Pruritus intensity is often not proportional to disease severity in patients with psoriasis or other pruritic dermatoses. Increasing evidence indicates that psychological factors may play an important role in the overall aetiology of pruritus. The aim of this study was to examine whether patients with psoriasis and severe pruritus differ psychologically from those with mild pruritus. In this study

Background In many European countries, medicines promotion is governed by voluntary codes of practice administered by the pharmaceutical industry under its own system of self-regulation. Involvement of industry organizations in policing promotion has been proposed to deter illicit conduct, but few detailed studies on self-regulation have been carried out to date. The objective of this study was to

We investigated the association between cadmium in blood and the concentration of the prostate specific antigen (PSA) in semen, including the modifying effects of zinc or the CAG polymorphism in the androgen receptor (AR). Blood and semen samples were collected from 504 partners of pregnant women in Greenland, Poland and Ukraine. We found an inverse trend between cadmium and PSA (log (ß)= -0.121,

Bacillus macerans cyclodextrin glycosyltransferase (CGTase) (EC 2.4.1.19) was covalently immobilised on Eupergit C and used in a packed-bed reactor to investigate the continuous production of long-carbohydrate-chain alkyl glycosides from alpha-cyclodextrin (alpha-CD) and n-dodecyl-(1,4)-beta-maltopyranoside (C(12)G(2)beta). The effects of buffer ion strength and pH, and enzyme loading on the immob

Neurotrophic factors are secreted proteins responsible for migration, growth and survival of neurons during development, and for maintenance and plasticity of adult neurons. Here we present a novel secreted protein named Cometin which together with Meteorin defines a new evolutionary conserved protein family. During early mouse development, Cometin is found exclusively in the floor plate and from

The gamma evaluation method has become the gold standard for the comparison between measured and calculated absorbed dose distributions. However, test criteria and failure rate tolerance levels have hitherto normally been based on empirical evidence, rather than rigorous statistical analysis. In this work, it is proposed that the gamma-evaluation method could be reinterpreted such that the absorbe

The polyamines are important for a variety of cellular functions, including cell growth. Their intracellular concentrations are controlled by a complex network of regulatory mechanisms, in which antizyme (Az) has a key role. Az reduces the cellular polyamine content by down-regulating both the enzyme catalysing polyamine biosynthesis, ornithine decarboxylase (ODC), and the uptake of polyamines. Th

90 species of Euplectrus are treated: 55 newly described, all from Area de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG),and 35 previously described species, of which 20 occur in ACG. Three of the previously described species(E. brasiliensis Ashmead, E. hircinus (Say), E. ronnai (Brèthes)) have unknown status, owing to missing or severely damaged type material. The new species, all authored by C. Hansson, are: Eu

The aim of this study was to investigate if preoperative measurements of the femoral valgus angle (FVA) affected the mechanical alignment, individual component positions and clinical outcome in total knee arthroplasty (TKA).

Objective: To investigate whether somatosensory impairments are more common in individuals with post-stroke shoulder pain than in those without post-stroke shoulder pain and healthy controls. Design: Descriptive analysis of a convenience sample. Participants: Forty-nine individuals with stroke, 24 with and 25 without post-stroke shoulder pain (median age 65 years), and 11 age- and sex-matched heal

A trial was undertaken to investigate how exposure to graded hypercapnia affected the growth performance of juvenile (15-80g) Atlantic cod. Juveniles were grown at 20‰ salinity and 10°C for 55 days under three hypercapnic regimes: low (2±0.9mgL(-1) CO(2), 0.6mm Hg, 1000μatm), medium (8±0.5mgL(-1) CO(2), 2.8mm Hg, 3800μatm) and high CO(2) exposure (18±0.2mgL(-1) CO(2), 6.3mm Hg, 8500μatm). All wate

The aim of this study was to explore whether islet cell antibodies (ICA) could be identified in children with newly onset diabetes mellitus but negative for autoantibodies against glutamic acid decarboxylase (GADA), islet antigen-2 (IA-2A), insulin (IAA), or any of the three variants with arginine (R), tryptophan (W), or glutamine (Q) at position 325 of the zinc transporter 8 (ZnT8A).

A better understanding of why medication errors (MEs) occur will mean that we can work proactively to minimise them. This study developed a proactive tool to identify general failure types (GFTs)in the process of managing cytotoxic drugs in healthcare. The tool is based on Reason’s Tripod Delta tool. The GFTs and active failures were identified in 60 cases of MEs reported to the Swedish national a

Cardiovascular disease and renal impairment are common in cirrhotic transplant candidates. We aimed to investigate potential association between pretransplant renal function impairment and cardiac events after liver transplantation.

Time-frequency representation algorithms such as spectrograms have proven to be useful tools in marine biosonar signal analysis. Although there are several different time-frequency representation algorithms designed for different types of signals with various characteristics, it is unclear which algorithms that are best suited for transient signals, like the echolocation signals of echolocating wh

The purpose of this study was to describe child health centre (CHC) nurses' views of managing parental groups during early childhood. All 311 CHC nurses working within the Swedish CHC system in one county were asked to complete a web-based questionnaire. Findings showed that although the CHC nurses were experienced, several found group leadership challenging and difficult. The need for specialized