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Background: Since the Covid-19 pandemic, bronchiolitis outbreaks have been subject to disrupted seasonality, and a major impact on the healthcare system was observed in 2022-23., Objective: The aim of this article is to describe the characteristics of the 2022-23 bronchiolitis epidemic in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, and its impact on the healthcare system., Method: We described the indicators of dynamics, intensity, severity and impact provided by the bronchiolitis monitoring in place, and compared these with those from previous seasons., Results: The intensity of the 2022-23 epidemic (emergency department visits: 23 %; SOS Médecins acts: 15 %), and its impact in terms of bronchiolitis-related hospitalizations (45 %) were higher than in previous seasons (p < 0.05)., Conclusion: In addition to earliness, the 2022-23 bronchiolitis epidemic was significant as regards its exceptional scale and major impact on the hospital system, requiring adaptation of the preexisting healthcare offer in response to the anticipated demand., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.)

Background: Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a serious psychiatric illness that begins most of the time during adolescence. An early and efficacious intervention is crucial to minimize the risk of the illness becoming chronic and to limit the occurrence of comorbidities. There is a global consensus on optimal treatment for adolescents suffering from AN: international guidelines recommend single-family therapy that involves the patient and his/her family. Several family therapy approaches have been developed to date. However, these approaches, which imply a direct questioning of intrafamilial dynamics, are not suitable for all patients and families, and the rates of dropout or poor response to treatment remain quite high. A modality of family therapy has been adapted to AN, known as multi-family therapy (MFT), which consists in bringing together several families whose children suffers from the same illness. Objectives of the present randomized clinical trial are to evaluate whether the implementation of MFT in a multi-disciplinary treatment program for adolescents with AN is at least as efficacious as the use of systemic single-family therapy (SFT), with respect to the evolution of body mass index and other clinical outcomes 12 and 18 months after the start of treatment. A cost-efficiency analysis will also be conducted., Methods: One hundred fifty patients meeting the inclusion criteria will be randomly assigned to one of the two treatment groups. Patients and their families will receive 10 sessions of therapy spread over 12 months. Body weight, eating disorder and other psychopathology-related symptoms, quality of family relationships, and family satisfaction with treatment will be evaluated during the treatment and at an 18 months follow-up. A cost-efficiency analysis will also be carried out., Discussion: We hypothesize that MFT is at least as efficacious as SFT, but at a lesser cost. The identification of possible preferential indications for each technique could help the improvement of therapeutic indications for adolescents suffering from AN and contribute to the earliness of intervention, which is associated with a better outcome., Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT03350594 . Registered on 22 November 2017. IDRCB number 2016-A00818-43.

This article comes within the compass of a research program (entitled CorAge. Bodily Experiences and AgePassages among 9-13 year-olds (ANR-09-ENFT-017) conducted between 2009 and 2013 about the emergence of a "new" age in life--"preadolescence"--as instanced in France (Alsace, Lorraine) and Italy (Venetia). The impressive amount of references to "early puberty" and "precocious puberty", in a context of feeling of a premature end of childhood, led us to make an in-depth study of this issue: first, through an analysis of international and French and Italian medical journals; second, through interviews with health professionals. Following the thesis of Foucault, we assume that the discourses on puberty timing participate of classifications of the child body drenched with moral representations of childhood, especially on gender and age issue. Our results: the question of whether a secular trend in puberty timing even exists continues to be debated between American and European scientists. Second, the terms "puberty", "precocious puberty", "early puberty" have been used to indicate a variety of puberty markers, increasing confusion. A controversy has focused on early breast development in girls, because this attribute is questioning the order of ages and gender. Moreover, psychosocial factors presented as accelerating early puberty, do not demonstrate the relation between earliness and risk behavior. The literature, as it is moved by the female precocity, creates a medical category to objectify the complex and flexible process of puberty and invent female child precocity. These differences between American and European scholars and the interviews with French and Italian health professional show a gap between the international literature and practitioners, clinicians and nurses who regularly work with children: they neither find pubertal advancement, nor increase of "true precocious puberty", although they share concerns about premature feminization of girls (France) or environmental toxicity (Italy) on children., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

How populations respond to climate change depends on the interplay between life history, resource availability, and the intensity of the change. Roe deer are income breeders, with high levels of allocation to reproduction, and are hence strongly constrained by the availability of high quality resources during spring. We investigated how recent climate change has influenced demographic processes in two populations of this widespread species. Spring began increasingly earlier over the study, allowing us to identify 2 periods with contrasting onset of spring. Both populations grew more slowly when spring was early. As expected for a long-lived and iteroparous species, adult survival had the greatest potential impact on population growth. Using perturbation analyses, we measured the relative contribution of the demographic parameters to observed variation in population growth, both within and between periods and populations. Within periods, the identity of the critical parameter depended on the variance in growth rate, but variation in recruitment was the main driver of observed demographic change between periods of contrasting spring earliness. Our results indicate that roe deer in forest habitats cannot currently cope with increasingly early springs. We hypothesise that they should shift their distribution to richer, more heterogeneous landscapes to offset energetic requirements during the critical rearing stage., (© 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd/CNRS.)

Objective: The aim of this study was to assess changes in the ages at which the main stages of reproductive life, including first sexual intercourse in particular, occur in Guadeloupe (French West Indies)., Patients and Methods: We conducted a transverse study of three generations of men and women over the age of 20 years. We recorded age at first intercourse and at first child for all subjects, plus age at menarche, at first pregnancy and at menopause for the women., Results: We collected information for 803 women and 169 men. For women, median age at menarche and at first intercourse had decreased significantly, reaching 12 and 17 years, respectively. The risk of first intercourse occurring before the median age was linked to the earliness of menarche. Age at first pregnancy, at menopause for women and at first intercourse for men remained roughly stable. A non-significant trend towards increasing age at the birth of the first child was observed in both sexes., Discussion and Conclusion: Age indicators for the main stages of reproductive life in Guadeloupe follow the trends reported in most Western countries, including mainland France. However, most of the ages recorded for particular stages are below those in mainland France. The link between age at menarche and sexual precocity may justify targeted awareness programs., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.)

Experimental populations evolving under natural selection represent an interesting tool to study genetic bases of adaptation. Evolution of genes possibly involved in adaptive response can be followed together with the corresponding phenotypic traits. Using experimental populations of hexaploid wheat, we studied the evolution of flowering time, a major adaptive trait that synchronizes the initiation of reproduction and the occurrence of favourable environmental conditions. During 12 generations, three populations were grown in contrasted environments (Vervins North France, Le Moulon near Paris, Toulouse South France) under the influence of natural selection, drift, mutation and recombination. Evolution of diversity at the major gene VRN-1 involved in wheat vernalization response has been analysed jointly with earliness estimated in controlled conditions. Whatever the population, rapid phenotypic changes as well as parallel genotypic variations were observed in the first seven generations, probably as the result of selection acting on this major gene which explains 80% of the trait variation overall. Different allelic combinations at physically unlinked copies of VRN-1 located on distinct genomes (A, B and D) were selected between populations. As theoretically expected, due to population differentiation, a high level of genetic diversity was maintained overall in generation 12. Surprisingly, in two populations out of three, the emergence of new alleles by mutation or migration, coupled with temporal variable selection or frequency-dependent selection, allowed to maintain within-population diversity despite local genetic drift and natural selection. This result may plead for an evolutionary approach of wheat genetic resource conservation.

Background and Aims: Dynamic management (DM) of genetic resources aims at maintaining genetic variability between different populations evolving under natural selection in contrasting environments. In 1984, this strategy was applied in a pilot experiment on wheat (Triticum aestivum). Spatio-temporal evolution of earliness and its components (partial vernalization sensitivity, daylength sensitivity and earliness per se that determines flowering time independently of environmental stimuli) was investigated in this multisite and long-term experiment., Methods: Heading time of six populations from the tenth generation was evaluated under different vernalization and photoperiodic conditions., Key Results: Although temporal evolution during ten generations was not significant, populations of generation 10 were genetically differentiated according to a north-south latitudinal trend for two components out of three: partial vernalization sensitivity and narrow-sense earliness., Conclusions: It is concluded that local climatic conditions greatly influenced the evolution of population earliness, thus being a major factor of differentiation in the DM system. Accordingly, a substantial proportion (approximately 25 %) of genetic variance was distributed among populations, suggesting that diversity was on average conserved during evolution but was differently distributed by natural selection (and possibly drift). Earliness is a complex trait and each genetic factor is controlled by multiple homeoalleles; the next step will be to look for spatial divergence in allele frequencies.

Infantile "subjective" or behavioural audiometry requires highly skilled pediatric audiologists. It is indeed often said in the majority of centres that any subjective examination is impossible under the age of 3, whereas in our clinic we successfully complete extremely precise tests, including in bone conduction, as from the age of 6 months. The strategy and techniques employed to obtain audiometric curves with headphones as from such an age are described. Subsequently, the statistical studies covering over 600 cases are presented, evidencing the earliness, accuracy and reliability of the curves obtained over nearly 15 years in Bordeaux by the method described.

Between 1971 and 1985, at the Haguenau Maternity Hospital, a 20% decrease was observed in the rate of small-for-gestational-age infants (birthweight less than 10th centile using figures from all the study births) among 20,101 births between 28 and 42 weeks. This decrease could not be explained by simultaneous changes in socio-demographic and anthropometric characteristics of the pregnant women, nor a recruitment bias. The earliness of prenatal care at the Maternity Hospital may have played a role in the downward trend. Further research is needed to confirm the influence of prenatal care on the rate of small-for-gestational-age babies.