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The KidlQol is a self-evaluation computer-based instrument to assess the quality of life of children aged 6 to 12 years old. This self-evaluation comprises three areas of their subjective quality of life: physical, psychological and social. A computer-assisted tool, composed of 62 items, was developed and set up based upon the results from the evaluation of the initial prototype tool which underwent a series validation steps, tested among children with and without psychological problems. This evaluation lead to the production of a final tool called KidlQuol, which is composed of 44 items. This tool, which utilises computer images to represent real-life situations, is adapted for and accessible to children with a French cultural background aged between 6 and 12 years old. As a generic tool, it could be used among a population of children with various types of handicaps, chronic diseases or psycho-social difficulties.

The objective of this work was to assess the quality of life of children aged 6 to 12 years old. The authors present the different conceptual and operational steps which lead to the construction of a prototype tool. It was a generic tool composed of 63 items which covered the classically described areas of life. Its originality was due to the method of construction used which included children's involvement, to the pictorial representation of real-life situations for children, and to its adaptation for gender. The evaluation of this tool showed a good level of acceptability but statistical analysis revealed some metrological inadequacies leading to the reconsideration of the initial concepts and their methods of exploration. Therefore a new tool was constructed whose validation is presented in a second article in the next issue.

Objective: To assess the frequency of deprivation in pregnant women and estimate the associated medical risks., Material: and methods. A retrospective study of the hospital's computerised data (6149 women) and two prospective studies with health staff (n=534) and social workers (n=85) in two maternity hospitals., Results: In the retrospective study, 17.5% of mothers were deprived. Deprivation was associated both with more difficulties during pregnancy and the perinatal period and with longer hospital stays. The prospective studies confirmed the prevalence of deprivation and gave a more detailed idea of the associated social and demographic characteristics. Deprivation was related with a combination of risk factors with a particularly important influence of economic risk. A quarter of deprived mothers had unwanted pregnancies and according to the social workers approximately 10% of them were not in a position to take care of their baby., Conclusion: This study emphasizes the importance of deprivation as a perinatal medical risk factor. Screening should take place in early pregnancy in order to find the best way to help such families.

The goal of this study is to define possible characteristics in social and medical needs with immigrant foreigners who arrived in France during the last fifty years; and because of the grave situation, it should be necessary to take appropriate and special action. Except identical needs related to similar social and economic situations shared by french and foreign people, the immigration introduces new risk factors: related to ethnologic expression of the illness and cultural breaking, a special assistance is claimed; ethnopsychiatry is one of many possible solutions.

Several sets of data suggest that specific classes of anti-DNA antibodies could be implicated in the genesis of glomerular lesions in SLE. The goal of this work is to investigate if this pathogenic role could be related to the antibodies' genetic origin--from BALB/c or NZBxNZW/F1 mice--or to their physiological origin--induced either by DNA or by polyclonal B cell activation in normal mice. For this purpose, anti-DNA antibody hybridoma clones produced from different origins were subcutaneously injected in BALB/c or NZBxNZW/F1 female mice, followed by studies of immunological parameters and kidney lesions. Results concur that the induced anti-DNA antibodies can play a role in fatal disease development, related to clonal specificity but not to the way of stimulation which was either polyclonal B cell activation or DNA immunization. Also, they emphasize the possible very lethal role of serum circulating DNA.

A method which allows for the quantitative measurement of DNA in plasma is described. After treatment of plasma with phenol, DNA is precipitated by ethanol using gelatin as a coprecipitating agent. DNA is then measured by nick translation labeling. This assay takes a few hours. It is suitable for the measurement of DNA within a range of 0.02 to 20 ng in 10 microliters of plasma. For example, it is applied to the measurement of DNA in plasma from mice injected with bacterial lipopolysaccharide.