From an international perspective, studying trends in adolescent alcohol use in the Netherlands is an important case study. Whereas Dutch adolescents topped the international rankings of alcohol ...consumption in the beginning of this century, they are nowadays found more toward the bottom of these rankings. This study examines time trends in adolescent alcohol use between 1992 and 2015, and tests whether these trends differ according to gender, age group, and educational track. Moreover, it examines to what extent the strictness of parental rule-setting can explain the identified trends.
Using data from ten waves of two nationally representative studies with a repeated cross-sectional design, trends were examined for eight different alcohol measures. Interaction analyses were conducted to test for subgroup differences. All analyses were controlled for educational track, family structure, and ethnicity. For the period 2007–2015, trends in parental alcohol-specific rule-setting were included as a predictor of the trends in adolescent alcohol use.
Adolescent alcohol use increased substantially between 1992 and 2003, and decreased sharply thereafter. Trends were stronger for 12- to 15-year olds, compared to the 16-year olds, and for adolescents attending higher educational tracks, compared to adolescents attending lower educational tracks. Overall, gender differences remained constant over time. Between 2007 and 2015, strict parental alcohol-specific rule-setting increased substantially, and this (partly) explained the strong decline in adolescent alcohol use during this period.
This study shows clear time trend changes in alcohol use among Dutch adolescents. The phenomenal decrease in adolescent alcohol use since 2003 appears to be closely related to a radical change in parenting behaviours surrounding the alcohol use of their children. While national prevention programs may have encouraged stricter parenting behaviours, the decline in alcohol use should be interpreted in a broader context of internationally changing sociocultural norms regarding adolescent alcohol use.
Letter from My Mill de Looze, Laurence
New England review (1990),
09/2018, Volume:
39, Issue:
3
Journal Article
De Looze discusses the moulin (mill) he bought with a childhood friend just before Europe went to the Euro in 1999. The mill is in the Eastern Pre-Pyrenees in France, a couple of hours up the ...autoroute from Barcelona, just over the border from Spain. This is the poorest and least populated part of France: a place of twisting roads with sharp drop-offs on one side and stern, monumental climbs on the other. The soil here is very dry and good only for growing grapes. This region is quite isolated and a world away from the quaint villages of northern France. As one friend who came down to visit from Paris said to him, "Parisians don't even know a place like this exists in their country."
Many people with sore throat seek, and are often inappropriately prescribed, antibiotics.
The objective of this study was to determine the analgesic efficacy of flurbiprofen 8.75 mg microgranules ...versus placebo. These microgranules are a possible alternative treatment for patients with sore throat due to upper respiratory tract infection (URTI).
Randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multiple-dose study conducted at eight primary care sites in Australia.
Participants with sore throat of onset within the past 4 days received either flurbiprofen 8.75 mg microgranules or non-medicated placebo microgranules. Throat soreness, difficulty in swallowing, sore throat pain intensity, sore throat relief, oral temperature, and treatment benefits were all assessed at regular intervals.
Of 373 patients from eight centres, 186 received flurbiprofen 8.75 mg microgranules and 187 received placebo microgranules (intent-to-treat population). Throat soreness was significantly reduced over the first 2 hours after the first dose. Reductions in difficulty in swallowing were observed at all time points from 5 to 360 minutes after the first dose, after taking flurbiprofen microgranules versus placebo. Sore throat relief was also evident at 1 minute and lasted for at least 6 hours. The multiple-dose efficacy results showed reduction of difficulty in swallowing at the end of days 1-3 and sore throat relief at the end of day 1.
Microgranules containing flurbiprofen 8.75 mg provided fast and effective relief from sore throat due to URTI and represent an alternative treatment option to antibiotic therapy.
Aim
To assess the efficacy, safety and tolerability of beloranib treatment for obesity.
Methods
This phase II, double‐blind, randomized study investigated the effects of beloranib suspension (0.6, ...1.2 and 2.4 mg) or placebo, administered subcutaneously, for 12 weeks in 147 participants (primarily white women) with obesity. No diet or exercise advice was administered.
Results
At week 12, beloranib resulted in dose‐dependent progressive weight loss of −5.5 ± 0.5, −6.9 ± 0.6 and −10.9 ± 1.1 kg for the 0.6, 1.2 and 2.4 mg beloranib doses, respectively, compared with −0.4 ± 0.4 kg with placebo (all p < 0.0001 vs placebo). Weight loss with beloranib was associated with corresponding reductions in waist circumference and body fat mass, as well as improvements in lipids, high‐sensitivity C‐reactive protein and blood pressure. Sleep disturbance and gastrointestinal adverse events were more common with beloranib than with placebo; these were generally mild to moderate, transient and dose‐related, and led to more early study withdrawals in participants in the group with the highest dose of beloranib.
Conclusions
In this 12‐week phase II study, beloranib produced clinically and statistically significant weight loss and corresponding improvements in cardiometabolic risk factors. Beloranib appeared safe, and the 0.6 and 1.2 mg doses were generally well tolerated. The 2.4 mg dose was associated with increased sleep latency and mild to moderate gastrointestinal adverse events over the first month of treatment. These findings represent a novel mechanism for producing clinically meaningful weight loss.
Summary
Background
As treatments for constipation become increasingly available, it is important to know when to progress along the treatment algorithm if the patient is not better.
Aim
To establish ...the definition of failure of a treatment to provide adequate relief (F‐PAR) to support this management and referral process in patients with chronic constipation.
Methods
We conducted an international Delphi Survey among gastroenterologists and general practitioners with a special interest in chronic constipation. An initial questionnaire based on recognised rating scales was developed following a focus group. Data were collected from two subsequent rounds of questionnaires completed by all authors. Likert scales were used to establish a consensus on a shorter list of more severe symptoms.
Results
The initial focus group yielded a first round questionnaire with 84 statements. There was good consensus on symptom severity and a clear severity response curve, allowing 67 of the symptom‐severity pairings to be eliminated. Subsequently, a clear consensus was established on further reduction to eight symptom statements in the final definition, condensed by the steering committee into five diagnostic statements (after replicate statements had been removed).
Conclusions
We present an international consensus on chronic constipation, of five symptoms and their severities, any of which would be sufficient to provide clinical evidence of treatment failure. We also provide data representing an expert calibration of commonly used rating scales, thus allowing results of clinical trials expressed in terms of those scales to be converted into estimates of rates of provision of adequate relief.
Interstellar dust in galaxies can be traced either through its extinction effects on the star light or through its thermal emission at infrared wavelengths. Recent radiative transfer studies of ...several nearby edge-on galaxies have found an apparent inconsistency in the dust energy balance: the radiative transfer models that successfully explain the optical extinction underestimate the observed fluxes by an average factor of 3. We investigate the dust energy balance for IC 4225 and NGC 5166, two edge-on spiral galaxies observed by the Herschel Space Observatory in the frame of the H-ATLAS survey. We start from models which were constrained from optical data and extend them to construct the entire spectral energy distribution of our galaxies. These predicted values are subsequently compared to the observed far-infrared fluxes. We find that including a young stellar population in the modelling is necessary as it plays a non-negligible part in the heating of the dust grains. While the modelling approach for both galaxies is nearly identical, we find two very different results. As is often seen in other edge-on spiral galaxies, the far-infrared emission of our radiative transfer model of IC 4225 underestimates the observed fluxes by a factor of about 3. For NGC 5166 on the other hand, we find that both the predicted spectral energy distribution as well as the simulated images match the observations particularly well. We explore possible reasons for this difference and conclude that it is unlikely that one single mechanism is the cause of the dust energy balance problem in spiral galaxies. We discuss the different approaches that can be considered in order to get a conclusive answer on the origin this discrepancy.
We present the highest-resolution (1″) 12CO observations of molecular gas in the dwarf starburst galaxy NGC 625 to date, obtained with Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array. The molecular gas, ...which is distributed in discrete clouds within an area of 0.4 kpc2, does not have well-ordered large-scale motions. We measure a molecular mass in NGC 625 of 5.3 × 106 , assuming a Milky Way CO-to- conversion factor. We use the CPROPS package to identify molecular clouds and measure their properties. The 19 resolved CO clouds have a median radius of 20 pc, a median linewidth 2.5 , and a median surface density of 169 . Larson scaling relations suggest that molecular clouds in NGC 625 are mostly in virial equilibrium. Comparison of our high-resolution CO observations with a star formation rate map, inferred from ancillary optical observations, suggests that about 40% of the molecular clouds coincide with the brightest H ii regions. These bright H ii regions have a range of molecular gas depletion timescales, all within a factor of ∼3 of the global depletion time in NGC 625 of 106-134 Myr. The highest surface density molecular clouds toward the southwest of the galaxy, in a region we call the Butterfly, do not show strong star formation activity and suggest a depletion timescale longer than 5 Gyr.
Abstract This study was designed to determine whether trunk extensor fatigue occurs during low-level activity and whether this is associated with a drop in muscle tissue oxygenation. Electromyography ...(EMG) feedback was used to impose constant activity in a part of the trunk extensor muscles. We hypothesized that electromyographic manifestations of fatigue and decreased oxygenation would be observed at the feedback site and that EMG activity at other sites would be more variable without fatigue manifestations. Twelve volunteers performed 30-min contractions at 2% and 5% of the maximum EMG amplitude (EMGmax) at the feedback site. EMG was recorded from six sites over the lumbar extensor muscles and near-infrared spectroscopy was used to measure changes in oxygenation at the feedback site (left L3 level, 3 cm paravertebral). In both conditions, mean EMG activity was not significantly different between electrode sites, whereas the coefficient of variation was lower at the feedback site compared to other recording sites. The EMG mean power frequency (MPF) decreased consistently at the feedback site only. At 5% EMGmax, the decrease in MPF was significant at the group level at all sites ipsilateral to the feedback site. These results suggest that the limited variability of muscle activity at the EMG feedback site and at ipsilateral locations enhances fatigue development. No decreases in tissue oxygenation were detected. In conclusion, even at mean activity levels as low as 2% EMGmax, fatigue manifestations were found in the trunk extensors. These occured in absence of changes in oxygenation of the muscle tissue.
Optimization of the temporal aspects of task design requires a better understanding of the development of muscle fatigue in the neck and shoulder region over time. The objective of the study was to ...investigate this in two production companies and to determine the relationship between objective and subjective estimates of fatigue. Indicators of fatigue were obtained through electromyography (EMG) during test contractions and ratings of perceived discomfort. EMG amplitude increased during the day in both case studies while mean power frequency decreased only in one case. In both cases, a more detailed frequency analysis of the EMG signals showed an increase in lower frequency power accompanied by a decrease in higher frequency power. Local perceived discomfort in the neck and shoulder increased over the course of the day in both cases. However, no clear relationship between perceived discomfort and objective indicators of fatigue was found. Obtaining sufficient sensitivity to detect effects of temporal aspects of task design probably requires complementary or more refined methods (e.g. EMG arrays, mechanomyography).
Secondary anal fissures: a pain in the a Ruymbeke, H; Geldof, J; De Looze, D ...
Acta gastro-enterologica belgica,
01/2023, Volume:
86, Issue:
1
Journal Article
PDF
