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Background: After a large increase during the 19th and the 20th century, for two decades the gap in life expectancy between sexes has been reducing in most industrialised countries. In France, where it was specially large, it stopped increasing in the early 1980s and decreased in the most recent years. The paper investigates reasons for these recent trends in France and in the industrialised countries., Methods: Two types of data are used for analysis. Death probabilities from life tables are used for calculating male excess mortality by age and estimating the role of various age groups in life expectancy differences by sex. Sex- and cause-specific mortality rates from INED database for France and from WHO database for other countries are used to assess the part played by various causes of death in the gender gap and its evolution., Results: In France, the stabilisation of the gap is mainly related to the decrease in cardiovascular mortality for men who benefit from the same progress but later than women. In the most recent years, the reduction of the gap is due to the trend reversal of male cancer mortality which is now decreasing, specially because of the reduction of lung cancer mortality. In European countries, taken as examples (England & Wales, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy) cardiovascular mortality is also the main responsible for the decreasing differences. Conversely, in Japan, the gap is still increasing specially for mortality from cancer and respiratory diseases., Conclusions: The recent gap narrowing between male and female life expectancy in France is not a specific case. It does not mean that female health situation is worsening but it is related to an acceleration of progress for males. This reduction will most probably go on in the next years, except if females would enjoy dramatic progression in old age mortality.

Central venous catheters are widely used as vascular accesses for chronic haemodialysis. Different factors may lead to catheter use, whether clinical such as emergency dialysis, or related to practices specific to each dialysis unit or country. The Dialysis Outcomes and Practice Patterns Study is an observational study of more than 10,000 representative patients treated by haemodialysis followed over a two-year period in the United States, Japan, and in five European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom). DOPPS data from the United States and Europe about catheters are reported in this paper. Catheter use is less frequent in Europe than in the US, both in incident and prevalent patients, and in patients who have been seen by a nephrologist in the pre-dialysis period. Tunneled and untunneled catheters are each associated with a significantly higher frequency of access infection compared to native arteriovenous fistulae and grafts. Patients with important comorbidities such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, malnutrition or dementia are more likely to be dialysed with tunneled catheters. Furthermore, patients initiating hemodialysis with a tunneled catheter display higher mortality risk compared to patients starting hemodialysis with a permanent access. In summary, DOPPS data indicate that central venous catheters are used for chronic haemodialysis in patients with a high level of morbidity, and that their utilisation is associated to an additional risk, particularly of infection, and to a lower survival for tunneled catheters. Appropriate care should limit the utilisation of central venous catheters to clinically undisputable indications.

Anorexia nervosa is an adolescent pathology of the present. Its frequency is increasing in the western countries. New data concerning the criteria of diagnosis, the evolution, the prognosis, the psychopathology and the treatment have been drawn of numerous recent studies and are exposed in the paper.