyse factors contributing to this phenomenon. The study group consisted of 718 female students aged 18-24 years. Underweight, overweight and obesity was classified according to BMI and WHO criteria. To assess the socio-economic status (SES), place of residence before entering the university and education of parents were used. Variables characterising lifestyle such as sports activity, cigarette smoking and alcohol drinking were also taken into account. In the studied group, the prevalence of underweight was much higher than the prevalence of overweight and obesity (15.3% and 3.5%, respectively). Low …
Whooping cough, twenty years from acellular vaccines introduction
2015
Clinical pertussis resulting from infection with B. pertussis is a significant medical and public health problem, despite the huge success of vaccination that has greatly reduced its incidence. The whole cell vaccine had an undeniable success over the last 50 years, but its acceptance was strongly inhibited by fear, only partially justified, of severe side effects, but also, in the Western world, by the difficulty to enter in combination with other vaccines: today multi-vaccine formulations are essential to maintain a high vaccination coverage. The advent of acellular vaccines was greeted with enthusiasm by the public health world: in the Nineties, several controlled vaccine trials were car…
Whole-body MRI radiomics model to predict relapsed/refractory Hodgkin Lymphoma: A preliminary study.
2022
Purpose A strong prognostic score that enables a stratification of newly diagnosed Hodgkin Lymphoma (HL) to identify patients at high risk of refractory/relapsed disease is still needed. Our aim was to investigate the potential value of a radiomics analysis pipeline from whole-body MRI (WB-MRI) exams for clinical outcome prediction in patients with Hodgkin Lymphoma (HL). Materials and methods Index lesions from baseline WB-MRIs of 40 patients (22 females; mean age 31.7 ± 11.4 years) with newly diagnosed HL treated by ABVD chemotherapy regimen were manually segmented on T1-weighted, STIR, and DWI images for texture analysis feature extraction. A machine learning approach based on the Extra T…
Experts’ Opinion for Improving Pertussis Vaccination Rates in Adolescents and Adults: A Call to Action
2022
This article highlights the importance of diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis (with reduced antigen content, dTap) vaccination in preventing pertussis, a respiratory infection that is still widespread and easily transmitted. In particular, it highlights the need to receive a booster vaccination throughout life to maintain high antibody levels, which decrease through time. This document collects the opinions that emerged from the comparison between major Italian experts in the field of vaccination. This working group was created to promote a “call to action”, aimed at raising awareness among all institutions, public health authorities, and health workers involved in the vaccination proces…
Hand trajectory formation during whole body reaching movements in man.
1998
End-effector trajectory formation was studied during a reaching movement using the whole body. The movements of various parts of the body were measured with the optoelectronic ELITE system. Wrist reaching movement paths showed noticeable curvatures. The analysis of various marker onset latencies revealed that the wrist was the last to move, always after the head, knee or trunk, suggesting a subordinate role of the focal component with respect to the primary role of the equilibrium component. These results suggest that reaching wrist movements are subjected to whole-body equilibrium constraints in addition to constraints placed upon end-effector kinematics or the dynamic optimization of uppe…
Activation of T‐Lymphocytes by LDL‐Cholesterol
2008
Native LDL-cholesterol can be mechanically stressed by strong vortexing. According to one hypothesis, mechanical shear stress within the vessel can lead to an aggregation of LDL-cholesterol and subsequently to activation of CD4 and CD8 T-lymphocytes. The goal of this study was to determine the proportion of activated CD4 and CD8 T-lymphocytes that is induced by adding unstressed and mechanically stressed LDL-cholesterol to whole blood samples. Whole blood was taken from 12 healthy subjects. All probands fasted for at least 12 h before blood withdrawal. In each case, 1 ml of whole blood from each subject was incubated for 16 h at 32 degrees C (89.3 degrees F) with concanavalin A (A), without…
Whole blood selenium content in pregnant women
1999
The selenium content in the blood of pregnant women in the Valencian Community, Spain was determined until the end of gestation in order to assess its evolution and detect possible differences in relation to the values corresponding to non-pregnant women of fertile age. A total of 158 blood samples were obtained from 137 pregnant women. Samples were classified as: (a) first; (b) second; and (c) third trimester. Selenium was determined by a flow injection hydride atomic absorption spectrometric method (Seronorm whole blood was used as a quality control check). The selenium values obtained for the three trimesters followed a Gaussian distribution. The intervals for mean found were: (a) 75.7-8…
Foetal erythrocytes exhibit an increased ability to scavenge for nitric oxide
1998
The presence of adult human whole blood inhibited in vitro relaxations of rat aortic rings by the nitric oxide (NO) donor S-nitroso-N-acetyl-DL-penicillamine (SNAP). Incubation with foetal blood containing the same concentration of haemoglobin produced a shift to the right of the relaxation curve. SNAP-induced vasorelaxations were more inhibited by dialysed solutions of haemoglobin than by the presence of erythrocytes in the organ bath, but there were no differences between the effect of adult or foetal haemoglobins. The presence of plasma from adult or foetal blood did not modify the effects of SNAP. Relaxations induced by endogenous, endothelium-derived, NO were more inhibited by foetal t…
The combined operative and radiotherapeutic treatment (CORT) of recurrent tumors infiltrating the pelvic wall: First experience with 18 patients
1992
CORT is a new radiosurgical treatment concept for patients with recurrent gynecologic malignancies infiltrating the pelvic wall. The operative part consists of (i) staging laparotomy; (ii) maximum debulking of the tumor from the pelvic wall and exenteration of infiltrated central pelvic organs; (iii) implantation of brachytherapy guiding tubes on the residual tumor/tumor bed at the pelvic wall; (iv) pelvic wall plasty with muscle and omentum flaps to create a protective distance between the tubes and the pelvic hollow organs and to induce therapeutic angiogenesis; and (v) surgical reconstruction of bowel, bladder, and vulvoperineovaginal functions. Radiation is given postoperatively as frac…