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In October 2009 it was reported that 68 of 101 patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) in the United States, when tested, were infected with a novel gamma retrovirus, xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV) (Lombardi et al., 2009). XMRV is a recently discovered human gammaretrovirus first described in prostate cancers that shares significant homology with murine leukemia virus (MLV) (Ursiman et al., 2006). It is known that XMRV can cause leukemias and sarcomas in several rodent, feline, and primate species but has not been shown to cause disease in humans. XMRV was detectable in the peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) and plasma of individuals diagnosed with CFS (Lombardi et al., 2009). After this report was published there was a great deal of uncertainty surrounding this emergent virus and its involvement in the etiology of CFS. The uncertainty was, in part, due to CFS being a complex, poorly understood multi-system disorder with different disease criteria used for its diagnosis. CFS, also known as Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), is a debilitating disease of unknown origin that is estimated to affect 17 million people worldwide. The initial report connecting XMRV to prostate cancers and CFS garnered significant media and scientific interest since it provided a potential Susie ElSaadany2**, Tamer Oraby1 * Daniel Krewski1, 4 and Peter R. Ganz5 1McLaughlin Centre for Population Health Risk Assessment, Institute of Population Health, University of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada 2Blood Safety Surveillance and Health Care Acquired Infections Division, Centre for Communicable Diseases and Infection Control, Public Health Agency of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada 3Aspinall and Associates, Cleveland House, High Street, and Earth Sciences, Bristol University, Bristol, United Kingdom 4Department of Epidemiology and Community Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada 5Health Canada, Director’s Office, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada ** Corresponding Author , Marian Laderoute2 , Jun Wu2 , Willy Aspinall3 , www.intechopen.com 32 The Continuum of Health Risk Assessments explanation for the disease but also an avenue for possible therapeutic treatments since XMRV is known to be susceptible to some anti-retroviral drugs (Cohen, 2011).
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This open access handbook provides the first comprehensive overview of biometrics exploiting the shape of human blood vessels for biometric recognition, i.e. vascular biometrics, including finger vein recognition, hand/palm vein recognition, retina recognition, and sclera recognition. After an introductory chapter summarizing the state of the art in and availability of commercial systems and open datasets/open source software, individual chapters focus on specific aspects of one of the biometric modalities, including questions of usability, security, and privacy. The book features contributions from both academia and major industrial manufacturers.
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This open access book describes marked advances in imaging technology that have enabled the visualization of phenomena in ways formerly believed to be completely
impossible. These technologies have made major contributions to the elucidation of the pathology of diseases as well as to their diagnosis and therapy. The volume presents various studies from molecular imaging to clinical imaging. It also focuses on innovative, creative, advanced research that gives full play to imaging technology in the broad sense, while exploring cross-disciplinary areas in which individual research fields interact and pursuing the development of new techniques where they fuse together. The book is separated into three parts, the first of which addresses the topic of visualizing and controlling molecules for life. Th e second part is devoted to imaging of disease mechanisms, while the final part comprises studies on the application of imaging technologies to diagnosis and therapy. Th e book contains the proceedings of the 12th Uehara International Symposium 2017, “Make Life Visible” sponsored by the Uehara Memorial Foundation and held from June 12 to 14, 2017. It is written by leading scientists in the field and is an open access publication under a CC BY 4.0 license.
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This open access book discusses basic clinical concepts of myopia, prevention of progression and surgical treatments for myopia and pathological myopia. It also summarises the latest evidence and best practices for managing myopia, high myopia and its complications. Written by leading experts, the book addresses clinical diagnosis and interpretation of imaging modalities, and various complications of myopia such as glaucoma, choroidal neovascularization, retinal degeneration and cataracts. It is a valuable comprehensive resource for general and sub-specialist ophthalmologists as well as residents and ophthalmologists in training.
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This open access book marks the first historical overview of the autism rights branch of the neurodiversity movement, describing the activities and rationales of key leaders in their own words since it organized into a unique community in 1992. Sandwiched by editorial chapters that include critical analysis, the book contains 19 chapters by 21 authors about the forming of the autistic community and neurodiversity movement, progress in their influence on the broader autism community and field, and their possible threshold of the advocacy establishment. The actions covered are legendary in the autistic community, including manifestos such as “Don’t Mourn for Us”, mailing lists, websites or webpages, conferences, issue campaigns, academic project and journal, a book, and advisory roles. These actions have shifted the landscape toward viewing autism in social terms of human rights and identity to accept, rather than as a medical collection of deficits and symptoms to cure.
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Drug metabolism/pharmacokinetics and drug interaction studies have been extensively carried out in order to secure the druggability and safety of new chemical entities throughout the development of new drugs. Recently, drug metabolism and transport by phase II drug metabolizing enzymes and drug transporters, respectively, as well as phase I drug metabolizing enzymes, have been studied. A combination of biochemical advances in the function and regulation of drug metabolizing enzymes and automated analytical technologies are revolutionizing drug metabolism research. There are also potential drug–drug interactions with co-administered drugs due to inhibition and/or induction of drug metabolic enzymes and drug transporters. In addition, drug interaction studies have been actively performed to develop substrate cocktails that do not interfere with each other and a simultaneous analytical method of substrate drugs and their metabolites using a tandem mass spectrometer. This Special Issue has the aim of highlighting current progress in drug metabolism/pharmacokinetics, drug interactions, and bioanalysis.
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Marine herbal medicine generally refers to the use of marine plants as original materials to develop crude drugs, or for other medical purposes. The term ‘marine plants’ usually denotes macroalgae grown between intertidal and subintertidal zones, including Chlorophyta, Phaeophyta, and Rhodophyta. Considerable progress has been made in the field of biomedical research into marine microalgae and microorganisms in the past decade. As the most important source of fundamental products in the world, marine plants have a very important role in biomedical research. Furthermore, worldwide studies have consistently demonstrated that many crude drugs derived from marine plants contain novel ingredients that may benefit health or can be used in the treatment of diseases; some have been developed into health foods, and some even into drugs. It is expected that there are many substances of marine plant origin that will have medical applications in terms of improving human health and are awaiting discovery.In this Special Issue, entitled “Development and Application of Herbal Medicine of Marine Origin”, we will provide a platform for researchers to publish biomedical studies on substances of marine plant origin. We welcome submissions from scientists and academics from across the world.
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Oral health is general health. If the oral cavity is kept healthy, the whole body is always healthy. Bacteria in the oral cavity do not stay in the oral cavity, but rather they travel throughout the body and can induce various diseases. Periodontal pathogens are involved in tooth loss. The number of remaining teeth decreases with age. People with more residual teeth can bite food well and live longer with lower incidence of dementia. There are many viruses in the oral cavity that also cause various diseases. Bacteria and viruses induce and aggravate inflammation, and therefore should be removed from the oral cavity. In the natural world, there are are many as yet undiscovered antiviral, antibacterial and anti-inflammatory substances. These natural substances, as well as chemically modified derivatives, help our oral health and lead us to more fulfilling, high quality lives. This Special Issue, entitled “Biological Efficacy of Natural and Chemically Modified Products against Oral Inflammatory Lesions”, was written by specialists from a diverse variety of fields. It serves to provide readers with up-to-date information on incidence rates in each age group, etiology and treatment of stomatitis, and to investigate the application of such treatments as oral care and cosmetic materials.
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The phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K)/mTOR pathway integrates signals from growth factors with nutrient signals and other conditions and controls multiple cell responses, including proliferation, survival and metabolism. Deregulation of the PI3K pathway has been extensively investigated in connection to cancer. Somatic or inherited mutations frequently occur in tumor suppressor genes (PTEN, TSC1/2, LKB1) and oncogenes (PIK3CA, PIK3R1, AKT) in the PI3K/mTOR pathway. The fact that the PI3K/mTOR pathway is deregulated in a large number of human malignancies, and its importance for different cellular responses, makes it an attractive drug target. Pharmacological PI3K inhibitors have played a very important role in studying cellular responses involving these enzymes. Currently, a wide range of selective PI3K inhibitors have been tested in preclinical studies and some have entered clinical trials in oncology. Rapamycin and its analogs targeting mTOR are effective in many preclinical cancer models. Although rapalogs are approved for the treatment of some cancers, their efficacy in clinical trials remains the subject of debate. Due to the complexity of the PI3K/mTOR signaling pathway, developing an effective anti-cancer therapy remains a challenge. The biggest challenge in curing cancer patients with various signaling pathway abnormalities is to target multiple components of different signal transduction pathways with mechanism-based combinatorial treatments.
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Aims and Scope: The Research Topic is designed to feature the latest innovative and leading-edge research, reviews and opinions on the study of complex and dynamic processes related to the mammalian immune system and cancer. All papers were meticulously selected to present our readers the multidisciplinary approach to tackle the existing challenges faced in these important fields. From high throughput experimental methodologies to computational and theoretical approaches, the articles are intended to introduce physicists, chemists, computer scientists, biologists and immunologists the idea of systems biology approach to the understanding of mammalian immune system and cancer processes. Attention was given to works that developed more effective approaches to the treatment of proinflammatory disease and cancer. The strong interdisciplinary focus will discuss biological systems at the level from a few molecules to the entire organism. Specific focus domain includes: Innate and adaptive immunity, cancer and cancer stem cell, genomic, proteomic and metabolic analysis, imaging, biophysics of immune and cancer response, computational modeling, non-linear analysis, statistical analysis, translational and disease models Types of articles: Viewpoint, commentaries, research letters, research articles, review and methodologies
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Mycoplasma pneumoniae (Mp) is a major human pathogen that causes both upper and lower respiratory infections, and is one of the leading causes of community acquired pneumonia (CAP), accounting for 11–15% of CAP throughout the world. Additionally it is known to induce an inflammatory process which depends on several mechanisms such as virulence of Mp (lipoproteins, community acquired respiratory distress syndrome (CARDS) toxin, oxidative products) and host defenses (cellular immunity and humoral immunity). Although it is a common pathogen, the pathogenesis for Mp infections is not yet fully understood. From the clinical point of view, since the pioneer studies in the 1960s and 1970s on the clinical presentation of Mp associated disease, the diagnostics approaches have changed dramatically leading to a better understanding of the clinical presentation and new issues have emerged - such as antibiotics resistance. The purpose of this Frontiers ebook is to thoroughly review and discuss the clinical presentation in view of the improved diagnostics, microbiological and immunological analysis of Mp infections, with focus on the history of Mp, clinical features of disease, bacterial structure of Mp and mechanism of gliding, clinical and laboratory diagnostics, the role of lipoproteins and Toll-like receptor, CARDS toxin, subtyping of Mp isolates and genome analysis, macrolide resistance and treatment.
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Pathophysiological processes in brain-injured patients can be assessed with an array of methods, with a goal to identify potentially deleterious events, guide treatments and avoid further deterioration. This eBook provides an in-depth exploration into different aspects of neuro-critical care monitoring and how new tools and strategies may be utilized to improve patient outcomes.
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The dairy chain is an integral part of global food supply, with dairy food products a staple component of recommended healthy diets. The dairy food chain from production through to the consumer is complex, with various opportunities for microbial contamination of ingredients or food product, and as such interventions are key to preventing or controlling such contamination. Dairy foods often include a microbial control step in their production such as pasteurization, but in some cases may not, as with raw milk cheeses. Microbial contamination may lead to a deterioration in food quality due to spoilage organisms, or may become a health risk to consumers should the contaminant be a pathogenic microorganism. As such food safety and food production are intrinsically linked. This Research Topic eBook includes submissions on issues relating to the microbiological integrity of the dairy food chain, such as the ecology of pathogenic and spoilage organisms through the dairy farm to fork paradigm, their significance to dairy foods and health, and genomic analysis of these microorganisms.
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Historically the study of the immune system and metabolism have been two very separate fields. In recent years, a growing literature has emerged illustrating how the multiple processes of cellular metabolism are intricately linked to several aspects of immune function and development. This Research Topic covers recent progress in the field now known as “Immunometabolism” and the role of metabolism in immune tolerance. Immune tolerance is operationally defined as a state where a host’s immune system is balanced such that although self-reactive lymphocytes are present, they are kept in check by immune regulation. Perturbations to this homeostasis may result in self-reactive lymphocytes gaining the upper hand and mediating auto-immune disease. Maintenance of immune tolerance involves a large cast of different cell types including effector T cells, regulatory T cells, B cells, stromal cells, dendritic cells and macrophages. Intracellular pathways and individual enzymes of metabolism have been shown to be harnessed by cells of both the adaptive and innate immune system to allow particular immune functions to be achieved. Examples include metabolic enzymes serving ‘moonlighting’ functions in mRNA translation, gene splicing, and kinase activation. Other examples include the requirement for de novo fatty acid synthesis for differentiation into Th17 effectors and CD8 memory T cells or products of the TCA cycle promoting pro-inflammatory cytokine production. Likewise, the availability of extracellular metabolic substrates has a large impact on the maintenance of local immune tolerance. For example, there are different requirements for glucose, glutamine and fatty acids for effector versus regulatory T cell development. Also tolerogenic dendritic cells mediate lowering of extracellular essential amino acids by their enhanced catabolism, promoting the induction of regulatory T cells. The purpose of this Research Topic is to provide an update on the current understanding of the multiple roles for metabolism in regulating the immune system.
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Obesity and its co-morbidities, including atherosclerosis, insulin resistance and diabetes, are a world-wide epidemic. Inflammatory immune responses in metabolic tissues have emerged as a universal feature of these metabolic disorders. While initial work highlighted the contribution of macrophages to tissue inflammation and insulin resistance, recent studies demonstrate that cells of the adaptive immune compartment, including T and B lymphocytes and dendritic cells also participate in obesity-induced pathogenesis of these conditions. However, the molecular and cellular pathways by which the innate and adaptive branches of immunity control tissue and systemic metabolism remain poorly understood. To engage in growth and activation, cells need to increase their biomass and replicate their genome. This process presents a substantial bioenergetic challenge: growing and activated cells must increase ATP production and acquire or synthesize raw materials, including lipids, proteins and nucleic acids. To do so, they actively reprogram their intracellular metabolism from catabolic mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation to glycolysis and other anabolic pathways. This metabolic reprogramming is under the control of specific signal transduction pathways whose underlying molecular mechanisms and relevance to physiology and disease are subject of considerable current interest and under intense study. Recent reports have elucidated the physiological role of metabolic reprogramming in macrophage and T cell activation and differentiation, B- and dendritic cell biology, as well as in the crosstalk of immune cells with endothelial and stem cells. It is also becoming increasingly evident that alterations of metabolic pathways play a major role in the pathogenesis of chronic inflammatory disorders. Due to the scientific distance between immunologists and experts in metabolism (e.g., clinicians and biochemists), however, there has been limited cross-talk between these communities. This collection of articles aims at promoting such cross-talk and accelerating discoveries in the emerging field of immunometabolism.
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In the southern summer of 1972/73, the Glomar Challenger was the first vessel of the international Deep Sea Drilling Project to venture into the seas surrounding Antarctica, confronting severe weather and ever-present icebergs. A Memory of Ice presents the science and the excitement of that voyage in a manner readable for non-scientists. Woven into the modern story is the history of early explorers, scientists and navigators who had gone before into the Southern Ocean. The departure of the Glomar Challenger from Fremantle took place 100 years after the HMS Challenger weighed anchor from Portsmouth, England, at the start of its four-year voyage, sampling and dredging the world’s oceans. Sailing south, the Glomar Challenger crossed the path of James Cook’s HMS Resolution, then on its circumnavigation of Antarctica in search of the Great South Land. Encounters with Lieutenant Charles Wilkes of the US Exploring Expedition and Douglas Mawson of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition followed. In the Ross Sea, the voyages of the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror under James Clark Ross, with the young Joseph Hooker as botanist, were ever present. The story of the Glomar Challenger’s iconic voyage is largely told through the diaries of the author, then a young scientist experiencing science at sea for the first time. It weaves together the physical history of Antarctica with how we have come to our current knowledge of the polar continent. This is an attractive, lavishly illustrated and curiosity-satisfying read for the general public as well as for scholars of science.
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Obesity and related co-morbidities are increasing worldwide and pose a serious health problem. Changes in lifestyle and diet would be the best remedies to fight obesity; however, many people will still rely on medical aid. Marine organisms have been prolific in the production of bioactive compounds for many diseases, e.g., cancer, and promise to be an excellent source for natural-derived molecules and novel nutraceuticals. Bioactive compounds with beneficial activities towards obesity have been described from diverse marine organism including marine algae, bacteria, sponges, fungi, crustaceans or fish. This Special Issue will highlight the progress in the following topics: Bioactive compounds for the treatment of obesity and obesity-related co-morbidities (diabetes, fatty liver, hyperlipidemia) from marine organisms; the isolation of novel compounds, the bioactivity screening of marine organisms and the elucidation of molecular mode of action of marine bioactive compounds.
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Radiation oncology is uniquely positioned to harness the power of big data as vast amounts of data are generated at an unprecedented pace for individual patients in imaging studies and radiation treatments worldwide. The big data encountered in the radiotherapy clinic may include patient demographics stored in the electronic medical record (EMR) systems, plan settings and dose volumetric information of the tumors and normal tissues generated by treatment planning systems (TPS), anatomical and functional information from diagnostic and therapeutic imaging modalities (e.g., CT, PET, MRI and kVCBCT) stored in picture archiving and communication systems (PACS), as well as the genomics, proteomics and metabolomics information derived from blood and tissue specimens. Yet, the great potential of big data in radiation oncology has not been fully exploited for the benefits of cancer patients due to a variety of technical hurdles and hardware limitations. With recent development in computer technology, there have been increasing and promising applications of machine learning algorithms involving the big data in radiation oncology. This research topic is intended to present novel technological breakthroughs and state-of-the-art developments in machine learning and data mining in radiation oncology in recent years.
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This book is comprised of important reviews and cutting-edge original research papers concerning electrospun and electrosprayed formulations in drug delivery. Electrospinning and electrospraying have, in recent years, attracted increasing attention in the pharmaceutical sector, with research in the area advancing rapidly. It is now possible to prepare extremely complex systems using multi-fluid processes, and to increase production rates to an industrial scale. Electrospun formulations can be produced under GMP conditions and are in clinical trials. In this volume, we explore a range of topics around electrospinning and electrospraying in controlled drug delivery. Four reviews cover the exciting potential of cyclodextrin-containing fibers and the many potential biomedical applications of electrospun fibers. The use of electrospinning to prepare amorphous systems and improve the dissolution rate and solubility of poorly soluble active ingredients is addressed, and the possibilities of such materials in tissue engineering are comprehensively covered. The six original research papers cover the effect of molecular properties on API release from Eudragit-based electrospun fibers; ferulic acid solid dispersions; electrospun medicines to treat psoriasis; scale up of electrospinning and its use to produce low-dose tablets; transepithelial permeation of drugs released from electrospun fibers, and the possibilities for the synergistic chemophotothermal treatment of cancer.
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The goal of this Special Issue, “Probiotics and Prebiotics in Pediatrics”, is to focus on the importance of pediatric nutrition with probiotics and prebiotics to improve gastrointestinal health in newborn, infants, and children.Specifically, the aim is to clarify if probiotics and prebiotics can influence gut microbiota composition and host-interaction favoring human health and preventing diseases.This new information will provide health care professionals with a widespread, clear and update evidence on probiotics and prebiotics and intestinal gut microbiota in pediatric care.
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It has not been yet clarified whether allergy and asthma are part of the same condition or they follow a parallel path. This Research Topic aims to try and put some light in this parallel march going through crucial topics: from prenatal events to later risk factors such as obesity; and from basic immunology to immunotherapy, both subcutaneous and sublingual. We hope the readers can infer their own conclusions as what is first: egg or chicken.
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Selective and quantitative detection of different kinds of biocomponents plays an important role in biomedical applications, clinical diagnostics, environmental monitoring, toxicology, regenerative medicine and drug delivery. Therefore, multidisciplinary area of magnetic biosensing have been extensively developed in recent years, aiming to create compact analytical devices for non-expensive and low time consuming analysis provided at the point of care by non-skilled personnel. Biological samples exhibit very low magnetic background, and thus highly sensitive measurements of magnetic labels or magnetic nanoparticles enriched units can be performed without further processing. A magnetic biosensor is a compact analytical device in which magnetic transducer converts a magnetic field variation into a change of frequency, current, voltage, etc. Different types of magnetic effects are capable of creating magnetic biosensors with extra high sensitivity. This book describes interesting examples of magnetic materials based biosensors, including the synthesis of model materials for biosensor development, new engineering solutions and theoretical contributions on the magnetic biosensor sensitivity. Book contains 13 research works representing international multidisciplinary teams from Austria, China, Germany, Greece, Iran, Russia, Serbia, Spain, Taiwan and United States of America. It can be useful for PHD students and researches working in the field of magnetic nanomaterials and biomedical applications.
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In the last few years, an increasing number of individuals have adopted a gluten free diet (GFD). A significant proportion of that includes patients affected by celiac disease (CD), who have to follow a strict GFD for medical purposes. However, a high number of individuals are currently following a GFD without medical counseling and without a specific diagnosis needing a gluten withdrawal from the diet. This is due to the frequently incorrect information diffused on the Internet and mass media on the topic of GFD. For these reasons, research on the GFD and its clinical use and biological effects is urgently needed.
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This book is the definitive reference regarding the global status of melioidosis in 2018. Melioidosis is one of the most neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), so much so that it is not even included in the WHO list of NTDs. Yet modeling suggests that it kills more people worldwide every year than diseases that are much better known, such as leptospirosis and dengue. The reasons for this under-recognition are numerous, including the fact that it mainly affects the disadvantaged rural poor in areas that are poorly supplied with the diagnostic capability to make the diagnosis. In 22 separate articles, expert authors from around the world have summarized what is known about the burden of the disease in humans and animals and the presence of the causative bacterium in the environment in their countries or regions. They have also identified the main obstacles and challenges to establishing the true burden, and to ensure that patients receive accurate diagnosis and optimal care for this all too frequently fatal disease. Rather than focusing on the theoretical risk of the use of Burkholderia pseudomallei as a biological weapon, this book highlights its importance as a clear and present danger to global public health.
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Ribosome inactivating proteins (RIPs) form a vast family of hundreds of toxins from plants, fungi, algae and bacteria. RIP activities have also been detected in animal tissues. They target a single adenine of a ribosomal RNA, thereby blocking protein synthesis and leading intoxicated cells to apoptosis. The role of plant RIPs may be related to plant defense against predators and viruses, plant senescence or bacterial pathogenesis. Most RIPs are no threat to human or animal health. However, several bacterial RIPs are major virulence factors involved in severe epidemic diseases such as dysentery or the hemolytic uremic syndrome that may occur in patients suffering from Shiga toxin-producing entero-hemorrhagic Escherichia coli infection. Several plant RIPs such as ricin toxin, abrin or sarcin have been, or may be involved in accidental or criminal poisonings, political intimidation or bio-suicides. Health crisis, biosafety and biosecurity issues became a major concern and many efforts are made to develop treatments. Finally, RIPs can be engineered into immunotoxins to destroy cancer cells or cells chronically infected by viruses. This book presents the most recent data on all aspects of RIPs including function, diversity and evolution, mechanism, pathophysiology, medical countermeasures and engineering into anticancer drugs.
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This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue Promising Detoxification Strategies to Mitigate Mycotoxins in Food and Feed that was published in Toxins
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Precision nutrition is an emerging concept encompassing an integrated action considering not only the genetic/epigenetic makeup and ethnic aspects of individuals, but other personalized phenotypical features, such as family and individual clinical issues, previous diseases and therapeutic treatments, perinatal nutrition, food likes/dislikes, allergies/intolerances, lifestyle attitudes and patterns, social and cultural circumstances or religious beliefs, etc. In this context, chronic disease prevalence is a global public health problem itself, which is also accompanied by a number of complications, including insulin resistance, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, fatty liver, inflammation, oxidative status and immunocompetence disturbances, and other adverse manifestations related to metabolic syndrome, which may need individualized nutritional approaches. Therefore, the current Special Issue attempts to provide specific nutritional strategies to prevent or treat the complications associated with metabolic syndrome features concerning diabetes, vascular events, liver diseases, dyslipemia, and cancer with a precision nutrition scope.
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The skin is the largest organ of the body and serves as a barrier between the inner and external environments. As such, any problems in the skin can have serious effects on systemic health and well-being. Several studies have established that both nutritional and dietary factors play an important role in the maintenance of normal skin integrity, and can execute a causative, preventative and/or treatment role in a number of skin related conditions. Nutritional factors have been studied for their involvement in skin ageing, acne, inflammation and several chronic immune-mediated disorders such as atopic dermatitis, psoriasis, diabetes, obesity, wounds and various types of skin cancer. The skin condition, in turn, can affect nutritional choices and subsequent nutritional and health status. There are a multitude of mechanisms by which nutraceuticals can counteract adverse skin conditions. Consumption of a diet rich in nutrients and vitamins (nutraceuticals and antioxidants), particularly those derived from fruits and vegetables, not only supports health in general, but also skin maintenance and repair in particular. Epidemiological evidence links consumption of these diets with prevention and mitigation of disease progression. For example, nutraceuticals with anti-oxidative or metal chelating properties are being actively evaluated as natural tools to modulate, prevent or inhibit oxidative processes or modulate advanced glycation end products. However, many other properties of dietary compounds with relevance to skin remain to be characterized. For this Special Issue of Nutrients, we have compiled invited manuscripts describing original research, or reviewing scientific literature examining the role of diets and/or specific nutraceuticals in the prevention and treatment of skin disorders. These articles describe the beneficial effects of plant extracts and plant-derived compounds and their ability to ameliorate diverse skin-related conditions including UV damage, aging, atopic dermatitis, psoriasis, and skin cancer. A comprehensive article summarizes the results of current clinical trials on nutraceuticals for various skin afflicitons. Finally, the outcome and research methods used for studies on nutraceuticals and skin function, and their compliance with European regulations is analyzed. Taken together, this compilation of articles provides an up-to-date view of research into the application of nutraceuticals for skin health, for the researcher and anyone interested in the application of natural, plant-derived agents for treatment of skin disease.
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Mycotoxins are secondary metabolites produced by several fungal species. They can contaminate human food and animal feed, and have been a threat for thousands of years. The gastrointestinal tract is the first target when ingesting mycotoxin-contaminated food or feed. As unlikely as it sounds, the investigations concerning the effects of mycotoxins on the intestine are still in their early stages. This book gathers the most recent advances related to the characterization of the intestinal toxicity of mycotoxins. Substantial data assembled on the damage caused to a number of histological structures and functions of the intestine remove any remaining doubt about this organ being a primary target for the toxicity of mycotoxins. An interesting overview of the detrimental effects of mycotoxins on the gut-hosted microbiota—now regarded as a fully-fledged organ associated with the gut—is also given. Finally, outstanding contributions in this book address questions relating to the suitability of current regulations to protect against alterations of the intestine, and to the efficacy assessment of new detoxification strategies using the intestinal toxicity of mycotoxins as a relevant endpoint.
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Mitochondrial disease constitutes a complex and heterogeneous group of disorders resulting from a defect in mitochondrial respiratory chain (MRC) enzyme activity. In view of the dual regulation of the MRC, exercised by both the mitochondrial and nuclear genome, mutations in either mitochondrial or nuclear DNA can result in a MRC deficiency. Whilst a single organ can be affected, MRC disorders often result in a multi-organ system presentation with prominent neurological and myopathic features. The diagnosis of MRC disorders can be complex, and requires a coordinated interplay of a number of disciplines. However, biochemical determination of metabolites in blood, cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) and/or urine are generally considered to be first-line investigations for the diagnosis of these disorders, although they lack sensitivity and specificity. Furthermore, there is a lack of consensus on the overall utility of monitoring other biochemical parameters, which may be of diagnostic value. For example, although oxidative stress may contribute to the pathogenesis of mitochondrial disorders, few centers monitor this as part of their diagnostic repertoire. Therefore, the purpose of this Special Issue was to highlight potential biomarkers of mitochondrial disease and to discuss the appropriateness of biochemical markers to monitor disease progression and therapeutic intervention.
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"This collaborative work provides a detailed snapshot of child oral health in Australia. In doing so, it describes the levels of dental caries and its components, dental fluorosis and other oral health conditions and how they vary by social characteristics. It also describes protective factors such as toothbrushing, the use of fluoridated toothpastes and making dental visits. The 2012–14 National Child Oral Health Survey (NCOHS) was a cross-sectional study of the child population aged 5 to 14 years in Australia. A total of 24,664 children from 841 participating schools completed the study. The study sample was selected in a complex multistage, stratified sampling design. Sophisticated weighting procedure was employed to adjust for variations in probabilities of selection and response rates. Therefore, this report presents estimates as representative of child oral health in Australia. Information was collected via a parental questionnaire and a detailed dental examination by trained dental professionals. Despite some improvement, child oral health has remained a significant population health issue in Australia in the 21st Century. The evidence described in this book has pointed to substantial social patterning of oral health status, dental service use and dental and general health behaviours among Australian children. The identification of the numerous factors and the relation between them at an individual child, family, school and community level poses both difficulties and opportunities for programs to make improvements to and reduce social inequalities in child oral health."
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Our understanding of the physiology and biochemistry of the brain has improved dramatically in the last two decades. In particular, the critical role of cations, including magnesium, has become evident, even if incompletely understood at a mechanistic level. The exact role and regulation of magnesium in particular remains elusive, largely because intracelluar levls are so difficult to routinely quantify. Nonetheless, the importance of magnesium to normal central nervous system activity is self-evident given the complicated homeostatic mechanisms that maintain the concentration of this cation within strict limits essential for normal physiology and metabolism. There is also considerable accumulating evidence to suggest alterations to some brain functions in both normal and pathological conditions may be linked to alterations in local magnesium concentration. This book, containing chapters written by some of the foremost experts in the field of magnesium research, brings together the latest in experimental and clinical magnesium research as it relates to the central nervous system. It offers a complete and updated view of magnesium’s involvement in central nervous system function and in so doing, brings together two main pillars of contemporary neuroscience research, namely providing an explanation for the molecular mechanisms involved in brain function, and emphasizing the connections between the molecular changes and behaviour. It is the untiring efforts of those magnesium researchers who have dedicated their lives to unraveling the mysteries of magnesium’s role in biological systems that has inspired the collation of this volume of work.
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When the war was over in 1945, Germany was a country with no government, little functioning infrastructure, millions of refugees and homeless people, and huge foreign armies living largely off the land. Large parts of the country were covered in rubble, with no clean drinking water, electricity, or gas. Hospitals overflowed with patients, but were short of beds, medicines, and medical personnel. In these conditions, the potential for epidemics and public health disasters was severe. This is a study of how the four occupiers—Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States—attempted to keep their own troops and the ex-enemy population alive. While the war was still being fought, German public health was a secondary consideration for them, an unaffordable and undeserved luxury. But once fighting ceased and the occupation began, it rapidly turned into a urgent priority. Public health was now recognized as an indispensable component of creating order, keeping the population governable, and facilitating the reconstruction of German society. But they faced a number of insoluble problems in the process: Which Germans could be trusted to work with the occupiers, and how were they to be identified? Who could be tolerated because of a lack of alternatives? How, if at all, could former Nazis be reformed and reintegrated into German society? What was the purpose of the occupation anyway? This is the first carefully researched comparison of the four occupation zones which looks at the occupation through the prism of public health, an essential service fundamentally shaped by political and economic criteria, and which in turn was to determine the success or failure of the occupation.
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The history of early modern medicine often makes for depressing reading. It implies that people fell ill, took ineffective remedies, and died. This book seeks to rebalance and brighten our overall picture of early modern health by focusing on the neglected subject of recovery from illness in England, c.1580–1720. Drawing on an array of archival and printed materials, Misery to Mirth shows that recovery did exist conceptually at this time, and that it was a widely reported phenomenon. The book takes three main perspectives: the first is physiological or medical, asking what doctors and laypeople meant by recovery, and how they thought it occurred. This includes a discussion of convalescent care, a special branch of medicine designed to restore strength to the patient’s fragile body after illness. Secondly, the book adopts the viewpoint of patients themselves: it investigates how they reacted to the escape from death, the abatement of pain and suffering, and the return to normal life and work. At the heart of getting better was contrast—from ‘paine to ease, sadnesse to mirth, prison to liberty, and death to life’. The third perspective concerns the patient’s loved ones; it shows that family and friends usually shared the feelings of patients, undergoing a dramatic transformation from anguish to elation. This mirroring of experiences, known as ‘fellow-feeling’, reveals the depth of love between many individuals. Through these discussions, the book opens a window onto some of the most profound, as well as the more prosaic, aspects of early modern existence, from attitudes to life and death, to details of what convalescents ate for supper and wore in bed.
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"An Equal Burden forms the first scholarly study of the Army Medical Services in the First World War to focus on the roles and experiences of the men of the ranks of the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC). These men, through their work as stretcher bearers and orderlies, provided a range of labour, both physical and emotional, in aid of the sick and wounded. They were not professional medical caregivers, yet were called upon to provide medical care, however rudimentary; they served in uniform, under military discipline, yet were forbidden, as non-combatants, from carrying weapons. Their service as men in wartime, was thus unique. Structured both chronologically and thematically, this study examines both the work that RAMC rankers undertook and its importance to the running of the chain of medical evacuation. It additionally explores the gendered status of these men within the medical, military and cultural hierarchies of a society engaged in total war, locating their service within the context of that of doctors, female nurses and combatant servicemen. Through close readings of official documents, personal papers, and cultural representations, both verbal and visual, it argues that the ranks of the RAMC formed a space in which non-commissioned servicemen, through their many roles, defined and redefined medical caregiving as men’s work in wartime."
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Mass vaccination campaigns are political projects that presume to protect individuals, communities, and societies. Like other pervasive expressions of state power - taxing, policing, conscripting - mass vaccination arouses anxiety in some people but sentiments of civic duty and shared solidarity in others. This collection of essays gives a comparative overview of vaccination at different times, in widely different places and under different types of political regime.Core themes in the chapters include immunisation as an element of state formation; citizens' articulation of seeing (or not seeing) their needs incorporated into public health practice; allegations that donors of development aid have too much influence on third-world health policies; and an ideological shift that regards vaccines more as profitable commodities than as essential tools of public health. A novel lens through which to view changes in concepts of 'society' and 'nation' over time.
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Recent decades have witnessed profound shifts in the politics of medicine and the biological sciences. Members of several professions, including philosophers, lawyers and social scientists, now discuss and help regulate issues that were once left to doctors and scientists, in a form of outside involvement known as ‘bioethics’. The making of British bioethics provides the first in-depth study of the growing demand for this outside involvement in Britain, where bioethicists have become renowned and influential ‘ethics experts’. The book moves beyond existing histories, which often claim that bioethics arose in response to questions surrounding new procedures such as in vitro fertilisation. It shows instead that British bioethics emerged thanks to a dynamic interplay between changing sociopolitical concerns and the aims of specific professional groups and individuals. Highlighting this interplay has important implications for our understanding of how issues such as embryo experiments, animal research and assisted dying became high profile ‘bioethical’ concerns in late twentieth century Britain. And it also helps us appreciate how various individuals and groups intervened in and helped create the demand for bioethics, playing a major role in their transformation into ‘ethics experts’. The making of British bioethics draws on a wide range of materials, including government archives, popular sources, professional journals, and original interviews with bioethicists and politicians. It is clearly written and will appeal to historians of medicine and science, general historians, bioethicists, and anyone interested in what the emergence of bioethics means for our notions of health, illness and morality.
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The Anatomy Quizbook is an interactive learning book that will help students and tutors – indeed anyone interested in anatomy – learn, test and improve their knowledge of the human body. Readers are presented with carefully selected questions and diagrams addressing core learning in clinically-relevant anatomy. This selective rather than exhaustive approach will especially suit time-poor scholars. Regular self-testing will also ensure a robust and strategic understanding of the subject matter. In this first Volume, you can develop your knowledge of fundamental anatomy, including clinically-relevant terminology and the significant parts and operation of the thorax focusing on the heart, lungs, and associated bones, muscles, nerves, blood and lymphatic vessels. abdomen exploring the stomach, intestines, pancreas, liver, gallbladder, kidneys, spleen and their supporting structures (muscles, nerves, blood and lymphatic vessels). pelvis examining the bones, ligaments, vessels and nerves of the pelvic region, the features of male and female pelves, and the major digestive and excretory organs (colon, rectum, bladder and urethra). Whilst developed primarily for students who are studying, or intend to study, medicine, the Anatomy Quizbook will reward all readers who seek to explore and learn about the workings of the human body. Regular users will find much to learn and build on, hopefully leading to further enthusiasm for a valuable subject that underpins much of medicine.
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This is the first book whose subject is the music, sounds and silences of Antarctica. From 2011 until 2014, Australia marked its long-standing connection with Antarctica by celebrating the centenary of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition. The icy continent, with its extremes of climate and environment and unique soundscapes, offers great potential for creative achievements in the world of music and sound. This book demonstrates the intellectual and creative engagement of artists, musicians, scientists and writers. Consciousness of sounds — in particular, musical ones — has not been at the forefront of our aims in polar endeavours, but listening to and appreciating them has been as important there as elsewhere.
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This book consolidates experiences from across Europe on the design, development, implementation and evolution of inter-organisational information infrastructures for healthcare. It provides insights with practical relevance for those involved or interested in the planning and implementation of such infrastructures and includes 11 empirical cases on the introduction of core infrastructural arrangements in different national settings: six cases investigate the use of e-prescriptions and five the public platforms for patient-oriented eHealth services. Both are linked to different types of aims. E-prescription initiatives are usually seen as opportunities to improve healthcare delivery by systematic change (controlling medication costs, improving patient safety and providing rich information for policy making and performance management). Public platforms for patient-oriented eHealth services are seen as opportunities for change and innovation, aiming to strengthen the patients’ role and facilitate a shift from provider-centered healthcare towards patient-centeredness. For both types of initiatives, there is a requirement to mix novelty with pre-existing infrastructural components. The cases are analysed by leading experts in health information systems through a common theoretical framework, exploring the role of the pre-existing sociotechnical basis, i.e. the installed base, and how it fundamentally impacts the evolution of information infrastructures. The book advances an “installed base sensitivity” in decision-making both at the policy/strategy level and at the concrete eHealth design level and shows how practitioners and policy-makers can address the complexity of infrastructures that facilitate information flows across organisational boundaries.
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This book is devoted to innovative medicine, comprising the proceedings of the Uehara Memorial Foundation Symposium 2014. It remains extremely rare for the findings of basic research to be developed into clinical applications, and it takes a long time for the process to be achieved. The task of advancing the development of basic research into clinical reality lies with translational science, yet the field seems to struggle to find a way to move forward. To create innovative medical technology, many steps need to be taken: development and analysis of optimal animal models of human diseases, elucidation of genomic and epidemiological data, and establishment of “proof of concept”. There is also considerable demand for progress in drug research, new surgical procedures, and new clinical devices and equipment. While the original research target may be rare diseases, it is also important to apply those findings more broadly to common diseases. The book covers a wide range of topics and is organized into three complementary parts. The first part is basic research for innovative medicine, the second is translational research for innovative medicine, and the third is new technology for innovative medicine. This book helps to understand innovative medicine and to make progress in its realization.
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This open access book is an overview on CT/X-ray contrast media designed for radiologists and other medical specialists who use contrast media in imaging and interventional procedures as well as related scientists on the use and pharmaceutical aspects of X-ray contrast media. The overall goal of this book is to provide a comprehensive overview relevant for the optimal use of x-ray contrast media covering next to the historic development, their structure and properties also practical information for handling of contrast media, and explanation of the relevant risks during use and measures for prevention and treatment of potential side effects.
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We appreciate your willingness to contribute an article to the upcoming Special Issue of the Journal of Clinical Medicine, which will focus on “AML in the Molecular Age: From Biology to Clinical Management”. In this Special Issue, we aim to discuss important scientific and clinical ongoing activities in AML. Scientific subjects will include articles concerning the molecular abnormalities, epigenetic mechanisms of disease/therapy as well as the role of the immune system in AML. Very interesting and uncommon subjects will include discussions of extramedullary disease and evaluations of the central nervous system by various imaging techniques. Experts will describe the role of hypomethylating agents in the management of AML and currently emerging and promising investigational therapies. Specifics of treament of pediatric and younger patients with AML. Clinical success relies greatly on supportive therapy, and we will discuss supportive therapy, including infection prophylaxis. Allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation remains the most effective measure for curing aggressive AML, and a variety of topics will be considered: donor selection, age of recipient, which has been increasing seemingly without limit; therefore, recipient/donor assessments are more important than ever in the aging population. Alternative donor use (e.g., cord blood and haploidentical individuals) has been increasing dramatically; when and who should be considered, what is being investigated? With significant changes occurring with respect to both donors and recipients, the pros and cons of using of anti-thymocyte globulin use in conditioning regimens will be also described.
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Micro-bioreactors offer unique opportunities to study biological systems under fluidic conditions. The concept of micro-bioreactors suggests that biological reaction conditions on a large scale can be scaled down to micro-volumes while maintaining performance and functionality. Models and operation principles can be simulated at a smaller scale, either by scaling down organs in the human body, or using bioreactors for the production of biologics. This book highlights these issues with a strong focus on new engineering design. The initial chapters cover the conceptual design of microbioreactors and organ-on-chips, and the role of microbioreactors in tissue engineering for clinical and therapeutic targets. Two chapters are dedicated to microbioreactors for implementing tumor models. Other chapters discuss three-dimensional models for hepatic and cardiac cells for toxicity testing and drug evaluation. Finally, the design of organ chips for cartilage scaffolds and the integration of sensors are covered in separate chapters. We believe the book will have substantial value for researchers active in bioreactor engineering, drug development and cell physiology, as well as readers interested in these topics.
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Vitamin C is a pivotal water soluble electron donor in nature and an essential nutrient in man. Despite its many years as a research focus, new and increasingly regulatory functions of vitamin C in human health are continually being unravelled. This improved mechanistic insight is starting to provide rationales explaining the extensive epidemiological literature that, for decades, has consistently shown strong associations between poor vitamin C status and increased morbidity and mortality. In this Special Issue, we include original research and literature reviews by experts in the field outlining the roles of vitamin C in early, daily and late life, as well as the roles of deficiency in cardiovascular disease, inflammation and cancer.
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The effects of nutrition in chronic conditions, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, and inflammatory bowel disease continue to generate interest among researchers. This stems from the fact that diet is a modifiable risk factor for these diseases, which manifest either as single entities or in co-morbid states in individuals and populations around the world. In particular, the prevalence of diabetes and cardiovascular disease is on the rise, especially in developed countries, but also in developing economies, partly due to lifestyle changes, including diet. For example, ischaemic heart disease is the leading cause of death globally. When combined with stroke, these conditions accounted for 15 million deaths in 2015 and are the world’s greatest killers (WHO, 2017). Furthermore, WHO (2016), reported that there were an estimated 422 million adults who were living with diabetes in 2014. This is significantly higher than the 108 million in 1980, representing a rise in worldwide diabetes prevalence from 4.7% in 1980 to 8.5% in 2014 among the adult population. These chronic conditions and their associated complications have significant implications for morbidity and mortality, and incur huge costs to the health services around the world. The composition of the diet, the proportion and types of macronutrients and micronutrients present in the diet are major contributors to these diseases. In addition, the beneficial effects of nutritional interventions have been well documented although differences remain among researchers with respect to their overall impact. The evaluation of the role of nutrition in chronic conditions draws on its effect on body weight and body composition, glycaemic and insulin excursions, vascular remodeling, and gastro-intestinal dysfunction. Therefore, this Special Issue on “Nutrition and Chronic Conditions” aims to evaluate the effect of nutrition in the development, care, and management of chronic conditions. The primary conditions of interest are diabetes, cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, and inflammatory bowel disease.
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Stroke, a progressively non-communicable disease, is the second leading cause of death after coronary heart disease in developed countries. The present treatment options for stroke are adapting lifestyle practices, diabetes treatment, drugs, and the management of other factors, but no cure is yet available, despite new insights into molecular and therapeutic targets. Discoveries related to explicating the molecular pharmacology in cerebrovascular function and thrombosis have led to significant advancements in the current treatment paradigm for patients with stroke. Hence, this Special Issue invited scientific papers and reviews from researchers to provide solid evidence from a molecular point of view to scrutinize the molecular pharmacology and pathology of strokes. Platelet activation plays a major role in cardio and cerebrovascular diseases. Platelets also play a key role in the hemostatic process and are associated with various pathological events, such as arterial thrombosis and atherosclerosis. While the currently used anti-platelet drugs such as aspirin and clopidogrel demonstrate efficacy in many patients, they exert undesirable side effects. Therefore, the development of effective therapeutic strategies for the prevention and treatment of thrombotic diseases is a significant priority. Recently, precious metal drugs have conquered the subject of metal-based drugs, and several investigators have moved their attention to the synthesis of various ruthenium (Ru) and iridium (Ir) complexes due to their prospective therapeutic values. We have published this e-book about the “Molecular Pharmacology and Pathology of Strokes” and anticipate that readers will find this book useful regarding the significant challenges and current advances that are presently being made in stroke research, with the possibility of inspiring the application of novel drug development to enrich the devotion and treatment of patients with cardiovascular diseases.
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ca. 200 words; this text will present the book in all promotional forms (e.g. flyers). Please describe the book in straightforward and consumer-friendly terms. [Magnesium is universally recognized as an essential nutrient for human life and health. Indeed, magnesium plays an important physiologic role in every organ of the human body. Disturbances of Mg homeostasis have been implicated in the pathophysiology of several diseases, and Mg supplementation has been evaluated in numerous large-scale clinical trials. The World Health Organization has listed magnesium as among those essential nutrients that are consumed in suboptimal amounts by the general population. In particular, this occurs in Western ("Westernized") countries, where a modest to mild Mg2+ deficiency is thought to be common. The consequences of suboptimal Mg intake are largely unknown. A deeper understanding of the link between magnesium intake, its systemic homeostasis, and human pathophysiology is therefore much needed. Here, we have invited the experts to contribute original research or review articles that may help elucidate the pathophysiology of Mg and its underlying molecular mechanisms.]
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This open access book is a step-by-step introduction on how shell scripting can help solve many of the data processing tasks that Health and Life specialists face everyday with minimal software dependencies. The examples presented in the book show how simple command line tools can be used and combined to retrieve data and text from web resources, to filter and mine literature, and to explore the semantics encoded in biomedical ontologies. To store data this book relies on open standard text file formats, such as TSV, CSV, XML, and OWL, that can be open by any text editor or spreadsheet application.
The first two chapters, Introduction and Resources, provide a brief introduction to the shell scripting and describe popular data resources in Health and Life Sciences. The third chapter, Data Retrieval, starts by introducing a common data processing task that involves multiple data resources. Then, this chapter explains how to automate each step of that task by introducing the required commands line tools one by one. The fourth chapter, Text Processing, shows how to filter and analyze text by using simple string matching techniques and regular expressions. The last chapter, Semantic Processing, shows how XPath queries and shell scripting is able to process complex data, such as the graphs used to specify ontologies.
Besides being almost immutable for more than four decades and being available in most of our personal computers, shell scripting is relatively easy to learn by Health and Life specialists as a sequence of independent commands. Comprehending them is like conducting a new laboratory protocol by testing and understanding its procedural steps and variables, and combining their intermediate results. Thus, this book is particularly relevant to Health and Life specialists or students that want to easily learn how to process data and text, and which in return may facilitate and inspire them to acquire deeper bioinformatics skills in the future.
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There has been an observed decrease in the global mortality from cancer, mostly atributable to improved, particularly early, detection and prevention. For many carcinomas and leukaemias in adults, once the disease has reached a certain stage there are no therapies that are able to erradicate the cancer cells and cure patients. There has been progress in the treatment of acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) and remissions are achievable; however, the presence of chemoresistent blast cells leads to most patients relapsing, and relapse is difficult to treat and thus patients die due to their disease. Targeting these resistent cells and the leukaemia stem cells, which sustain the leukaemia, is crucial for an effective therapy for AML. Moreover, an increasing number of diverse mutations have been described in AML cells that disrupt the ability of these cells to undergo differentiation. The use of pro-differentiating agents to drive the blast cells to mature, and subsequently undergo apoptosis, provides another approach to therapy. Differentiation therapy, using all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA), an inducer of granulocyte differentiation, has been highly successful in the case of acute promyeloicytic leukaemia, a sub-type of AML, turning this disease into a curable malignancy.
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Sleep-related symptoms are common in the majority of psychiatric diagnostic categories. The overlap of sleep and psychiatric disorders have been demonstrated in numerous studies. The understanding of sleep and child psychiatry has progressively evolved in the last decade and newer insights have developed regarding the complex interaction between sleep and psychopathology. This collection of articles represents updates on sleep and psychiatric disorders with medical and neurological co-morbidities in children and adolescents.
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At least 20 million children worldwide would benefit from Pediatric Palliative Care (PPC) annually, and eight million children would need specialized PPC services. In the USA alone, more than 42,000 children, 0–19 years, die annually; fifty-five percent of them are infants younger than one year old. Interdisciplinary PPC is about matching treatment to patient goals and is considered specialized medical care for children with a serious illness. It is focused on relieving pain, distressing symptoms, and stress from a serious illness and is appropriate at any age and at any stage, together with curative treatment. The primary PPC goal is to improve the quality of life both for the child and for his/her family. Sadly, advances in the control of symptoms in children dying of life-limiting diseases have often not kept pace with treatment directed at curing the underlying disease. Data reveal that the majority of distressing symptoms in children with an advanced serious illness (such as pain, dyspnea and nausea/vomiting) are not treated, and, when treated, therapy is commonly ineffective. Emerging evidence shows that palliative care involvement results in improved quality of life, as well as prolongation of life. High-quality pediatric palliative care for children with serious illnesses is now an expected standard of medical care. However, there still remain significant barriers to achieving optimal care, related to lack of formal education, reimbursement issues, the emotional impact of caring for a dying child, and most importantly, the lack of interdisciplinary PPC teams with sufficient staffing. Fortunately, considerable advances have been made in recent years providing PPC around the globe both in resource-poor and resource-rich countries through care provided at children’s hospitals, outpatient palliative care clinics, palliative home care, and free-standing children’s hospice houses. This book, authored by leading authorities in the field, is dedicated to describing existing gaps, as well as the achievements made in clinical care, education, training, and research.
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Cadmium (Cd) is an environmental toxicant of continuing public health concern worldwide, because total diet studies have shown that Cd is present in virtually all foodstuffs. Consequently, foods that are frequently consumed in large quantities, such as rice, potatoes, wheat, leafy salad vegetables, and other cereal crops, are the most significant dietary Cd sources. Moreover, Cd has chemical propensities that confer the potential to interfere with the physiological functions of calcium and zinc. Evidence of a wide range of diverse, toxic effects of Cd is increasingly apparent. In this collection, environmental Cd exposure is linked to an increased risk of chronic kidney disease that is known to be a cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Cd is also implicated in an early onset of menarche and deaths from cancer, especially in the uterus, kidney, and urinary tract. Moreover, Cd-induced kidney injury is replicated in Sprague Dawley rats, as is Cd-induced periodontal disease. Experimental studies suggest that the development of kidneys in fetuses and the function of insulin-producing cells may be adversely affected by Cd and that metformin, an anti-diabetic drug, is ineffective in Cd-intoxicated Wistar rats.
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This book focuses on the investigation, development, and modernization of acupuncture in basic research settings as well as in clinical applications. The book contains 13 chapters reporting the latest evidence-based results of acupuncture research and exploring acupuncture in general. Altogether, 44 authors from all over the world contributed to this book.
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This open access book aims to provide a comprehensive but practical overview of the knowledge required for the assessment and management of the older adult with or at risk of fragility fracture. It considers this from the perspectives of all of the settings in which this group of patients receive nursing care.
Globally, a fragility fracture is estimated to occur every 3 seconds. This amounts to 25 000 fractures per day or 9 million per year. The financial costs are reported to be: 32 billion EUR per year in Europe and 20 billon USD in the United States. As the population of China ages, the cost of hip fracture care there is likely to reach 1.25 billion USD by 2020 and 265 billion by 2050 (International Osteoporosis Foundation 2016). Consequently, the need for nursing for patients with fragility fracture across the world is immense. Fragility fracture is one of the foremost challenges for health care providers, and the impact of each one of those expected 9 million hip fractures is significant pain, disability, reduced quality of life, loss of independence and decreased life expectancy.
There is a need for coordinated, multi-disciplinary models of care for secondary fracture prevention based on the increasing evidence that such models make a difference. There is also a need to promote and facilitate high quality, evidence-based effective care to those who suffer a fragility fracture with a focus on the best outcomes for recovery, rehabilitation and secondary prevention of further fracture. The care community has to understand better the experience of fragility fracture from the perspective of the patient so that direct improvements in care can be based on the perspectives of the users.
This book supports these needs by providing a comprehensive approach to nursing practice in fragility fracture care.
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This open access book focuses on diagnostic and interventional imaging of the chest, breast, heart, and vessels. It consists of a remarkable collection of contributions authored by internationally respected experts, featuring the most recent diagnostic developments and technological advances with a highly didactical approach. The chapters are disease-oriented and cover all the relevant imaging modalities, including standard radiography, CT, nuclear medicine with PET, ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging, as well as imaging-guided interventions.
As such, it presents a comprehensive review of current knowledge on imaging of the heart and chest, as well as thoracic interventions and a selection of "hot topics".
The book is intended for radiologists, however, it is also of interest to clinicians in oncology, cardiology, and pulmonology.
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This open access book outlines the challenges of supporting the health and wellbeing of older adults around the world and offers examples of solutions designed by stakeholders, healthcare providers, and public, private and nonprofit organizations in the United States. The solutions presented address challenges including: providing person-centered long-term care, making palliative care accessible in all healthcare settings and the home, enabling aging-in-place, financing long-term care, improving care coordination and access to care, delivering hospital-level and emergency care in the home and retirement community settings, merging health and social care, supporting people living with dementia and their caregivers, creating communities and employment opportunities that are accessible and welcoming to those of all ages and abilities, and combating the stigma of aging. The innovative programs of support and care in Aging Well serve as models of excellence that, when put into action, move health spending toward a sustainable path and greatly contribute to the well-being of older adults.
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Population aging and the associated burden of chronic diseases are one of the main challenges in public health worldwide.This Research Topic on "Active Aging and Disease Management" provides a comprehensive overview of population aging through fourteen comprehensive papers. Chapter 1 discusses an overview of health systems in active and healthy aging, while Chapter 2 focuses on the role of lifestyles, exercise and new technologies. Chapter 3 debates psychological and cognitive issues in aging and finally in Chapter 4, an older people self assessment is proposed and the role of communities and supporters are highlighted. We think that real social and health care integration at community level could be the key point to deliver effective health promotion and preventive intervention. Enjoy the reading!
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This book presents the VISCERAL project benchmarks for analysis and retrieval of 3D medical images (CT and MRI) on a large scale, which used an innovative cloud-based evaluation approach where the image data were stored centrally on a cloud infrastructure and participants placed their programs in virtual machines on the cloud. The book presents the points of view of both the organizers of the VISCERAL benchmarks and the participants.The book is divided into five parts. Part I presents the cloud-based benchmarking and Evaluation-as-a-Service paradigm that the VISCERAL benchmarks used. Part II focuses on the datasets of medical images annotated with ground truth created in VISCERAL that continue to be available for research. It also covers the practical aspects of obtaining permission to use medical data and manually annotating 3D medical images efficiently and effectively. The VISCERAL benchmarks are described in Part III, including a presentation and analysis of metrics used in evaluation of medical image analysis and search. Lastly, Parts IV and V present reports by some of the participants in the VISCERAL benchmarks, with Part IV devoted to the anatomy benchmarks and Part V to the retrieval benchmark.This book has two main audiences: the datasets as well as the segmentation and retrieval results are of most interest to medical imaging researchers, while eScience and computational science experts benefit from the insights into using the Evaluation-as-a-Service paradigm for evaluation and benchmarking on huge amounts of data.
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Single-domain antibodies (sdAbs) represent the minimal antigen binding-competent form of the immunoglobulin domain and have unique properties and applications. SdAbs are naturally produced as the variable domains of the heavy chain-only antibodies of camelid ruminants and cartilaginous fishes, but can also be engineered synthetically from autonomous human or mouse VH or VL domains. The scope of this research topic and associated e-book covers current understanding and new developments in (i) the biology, immunology and immunogenetics of sdAbs in camelids and cartilaginous fishes, (ii) strategies for sdAb discovery, (iii) protein engineering approaches to increase the solubility, stability and antigen-binding affinity of sdAbs and (iv) specialized applications of sdAbs in areas such diagnostics, imaging and therapeutics.
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We appreciate your willingness to contribute an article to the upcoming Special Issue of the Journal of Clinical Medicine, which will focus on “AML in the Molecular Age: From Biology to Clinical Management”. In this Special Issue, we aim to discuss important scientific and clinical ongoing activities in AML. Scientific subjects will include articles concerning the molecular abnormalities, epigenetic mechanisms of disease/therapy as well as the role of the immune system in AML. Very interesting and uncommon subjects will include discussions of extramedullary disease and evaluations of the central nervous system by various imaging techniques. Experts will describe the role of hypomethylating agents in the management of AML and currently emerging and promising investigational therapies. Specifics of treament of pediatric and younger patients with AML. Clinical success relies greatly on supportive therapy, and we will discuss supportive therapy, including infection prophylaxis. Allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation remains the most effective measure for curing aggressive AML, and a variety of topics will be considered: donor selection, age of recipient, which has been increasing seemingly without limit; therefore, recipient/donor assessments are more important than ever in the aging population. Alternative donor use (e.g., cord blood and haploidentical individuals) has been increasing dramatically; when and who should be considered, what is being investigated? With significant changes occurring with respect to both donors and recipients, the pros and cons of using of anti-thymocyte globulin use in conditioning regimens will be also described.
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Scholars contributing to this special issue on “Family Communication at the End of Life” have provided evidence that communication is vital for terminally ill individuals, family members, and healthcare/palliative care specialists. Overall, the fifteen articles in this special issue focus on five questions: First, what are the trends regarding different approaches for beginning the conversation about death and dying earlier rather than later? Second, who is making the end of life decisions and how are they made? Third, how does age and disease impact the way that families communicate at the end of life? Fourth, how does good communication (i.e., satisfying for all participants, effective for addressing needs, fulfilling goals) impact the myriad of complex issues at the end of life? Fifth, what is the significance of exploring and valuing the perspective of the family members’ experiences and recollections of their communication at the end of life with their terminally ill family member as well as with the healthcare providers? Overall, the scholars emphasize that focusing on family communication at the end of life is crucial for improving medical, psychological, and relational outcomes for those dealing with the death and dying process.
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The authors of this book set out a system of safety strategies and interventions for managing patient safety on a day-to-day basis and improving safety over the long term. These strategies are applicable at all levels of the healthcare system from the frontline to the regulation and governance of the system.There have been many advances in patient safety, but we now need a new and broader vision that encompasses care throughout the patient’s journey. The authors argue that we need to see safety through the patient’s eyes, to consider how safety is managed in different contexts and to develop a wider strategic and practical vision in which patient safety is recast as the management of risk over time. Most safety improvement strategies aim to improve reliability and move closer toward optimal care. However, healthcare will always be under pressure and we also require ways of managing safety when conditions are difficult. We need to make more use of strategies concerned with detecting, controlling, managing and responding to risk. Strategies for managing safety in highly standardised and controlled environments are necessarily different from those in which clinicians constantly have to adapt and respond to changing circumstances.This work is supported by the Health Foundation. The Health Foundation is an independent charity committed to bringing about better health and health care for people in the UK.The charity’s aim is a healthier population in the UK, supported by high quality health care that can be equitably accessed. The Foundation carries out policy analysis and makes grants to front-line teams to try ideas in practice and supports research into what works to make people’s lives healthier and improve the health care system, with a particular emphasis on how to make successful change happen.A key part of the work is to make links between the knowledge of those working to deliver health and health care with research evidence and analysis. The aspiration is to create a virtuous circle, using what works on the ground to inform effective policymaking and vice versa. Good health and health care are vital for a flourishing society. Through sharing what is known, collaboration and building people’s skills and knowledge, the Foundation aims to make a difference and contribute to a healthier population.
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The history of science can teach modern men that our understanding of life is to a great extent based on the accuracy of the analytical methods that we use and, on our readiness to oppose dogmatic opinions, which are based on outdated methods and black/white approaches to the major questions raised by mankind in the past. The recent decades have brought a lot of new insights into the fundamentals of the active principles of reactive oxygen species that are necessary for living cells, but which also cause dangerous pathophysiological processes. Accordingly, although they were previously considered to be the most undesired toxic compounds generated as the final products of the oxidative degradation of lipids, reactive aldehydes are now considered to play important roles both in health and in major diseases. Represented mostly by 4-hydroxynonenal (HNE), a substance discovered only fifty years ago, reactive aldehydes are the focus of research not only because of their toxicity but also because of their positive effects regulating the most important metabolic processes such as growth of living cells or the death of cells. Better understanding the interactions between reactive aldehydes and natural or synthetic antioxidant substances might eventually help us to better monitor, prevent and control modern diseases, thus building pillars for the development of the modern, multidisciplinary life sciences and integrative medicine of the 21st century.
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The first real major breakthrough that laid the basis of HLA antibody detection in the field of solid organ transplantation, came with the introduction of the complement dependent cytotoxicity (CDC) test in 1964 by Terasaki and McClelland. Since then, methods for antibody detection have evolved remarkably from conventional cell-based assays to the current advanced solid phase systems on the Luminex platform, with increasing degree of sensitivity and specificity. The latter have been indispensable for more accurate identification of donor specific HLA antibodies in broadly reactive allo antisera, and to guide donor selection and kidney paired exchange programs through virtual crossmatching, in addition to serving as excellent tools for initiating pre-transplant desensitization and post- transplant antibody monitoring. Consensus is evolving on the optimal routine employment of these methods in donor selection strategies along with an understanding of the clinical relevance of antibodies detected by each of them. The immunoassays based on the Luminex platform and flow cytometric beads are however unable to discriminate complement fixing from non-complement fixing HLA antibodies. This is important because the former are considered clinically more pertinent in the peri-transplant period. The C1q assay which is a modification of the solid phase assay based on Luminex single antigen beads, which can be used effectively to monitor high dose IVIG desensitization is essentially a surrogate complement fixing assay, retaining the exquisite sensitivity and specificity of the Luminex platform. Currently, information obtained from these assays is preliminary and much needs to be done to standardize technologies and set a consensus ‘MFI cut off’ for antibody positivity. Besides the overriding influence of anti-HLA antibodies on overall solid organ graft survival, immune response to non-HLA antigens has become a topic of substantial interest in recent years. An ever expanding list of non-HLA antigens has been implicated in graft rejection for various organs, of which the most noted are the Major Histocompatibility Complex class I chain-related molecule A (MICA), Vimentin, Myosin, Angiotensin II type 1 receptor (AT1R), Tubulin and Collagen. MICA is one of the most polymorphic and extensively studied non-HLA antigenic targets especially in renal transplantation. Although there are clear indications of MICA antibodies being associated with adverse graft outcome, to date a definitive consensus on this relationship has not been agreed. Because MICA molecules are not expressed constitutively on immunocompetent cells such as T and B lymphocytes, it is of utmost importance to address the impact of MICA donor specific antibodies (DSA) as compared to those that are non- donor specific (NDSA) on graft outcome. The soluble isoform of MICA molecule (sMICA) that is derived from the proteolytic shedding of membrane bound molecules has the potential to engage the NK-cell activating receptor NKG2D and down-regulate its expression. Consequent to the interaction of NKG2D by sMICA, the receptor ligand complex is endocytosed and degraded and thus suppresses NKG2D mediated lysis of the target by NK cells. Thus interaction between NKG2D and sMICA leads to expansion of immunosuppressive/anergic T cells thereby resulting in suppression of NKG2D mediated host innate immunity. These concept support the possible involvement of an immunosuppressive role for sMICA during allotransplantation as shown recently for heart transplantation. This research topic focuses on the clinical utility of investigating the complete antibody repertoire in solid organ transplantation.
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The Australian Continent: A Geophysical Synthesis is designed to provide a summary of the character of the Australian continent through the extensive information available at the continental scale, as a contribution to the understanding of Australia's lithospheric architecture and its evolution.The results build on the extensive databases assembled at Geoscience Australia, particularly for potential fields, supplemented by the full range of seismological information, mostly from The Australian National University. To aid in cross comparison of results from different disciplines, information is presented with a common projection and scales.
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Macrophages have unique and diverse functions necessary for survival. And, in humans (and other species), they are the most abundant leukocytes in tissues. The Innate functions of macrophages that are best known are their unusual ability to either "Kill" or "Repair". Since killing is a destructive process and repair is a constructive process, it was stupefying how one cell could exhibit these 2 polar – opposite functions. However, in the late 1980’s, it was shown that macrophages have a unique ability to enzymatically metabolize Arginine to Nitric Oxide (NO, a gaseous non – specific killer molecule) or to Ornithine (a precursor of polyamines and collagen for repair). The dual Arginine metabolic capacity of macrophages provided a functional explanation for their ability to kill or repair. Macrophages predominantly producing NO are called M1 and those producing Ornithine are called M2. M1 and M2 – dominant responses occur in lower vertebrates, and in T cell deficient vertebrates being directly driven by Damage and Pathogen Associated Molecular Patterns (DAMP and PAMP). Thus, M1 and M2 are Innate responses that protect the host without Adaptive Immunity. In turn, M1/M2 is supplanting previous models in which T cells were necessary to "activate" or "alternatively activate" macrophages (the Th1/Th2 paradigm). M1 and M2 macrophages were named such because of the additional key findings that these macrophages stimulate Th1 and Th2 – like responses, respectively. So, in addition to their unique ability to kill or repair, macrophages also govern Adaptive Immunity. All of the foregoing would be less important if M1 or M2 – dominant responses were not observed in disease. But, they are. The best example to date is the predominance of M2 macrophages in human tumors where they act like wound repair macrophages and actively promote growth. More generally, humans have become M2 – dominant because sanitation, antibiotics and vaccines have lessened M1 responses. And, M2 dominance seems the cause of ever - increasing allergies in developed countries. Obesity represents a new and different circumstance. Surfeit energy (e.g., lipoproteins) causes monocytes to become M1 dominant in the vessel walls causing plaques. Because M1 or M2 dominant responses are clearly causative in many modern diseases, there is great potential in developing the means to selectively stimulate (or inhibit) either M1 or M2 responses to kill or repair, or to stimulate Th1 or Th2 responses, depending on the circumstance. The contributions here are meant to describe diseases of M1 or M2 dominance, and promising new methodologies to modulate the fungible metabolic machinery of macrophages for better health.
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The Tohoku University Graduate School of Dentistry first introduced the concept of “Interface Oral Health Science”, designed to establish and maintain healthy oral cavities, which are home to a number of mixed systems. Included in those systems are: (1) host tissues such as teeth, mucosa, muscle and bone, (2) parasites and microorganisms cohabiting the surfaces of the oral cavity, and (3) biomaterials that are used for the rehabilitation of oral functions. In addition, (4) these systems are subject to severe and complex mechanical forces. Therefore, it is critical to promote dental studies that integrate a wide range of interdisciplinary research as medicine, agriculture, material science, engineering, and pharmacology. With this incentive, international symposiums for interface oral health science have been held several times in the past. The concept has since refined and expanded, the result being the “Biosis-Abiosis Intelligent Interface,” and projects aiming at the creation of highly functional and autonomic intelligent interfaces are ongoing. This book brings together a number of studies on incentives and projects by leading authors. Topics include biosis-abiosis interface of dental implants, biomaterials in interface science, biomedical engineering interface, and cell manipulation and tissue regeneration. Readers not only from the field of dentistry but also many related areas will find this book a valuable resource.
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Islamic Perspectives on the Principles of Biomedical Ethics presents results from a pioneering seminar in 2013 between Muslim religious scholars, biomedical scientists, and Western bioethicists at the research Center for Islamic Legislation & Ethics, Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies. By examining principle-based bioethics, the contributors to this volume addressed a number of key issues related to the future of the field. Discussion is based around the role of religion in bioethical reasoning, specifically from an Islamic perspective. Also considered is a presentation of the concept of universal principles for bioethics, with a response looking at the possibility (or not) of involving religion. Finally, there is in-depth analysis of how far specific disciplines within the Islamic tradition — such as the higher objectives of Sharia (maqāṣid al-Sharī'ah) and legal maxims (qawā'id fiqhīyah) — can enrich principle-based bioethics.
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This volume constitutes the Proceedings of the 17th International Symposium on Hearing (ISH), held from 15 to 19 June 2015 in Groningen, The Netherlands. This meeting continued a great tradition of conferences that started in 1969 and has been held every 3 years. It was the second ISH meeting that took place in Groningen.The emphasis for the ISH series has traditionally been on bringing together re-searchers from basic research on physiological and perceptual processes of the au-ditory system, including modeling. However, this tradition has also meant usually excluding great research on other topics related to hearing sciences, such as hearing impairment, hearing devices, as well as cognitive auditory processes. During the ISH 2015, we have aimed to expand to include such relatively new research, while still continuing with the ISH tradition of basic science. As a result, we had a great program that covered many exciting, and some contemporary, topics from a wide range of disciplines related to auditory sciences.
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Universal Health Coverage as defined by the World Health Organization encompasses equal access for all to good quality health services and with no financial risk for those in need of them. As such it is a modern term formulated on western ideas of health, however the philosophy it conveys has existed for many centuries across different regions and cultures of the world. 'Health For All' is based on series of seminars which formed part of the World Health Organization's Global Health Histories project. It explores the development of universal health coverage in diverse contexts, the political and economic trends that effected the running of these schemes, and, not least, critical perspectives into the variety of links between structures of national universal healthcare systems.
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Developmental neuroscience research is on the cusp of unprecedented advances in the understanding of how variations in brain structure and function within neural circuits confer risk for symptoms of childhood psychiatric disorders. Novel dimensional approaches to illness classification, the availability of non-invasive, diverse and increasingly sophisticated methods to measure brain structure and function in humans in vivo, and advances in genetics, animal model and multimodal research now place brain-based biomarkers within reach in the field of psychiatry. These advances hold great promise for moving neuroscience research into the clinical realm. One exciting new area of translational research in child and adolescent psychiatry, is in the use of a variety of neuroscience research tools to track brain response to clinical intervention. Examples of this include: using longitudinal neuroimaging techniques to track changes in white matter microstructure following a training intervention for children with poor reading skills, or using functional imaging to compare brain activity before and after children with bipolar disorder begin taking psychotropic medication treatment. Brain stimulation is another cutting-edge research area where brain response to therapeutic intervention can be closely tracked with electroencephalography or other brain imaging modalities. Research using neuroscience tools to track brain response to clinical interventions is beginning to yield novel insights into the etiopathogenesis of psychiatric illness, and is providing preliminary feedback around how therapeutic interventions work in the brain to bring about symptom improvement. Using these novel approaches, neuroscience research may soon move into the clinical realm to target early pathophysiology, and tailor treatments to both individuals and specific neurodevelopmental trajectories, in an effort to alter the course of development and mitigate risk for a lifetime of morbidity and ineffective treatments. Excitement and progress in these areas must be tempered with safety and ethical considerations for these vulnerable populations. This research topic focuses on efforts to use neuroscience research tools to identify brain-based biomarkers of therapeutic response in child and adolescent psychiatry.
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This English-language study is dedicated to questions of gender research and the history of medicine in colonial North Africa. It shows that French psychiatrists described "normal" and "abnormal" behaviors of the colonized in the Maghreb and compared them to those of Europeans who had diagnosed them with "abnormality."
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While mental health care has undergone substantial reforms, little attention has been paid to financing issues. This book addresses this shortcoming and brings more transparency into the complex relationship between mental health care reform, service provision and financing. Additionally, it provides rich information about the characteristics of mental health care financing in Western Europe. The author analyses the recent mental health care reform discourse against the backdrop of broader political economic developments and demonstrates the role of financing arrangements herein. The book vividly shows how financing is related to specific effects for service users and their relatives in the process of change. In the final part practitioners, planers and policy makers find useful guidelines for developing alternative financing approaches including support to improve understanding of financing issues amongst those involved in mental health care.
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Tobacco has become one of the most widely used and traded commodities on the planet. Reflecting contemporary anthropological interest in material culture studies, Anthropology of Tobacco makes the plant the centre of its own contentious, global story in which, instead of a passive commodity, tobacco becomes a powerful player in a global adventure involving people, corporations and public health. Bringing together a range of perspectives from the social and natural sciences as well as the arts and humanities, Anthropology of Tobacco weaves stories together from a range of historical, cross-cultural and literary sources and empirical research. These combine with contemporary anthropological theories of agency and cross-species relationships to offer fresh perspectives on how an apparently humble plant has progressed to world domination, and the consequences of it having done so. It also considers what needs to happen if, as some public health advocates would have it, we are seriously to imagine ‘a world without tobacco’. This book presents students, scholars and practitioners in anthropology, public health and social policy with unique and multiple perspectives on tobacco-human relations.
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In nine lively essays, bioethicist J. David Velleman challenges the prevailing consensus about assisted suicide and reproductive technology, articulating an original approach to the ethics of creating and ending human lives. He argues that assistance in dying is appropriate only at the point where talk of suicide is not, and he raises moral objections to anonymous donor conception. In their place, Velleman champions a morality of valuing personhood over happiness in making end-of-life decisions, and respecting the personhood of future children in making decisions about procreation. These controversial views are defended with philosophical rigor while remaining accessible to the general reader. Written over Velleman's 30 years of undergraduate teaching in bioethics, the essays have never before been collected and made available to a non-academic audience. They will open new lines of debate on issues of intense public interest.
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This widely researched study demonstrates convincingly that neither grandiose promises nor nightmare scenarios have much to do with actual care practices employing telecare. Combining detailed ethnographic studies of nurses and patients involved in telecare with a broad theoretical frameworky from various disciplines, the author concludes that these practices leads to more rather than less intense caring relations, resulting from a spectacular raise in the frequency of contacts between nurses and patients. Patients are much taken with this, not because they feel they are finally able to manage themselves, but because they can ‘leave things to the experts’. The patients find that caring is something that is best done for others. The book frames urgent questions about the future of telecare and the ways in which innovative care practices can be built on facts rather than hopes, hypes or nightmares.
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This monograph focuses on modern femtosecond laser microscopes for two photon imaging and nanoprocessing, on laser tweezers for cell micromanipulation as well as on fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM) in Life Sciences. The book starts with an introduction by Dr. Wolfgang Kaiser, pioneer of nonlinear optics and ends with the chapter on clinical multiphoton tomography, the novel high resolution imaging technique. It includes a foreword by the nonlinear microscopy expert Dr. Colin Sheppard. Contents Part I: Basics Brief history of fluorescence lifetime imaging The long journey to the laser and its use for nonlinear optics Advanced TCSPC-FLIM techniques Ultrafast lasers in biophotonics Part II: Modern nonlinear microscopy of live cells STED microscopy: exploring fluorescence lifetime gradients for super-resolution at reduced illumination intensities Principles and applications of temporal-focusing wide-field two-photon microscopy FLIM-FRET microscopy TCSPC FLIM and PLIM for metabolic imaging and oxygen sensing Laser tweezers are sources of two-photon effects Metabolic shifts in cell proliferation and differentiation Femtosecond laser nanoprocessing Cryomultiphoton imaging Part III: Nonlinear tissue imaging Multiphoton Tomography (MPT) Clinical multimodal CARS imaging In vivo multiphoton microscopy of human skin Two-photon microscopy and fluorescence lifetime imaging of the cornea Multiscale correlative imaging of the brain Revealing interaction of dyes and nanomaterials by multiphoton imaging Multiphoton FLIM in cosmetic clinical research Multiphoton microscopy and fluorescence lifetime imaging for resection guidance in malignant glioma surgery Non-invasive single-photon and multi-photon imaging of stem cells and cancer cells in mouse models Bedside assessment of multiphoton tomography.
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The first 1,000 days, from conception to 2 years of age, is a critical window of growth and development. Exposures to dietary, environmental, hormonal, and other stressors during this period have been associated with an increased risk of adverse health outcomes. Researchers using cell culture, animal models, and humans have identified this time as a period of rapid physiological change and plasticity with significant potential for lasting effects. As such, interventions during the first 1,000 days will have the greatest impact on outcomes, particularly in low- and middle-income countries where the need is greatest. To date, there is no single resource that compiles our knowledge of the biology of the first 1,000 days. Our knowledge and understanding of the biology behind the first 1,000 days is still limited. This greater understanding is helping us inform effective nutrition policy and programming. The strength of this book lies in its cross- disciplinary nature that encompasses the full range of human biology, providing a more holistic perspective during this critical time frame. Moreover, we have broadened the scope and included important periods before and after the 1,000 days. We have designed this book as a comprehensive resource for those involved in global health and nutrition policy, strategy, programming, or research. This book will also be a resource for students learning about nutrition and health across the 1,000 days. The book includes an exceptional group of contributors who are experts in their given fields. As biology underlies the core of each discussion, it allows the readers to answer the what and why, and, we hope, the how for new discovery research and more effective interventions. Each chapter in this volume provides insight into a specific life stage, disease state, nutrient, and stressor in the first 1,000 days. As such, each chapter can be read independently, providing a comprehensive overview of that subject. However, there is continuity between chapters allowing this collection of chapters to be read cover to cover. The first chapters set the stage, providing a succinct resource to understand the well-established biological mechanisms that underlie growth regulation and nutrient recommendations throughout the first 1,000 days. The next chapters move on to the evidence behind nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive interventions to combat adverse outcomes and disease states in the first 1,000 days. This book also features emerging research areas, such as the gut microbiome, environmental enteric dysfunction, and the role of epigenetics in health and development. The final chapter pushes the boundaries of discovery research, exploring novel areas such as proteomics and metabolomics, and how insults such as environmental enteric dysfunction affect metabolism in the first 1,000 days. We approached this book with the ambition to shed more light on the biology during 1,000 days, but there was also a need to put the biology into a broader context of nutrition and health. There are still many gaps in our understanding of the biology of the first 1,000 days. It is only by bridging this knowledge gap through research that we can inform effective interventions to improve outcomes during the first 1,000 days.
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This book has three main goals. The first is to celebrate the work of a great public health figure, the late A.J. (Tony) McMichael (1942–2014). The second is to position contemporary public health issues in an interdisciplinary context and in ways that highlight the interdependency between the environment, human institutions and behaviours; a broad approach championed by Tony. The third is to encourage emerging and future public health leaders to advocate for policies and cultural change to sustain and improve human health, from a foundation of objective scholarship. The book’s foreword and 38 chapters were written by people who were inspired by Tony; many of whom worked with him at some point in the last 40 years. Its structure reflects five major public health domains, each of which Tony made major contributions to in an extremely productive academic life: occupational health and safety; environmental and social epidemiology; nutrition and food systems; climate change and health; and ecosystem change and infectious disease. The final section, ‘Transformation’, is dedicated to Tony’s desire for public health scientists to propose adaptive and mitigating solutions to the problems they were observing. Each section contains at least one key publication involving Tony. There is also a selection of artworks from an exhibition which formed part of the conference held to honour Tony at The Australian National University in 2012. This conference formed the first part of Tony’s festschrift, completed by this book.
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This book is intended to be a reference text for veterinarians who provide clinical services to sheep producers. It is directed first and foremost at Australian sheep-raising systems, but the approaches described herein will have wide application in all countries where sheep are raised under extensive grazing conditions. Most of the important conditions of sheep in Australia are relatively straightforward to diagnose, but the establishment of effective and economically sound control strategies is often the most difficult part of health management, particularly for those who are less familiar with sheep production systems. With six initial chapters focusing on providing readers with a basic understanding of the business and science underpinning sheep production, this book focuses its remaining chapters on reproduction and disease conditions, ordered largely on a systems basis. The book provides details about the way disease processes develop and manifest in sheep flocks, with numerous references for those who wish to read further. Australian sheep production is a profitable and fulfilling agricultural pursuit for a large number of farm owners, and this book is intended to assist those who work in the industry to add to the profitability and efficiency of sheep production systems, the quality of sheep products and the welfare of the sheep in those systems.
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Malaria was considered one of the most widespread disease-causing entities in the nineteenth century. It was associated with a variety of frailties far beyond fevers, ranging from idiocy to impotence. And yet, it was not a self-contained category. The reconsolidation of malaria as a diagnostic category during this period happened within a wider context in which cinchona plants and their most valuable extract, quinine, were reinforced as objects of natural knowledge and social control. In India, the exigencies and apparatuses of British imperial rule occasioned the close interactions between these histories. In the process, British imperial rule became entangled with a network of nonhumans that included, apart from cinchona plants and the drug quinine, a range of objects described as malarial, as well as mosquitoes. Malarial Subjects explores this history of the co-constitution of a cure and disease, of British colonial rule and nonhumans, and of science, medicine and empire.
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This book recounts some experiences of young Australians with catastrophic brain injuries, their families and the medical system which they encountered. Whilst most of the events described occurred two to three decades ago they raise questions relevant to contemporary medical practice. The patients whose stories are told were deemed to be ‘unsuitable for rehabilitation’ and their early placement in nursing homes was recommended. In 2013, it is time to acknowledge that the adage of ‘one size fits all’ has no place in rehabilitation in response to severe brain injury. Domiciliary rehabilitation, when practicable, may be optimal with the alternative of slow stream rehabilitation designed to facilitate re-entry into the community. Patients’ families were impelled to undertake heroic carers’ commitments as a reaction to nihilistic medical prognoses. It is time for the Australian health care system to acknowledge those commitments, and the budgetary burden which they lift from the system by providing family members with support to retrieve career opportunities, most notably in education and employment, which have been foregone in caring. Medical attendants repeatedly issued negative prognoses which were often confounded by the patient’s long term progress. Hopefully, those undertaking the acute care of young people with severe brain injury will strive to acquire an open mind and recognise that a prognosis based on a snapshot observation of the patient, without any longer term contact provides a flawed basis for a prognosis. The story of these patients and of Dr Ted Freeman has wider implications.
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Mass vaccination campaigns are political projects that presume to protect individuals, communities, and societies. Like other pervasive expressions of state power - taxing, policing, conscripting - mass vaccination arouses anxiety in some people but sentiments of civic duty and shared solidarity in others. This collection of essays gives a comparative overview of vaccination at different times, in widely different places and under different types of political regime. Core themes in the chapters include immunisation as an element of state formation; citizens' articulation of seeing (or not seeing) their needs incorporated into public health practice; allegations that donors of development aid have too much influence on third-world health policies; and an ideological shift that regards vaccines more as profitable commodities than as essential tools of public health. A novel lens through which to view changes in concepts of 'society' and 'nation' over time.
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This volume describes and explains the educational method of Case-Based Clinical Reasoning (CBCR) used successfully in medical schools to prepare students to think like doctors before they enter the clinical arena and become engaged in patient care. Although this approach poses the paradoxical problem of a lack of clinical experience that is so essential for building proficiency in clinical reasoning, CBCR is built on the premise that solving clinical problems involves the ability to reason about disease processes. This requires knowledge of anatomy and the working and pathology of organ systems, as well as the ability to regard patient problems as patterns and compare them with instances of illness scripts of patients the clinician has seen in the past and stored in memory. CBCR stimulates the development of early, rudimentary illness scripts through elaboration and systematic discussion of the courses of action from the initial presentation of the patient to the final steps of clinical management. The book combines general backgrounds of clinical reasoning education and assessment with a detailed elaboration of the CBCR method for application in any medical curriculum, either as a mandatory or as an elective course. It consists of three parts: a general introduction to clinical reasoning education, application of the CBCR method, and cases that can used by educators to try out this method.
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This volume covers aspects of sudden infant and early childhood death, ranging from issues with parental grief, to the most recent theories of brainstem neurotransmitters. It also deals with the changes that have occurred over time with the definitions of SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome), SUDI (sudden unexpected death in infancy) and SUDIC (sudden unexpected death in childhood). The text will be indispensable for SIDS researchers, SIDS organisations, paediatric pathologists, forensic pathologists, paediatricians and families, in addition to residents in training programs that involve paediatrics. It will also be of use to other physicians, lawyers and law enforcement officials who deal with these cases, and should be a useful addition to all medical examiner/forensic, paediatric and pathology departments, hospital and university libraries on a global scale. Given the marked changes that have occurred in the epidemiology and understanding of SIDS and sudden death in the very young over the past decade, a text such as this is very timely and is also urgently needed.
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This stimulating open access volume details the innovative work of the Pan Institution Network for Global Health in creating collaborative research-based answers to large-scale health issues. Equitable partnerships among member universities representing North America, Africa, Asia, and Europe reverse standard cross-national dynamics to develop locally relevant responses to health challenges as well as their underlying disparities. Case studies focusing on multiple morbidities and effects of urbanization on health illustrate open dialogue in addressing HIV, maternal/child health, diabetes, and other major concerns. These instructive examples model collaborations between global North and South as meaningful steps toward the emerging global future of public health.Included in the coverage: Building sustainable networks: introducing the Pan Institution Network for Global Health Fostering dialogues in global health education: a graduate and undergraduate approach Provider workload and multiple morbidities in the Caribbean and South Africa Project Redemption: conducting research with informal workers in New York City Partnership and collaboration in global health: valuing reciprocityGlobal Health Collaboration will interest faculty working within the field of global health; scholars within public health, health policy, and cognate disciplines; as well as administrators looking to develop international university partnerships around global health and graduate students in the areas of global health, health administration, and public health and related social sciences (e.g., sociology, anthropology, demography)
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Manipulating practices is the first ever collection of critical physiotherapy studies and comes at a time of unprecedented change in the profession. Written as a collaboration between 20 authors, many members of the Critical Physiotherapy Network (CPN), the book uncovers the growing body of critical thinking now emerging in physiotherapy. From topics as diverse as 21st century education, ethics, evidence-based practice, touch, and equine therapy; and approaches as varied as disability and performance studies, feminism, logic, narrative theory, new materialism, and phenomenology, the book explores ways of thinking ‘otherwise’ about physiotherapy. Over 16 chapters written by authors from six different countries, Manipulating practices offers insights from some of physiotherapy’s most radical thinkers. The book is also an innovative venture into open source publishing, making it entirely free to download and read. In keeping with the objectives of the CPN, the chapters expose a range of concepts, ideas and practices to critical scrutiny, and reflect the profession’s growing interest in critiquing taken-for-granted ways of practicing and thinking. Manipulating practices will be of interest to clinicians, lecturers, policy-makers, researchers and students, and will provide new impetus to help physiotherapists imagine how the profession might grow and develop into the future.
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Written by experts from London’s renowned Royal Free hospital, Textbook of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery offers a comprehensive overview of the vast topic of reconstructive plastic surgery and its various subspecialties for introductory plastic surgery and surgical science courses. The book comprises five sections covering the fundamental principles of plastic surgery, cancer, burns and trauma, paediatric plastic surgery and aesthetic surgery. Additional coverage of areas in which reconstructive surgery techniques are called upon includes abdominal wall reconstruction, ear reconstruction and genital reconstruction. The broad scope of this volume makes this a unique contribution to the field. Heavily illustrated throughout, Textbook of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery is essential reading for anyone interested in furthering their knowledge of this exciting field.
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The practice of sex-selective abortion is on the rise globally, stirring debates about gender inequality, medical ethics and reproductive autonomy. This book is the first ethnography to document practices of sex selection in Viet Nam. It shows how and why abortions are used to select the sex of children and how Vietnamese individuals and health professionals are implicated in this illicit and controversial practice. Telling the stories of women who have undergone sex-selective abortions, it traces their passage through sex determination and abortion decision-making phases, and investigates their experiences during and after their sex-selective abortions. It describes the turmoil experienced by individuals who undergo such abortions and explores their interactions with the spectrum of social actors and health institutions that facilitate practices of sex selection.
As the first ethnographic study on sex-selective abortions in Viet Nam, this book delves into socially sensitive terrain and sheds light on personally fraught individual experiences of reproductive agency. It documents societal responses to sex-selective abortions in Viet Nam and identifies gaps in the state’s capacity to regulate reproductive desire in a marketised economy. A resource for researchers, it contributes to ongoing debates on sex selection and provides a framework for developing relevant social policies, interventions and support services.
‘This pioneering study offers a nuanced and sensitive account of sex-selective abortion as human experience. Through thought provoking case studies, the book provides rare ethnographic documentation of the complex quandaries that arise as selective reproductive technologies are routinised across the globe.’
— Tine M. Gammeltoft, Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen
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This book explores the impact that professional volunteers have on the low resource countries they choose to spend time in. Whilst individual volunteering may be of immediate benefit to individual patients, this intervention may have detrimental effects on local health systems; distorting labour markets, accentuating dependencies and creating opportunities for corruption. Improved volunteer deployment may avoid these risks and present opportunities for sustainable systems change. The empirical research presented in this book stems from a specific volunteering intervention funded by the Tropical Health Education Trust and focused on improving maternal and newborn health in Uganda. However, important opportunities exist for policy transfer to other contexts.
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This volume broadens understanding of dentistry and promotes interdisciplinary research across a wide range of related fields, based on the symposium entitled "Innovative Research for Biosis–Abiosis Intelligent Interface 2016". It aims to create highly functional and autonomic intelligent interface by combining highly functional interface science with the technology of an evaluation and a control at the interface, with the various topics of biomaterials, innovation for oral science and application, regenerative oral science, and medical engineering. Since 2002, the Tohoku University Graduate School of Dentistry has hosted “Interface Oral Health Science” several times as the main theme of dental research in the twenty-first century, and this is the sixth proceedings of the symposiums following the ones in 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011, and 2014.
This book benefits not only dental scientists but also other health scientists including medical physicians and pharmacologists, material scientists, engineers, and any scientist who is involved in variety of disciplines.
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This book presents the most current research results and knowledge from five multidisciplinary themes: Vulnerability of Arctic Environments, Vulnerability of Arctic Societies, Local and Traditional Knowledge, Building Long-term Human Capacity, New Markets for the Arctic, including tourism and safety. The themes are those discussed at the first ever UArctic Congress Science Section, St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2016. The book looks at the Arctic from a holistic perspective; how the environment (both marine and terrestrial) and communities can adapt and manage the changes due to climate change. The chapters provide examples of the state-of-the-art research, bringing together both scientific and local knowledge to form a comprehensive and cohesive volume.
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This book presents the VISCERAL project benchmarks for analysis and retrieval of 3D medical images (CT and MRI) on a large scale, which used an innovative cloud-based evaluation approach where the image data were stored centrally on a cloud infrastructure and participants placed their programs in virtual machines on the cloud. The book presents the points of view of both the organizers of the VISCERAL benchmarks and the participants.
The book is divided into five parts. Part I presents the cloud-based benchmarking and Evaluation-as-a-Service paradigm that the VISCERAL benchmarks used. Part II focuses on the datasets of medical images annotated with ground truth created in VISCERAL that continue to be available for research. It also covers the practical aspects of obtaining permission to use medical data and manually annotating 3D medical images efficiently and effectively. The VISCERAL benchmarks are described in Part III, including a presentation and analysis of metrics used in evaluation of medical image analysis and search. Lastly, Parts IV and V present reports by some of the participants in the VISCERAL benchmarks, with Part IV devoted to the anatomy benchmarks and Part V to the retrieval benchmark.
This book has two main audiences: the datasets as well as the segmentation and retrieval results are of most interest to medical imaging researchers, while eScience and computational science experts benefit from the insights into using the Evaluation-as-a-Service paradigm for evaluation and benchmarking on huge amounts of data.
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This book covers the latest in snow sport epidemiology, snow sport injuries and treatment, and biomechanical/mechanical engineering related to snow sports injuries (mechanisms of injury, injury prevention by equipment design, injury prevention by design of resort features, and more). It brings together a collection of papers from the International Congress on Ski Trauma and Safety (the biennal meeting of the International Society for Skiing Safety) and presents the latest research on the effectiveness of winter sports equipment, the behavior of winter sports participants, and the epidemiology and biomechanics of winter sports injuries. This is an ideal book for researchers and professionals working in the field of sports medicine and safety.
This book also:
Covers the latest body of literature dealing with safety in winter sports as well as the prevention and treatment of injuries sustained by participants in these activities
Broadens readers’ understanding of snow sport injury prevention research
Illustrates ways safety standards for snow sports can be improved based on evidence-based research.
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This book is open access under a CC BY license. The narrative of 20th-century medicine is the conquering of acute infectious diseases and the rise in chronic, degenerative diseases. The history of fungal infections does not fit this picture. This book charts the path of fungal infections from the mid 19th century to the dawn of the 21st century.
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This book is open access under a CC BY license and explores the under-researched history of male mental illness from the mid-twentieth century. It argues that statistics suggesting women have been more vulnerable to depression and anxiety are misleading since they underplay a host of alternative presentations of 'distress' more common in men.
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This book is open access under a CC BY license and charts the rise and fall of various self-harming behaviours in twentieth-century Britain. It puts self-cutting and overdosing into historical perspective, linking them to the huge changes that occur in mental and physical healthcare, social work and wider politics.
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This book trains the next generation of scientists representing different disciplines to leverage the data generated during routine patient care. It formulates a more complete lexicon of evidence-based recommendations and support shared, ethical decision making by doctors with their patients. Diagnostic and therapeutic technologies continue to evolve rapidly, and both individual practitioners and clinical teams face increasingly complex ethical decisions. Unfortunately, the current state of medical knowledge does not provide the guidance to make the majority of clinical decisions on the basis of evidence. The present research infrastructure is inefficient and frequently produces unreliable results that cannot be replicated. Even randomized controlled trials (RCTs), the traditional gold standards of the research reliability hierarchy, are not without limitations. They can be costly, labor intensive, and slow, and can return results that are seldom generalizable to every patient population. Furthermore, many pertinent but unresolved clinical and medical systems issues do not seem to have attracted the interest of the research enterprise, which has come to focus instead on cellular and molecular investigations and single-agent (e.g., a drug or device) effects. For clinicians, the end result is a bit of a “data desert” when it comes to making decisions. The new research infrastructure proposed in this book will help the medical profession to make ethically sound and well informed decisions for their patients.
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This book is an essential guide to the medical treatment of thrombosis and presents core principles of anticoagulant therapeutics as well as drug recommendations. Written by recognized experts in the field, this concise, accessible handbook provides a unique and valuable resource in the cardiovascular field, both for those currently in training, and for those already in clinical or research practice.
