ObjectivesSerum creatinine (SCr) is a routine marker of kidney injury but also increases with dehydration and muscular work. This study was to elucidate whether increase in SCr is associated with ...more specific markers of kidney tubular and interstitial injury and function, during prolonged heat stress among workers at high risk of chronic kidney disease of non-traditional origin (CKDnt).MethodsUrine monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1), kidney injury molecule-1 (KIM-1), calbindin, glutathione S-transferase-π (GST-π), clusterin, interleukin 18 and albumin, fractional excretion of potassium (FEK), blood haemoglobin, serum potassium, ferritin and erythropoietin were measured before and after harvest in a sample of 30 workers with a ≥0.3 mg/dL SCr increase across harvest (cases), and 53 workers with stable SCr (controls).ResultsUrine MCP-1 (p for differential cross-harvest trend <0.001), KIM-1 (p=0.002), calbindin (p=0.02), GST-π (p=0.04), albumin (p=0.001) and FEK (p<0.001) increased in cases, whereas blood haemoglobin (p<0.001) and serum erythropoietin (p<0.001) decreased.ConclusionSeveral markers of tubular and interstitial injury and function changed as SCr increased across a harvest season, supporting the use of SCr as an indicator of kidney injury in physically active workers regularly exposed to heat stress. Repeated injury similar to that described here, and continued work under strenuous and hot conditions with similarly elevated injury markers is likely to worsen and possibly initiate CKDnt.
The present study suggests that the theoretical framework of evolutionary psychology, in particular theories and models relating to social status and pride, can be used to further our understanding ...of educational motivation. Our assumption was that the desire for social recognition and high status is a universal human phenomenon. Based on this, we suggested that differences in educational motivation among high school students would be related to differences in the extent to which one sees academic achievements as a viable path to social status and source of pride. The present study examined this topic using a cross-sectional design in a sample of high school students. In general, the results provided support for the hypothesis that status and pride are reliably related to educational motivation in high school students, and that the theoretical framework employed could be used to understand differences in educational motivation related to both gender and level of parental education.
A case-control study to evaluate risk factors of gastric cancer was carried out in areas with contrasting incidence rates in Sweden. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 338 of 456 eligible ...histologically confirmed gastric-cancer cases and 669 of 880 eligible control subjects, sampled from population registers and frequency-matched by age and gender. We focused on 2 periods, adolescence and 20 years prior to interview. The association of gastric-cancer risk with dietary habits during adolescence were similar to that found for the period 20 years before interview; high consumption of wholemeal bread, fruit and vegetables was associated with reduced gastric-cancer risk. In addition, cheese, fish and tea had a protective effect during adolescence. Increased gastric-cancer risk was related to whole-milk consumption, but this association decreased substantially in a multivariate analysis including vegetables. There was a positive relationship between gastric-cancer risk and the age at which the interviewees started using refrigerators. This population-based study confirmed the protective effect of a high consumption of vegetables and fruit in the development of gastric cancer, but failed to find any association between intake of meat, sausage, cold cuts, liver, salt, coffee, the habit of frying, smoking or grilling foods, and risk of gastric cancer.
ABSTRACT
Background. Infection with Helicobacter pylori is associated with an increased risk of gastric cancer. Several studies have indicated that the association differs with strain type. We aimed ...to find out if infection with strains lacking the virulence factor CagA is linked to gastric cancer risk.
Materials and methods. In a hospital‐based case–control study, we collected sera from 100 case patients with a newly diagnosed gastric adenocarcinoma and 96 control patients with diseases unrelated to H. pylori status. Antibodies to H. pylori were analyzed by enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), and antibodies to CagA were detected by immunoblot. Logistic regression was used to obtain odds ratios (ORs) as estimates of relative risk, adjusted for potential confounding.
Results. Among the case patients, 81% were ELISA positive and 86% had antibodies to CagA. The corresponding numbers among the controls were 58% and 55%, respectively. ELISA positivity was associated with an increased risk of gastric adenocarcinoma compared to ELISA negativity (OR for gastric cancer regardless of site 3.9, 95% CI 1.9–8.2). The OR was 7.4 (95% CI 3.3–16.6) for CagA‐positive relative to CagA‐negative subjects. Among ELISA‐positive subjects the presence of CagA antibodies increased the risk 3.6 times (95% CI 1.2–11.1). ELISA‐positive CagA‐negative infections were associated with a fourfold increased risk (OR = 4.2, 95% CI 1.0–17.0) compared to no infection (ELISA‐negative and CagA‐negative).
Conclusions. Although patients with antibodies to CagA have the greatest risk of developing gastric cancer, those with CagA‐negative infections run a significantly greater risk than uninfected persons.
The pH dependent release of Cd, Cr, Cu, Mn, Mo, Ni, Pb, V and Zn from different recycled concrete aggregate samples was determined. Geochemical speciation modelling was applied on the concentrations ...of Cu, Cr, Mo and Ni in the leachates in order to predict the measured concentrations and the specific release mechanisms. The model was able to reproduce the characteristic pH dependent release patterns for these elements and reasonable to sometimes excellent matches between the predicted and measured concentrations were achieved. Binding of Mo and Cr as oxyanions (MoO
4
2− and CrO
4
2−) to ettringite was modelled with fair agreement for Cr only. For Cu and Ni, the predicted and measured concentrations agreed well for the partly carbonated sample at high alkaline pH (11–13). The importance of complexation to humic substances was also shown in samples derived from construction debris.
A population-based case-control study of gastric cancer was conducted in areas with contrasting incidence rates in Sweden. Face-to-face interviews were carried out with 338 (74.1%) of all eligible ...cases and 679 (77.3%) of the selected controls. Consumption of selected nutrients during adolescence and 20 years prior to interview was estimated, together with life-time intake of vitamin supplements. Ascorbic acid and beta-carotene had an unequivocal protective effect, but alpha-tocopherol and nitrate were also negatively associated with gastric-cancer risk. In a multivariate analysis including all of these factors, only ascorbic acid remained a significant protective factor. The only macronutrient positively associated with the risk of gastric cancer was fat: intake 20 years prior to interview, but not during adolescence, was found to have a significant impact. Supplementation with vitamins almost halved the risk after adjustment for dietary intake of the corresponding vitamins. While the protective effect of vitamin C and beta-carotene could conceivably be ascribed to other agents in the diet, the strong negative association between supplementation with vitamin C and risk of gastric cancer supports the hypothesis of a protective role of this anti-oxidant.
Helicobacter pylori infection, now considered to be a cause of gastric cancer, is also strongly associated with gastric and duodenal ulcer disease. The discovery of these relations has brought the ...long-controversial connection between peptic ulcers and gastric cancer into focus.
We estimated the risk of stomach cancer in a large cohort of hospitalized patients with gastric or duodenal ulcers, as recorded in the Swedish Inpatient Register between 1965 and 1983. Altogether, 57,936 patients were followed through 1989, for an average of 9.1 years. The standardized incidence ratio--the ratio of the observed number of cancers to the number expected on the basis of the incidence in the Swedish population at large--was used as a measure of relative risk.
After peaking in the first 3 years of follow-up, the standardized incidence ratio for gastric cancer among 29,287 patients with gastric ulcers leveled off at 1.8 (95 percent confidence interval, 1.6 to 2.0) and remained significantly increased throughout follow-up, which was as long as 24 years for some patients. Prepyloric ulcer, diagnosed in 8646 patients, was not associated with a significant excess risk (standardized incidence ratio, 1.2; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.8 to 1.6). In the cohort of patients with duodenal ulcers (24,456 patients), the incidence of gastric cancer was significantly lower than expected. After the second year of follow-up, the standardized incidence ratio was only 0.6 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.4 to 0.7) and remained stable thereafter.
Gastric ulcer disease and gastric cancer have etiologic factors in common. A likely cause of both is atrophic gastritis induced by H. pylori. By contrast, there appear to be factors associated with duodenal ulcer disease that protect against gastric cancer.
We consider the general problem of generating code for the automated selection of the expected best implementation variants for multiple subcomputations on a heterogeneous multicore system, where the ...program's control flow between the subcomputations is structured by sequencing and loops. A naive greedy approach as applied in previous works on multi-variant selection code generation would determine the locally best variant for each subcomputation instance but might miss globally better solutions. We present a formalization and a fast algorithm for the global variant selection problem for loop-based programs. We also show that loop unrolling can additionally improve performance, and prove an upper bound of the unroll factor which allows to keep the run-time space overhead for the variant-dispatch data structure low. We evaluate our method in case studies using an ARM big.LITTLE based system and a GPU based system where we consider optimization for both energy and performance.
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