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Aim To investigate patients’ experiences of the assessment of support garments in relation to a parastomal bulge. Material and Methods A qualitative study with 11 in-depth semi-structured interviews. A preceding systematic literature review and a small field study conducted before the study informed the main topics in the interview guide. Results Garments had to fit patients’ needs and personal preferences; being comfortable, flexible and user-friendly. When comorbidities, e.g., incontinence, poor balance, arthritis and visual impairment were not accounted for, garments were unmanageable to patients. Patients needed guidance on how to apply and use the garment. Lack of hands-on guidance left patients confused and helpless with unworn garments. Re-assessment of a garment necessitated several visits to the manufacturer, was time-consuming and stressful for patients and required patients’ physical and mental resources. The garment created new possibilities and challenges; well-assessed garments reduced symptoms from the parastomal bulge while poorly assessed worsened or induced new symptoms and ended up unworn. Conclusion Exploring patients’ expectations, symptoms, needs and comorbidity were vital for patients’ subsequent use and benefit of garments. Tailor-made information, guidance and professional assistance are important in the assessment process. Interventions to support a patient-centred, individual and systematic approach are warranted.

Use of antiosteoporotic medication in the population-based, risk-stratified osteoporosis strategy evaluation (ROSE) screening study, comparing the use of FRAX followed by DXA with usual care, was examined. Screening increased the overall use of medication. Being recommended treatment by the hospital and higher age increased the likelihood of starting medication, but, nevertheless, a large percentage opted not to start treatment.The aim of the study was to examine the impact on medication prescription, adherence, and persistence of osteoporotic medicine in the randomized population-based ROSE screening study for osteoporosis.The Danish ROSE study included a population-based random sample of women aged 65-81 years randomized to either a two-step screening program consisting of FRAX followed by DXA for high-risk participants or opportunistic screening for osteoporosis (usual care). This sub-study on the intention-to-treat population examined the impact of the screening program on antiosteoporotic medication redemption rates, adherence, and persistence using Danish registers.A total of 30,719 of 34,229 women were treatment-naïve. Significantly more participants in the screening group started on antiosteoporotic medication, but no differences in adherence and persistence rates were found. Higher age was associated with a higher likelihood of starting medication. A low Charlson comorbidity score (= 1) was associated with higher treatment initiation but lower adherence and persistence of antiosteoporotic treatment. A total of 31.7% of participants advised to initiate treatment did not follow the advice.Screening for osteoporosis using FRAX followed by DXA increased the overall use of antiosteoporotic medication in the screening group without differences in adherence and persistence rates. A large percentage of participants advised to initiate treatment did nevertheless fail to do so.

This document is a recap of an oral presentation made at Nice during the INSU Astrophysics Detector Workshop 2008. It aims at giving an overview of the achievements and ongoing developments presently carried out at CEA-LETI in the field of Infrared focal plane array. Although most of the research actually performed at LETI is not driven by space oriented application, the excellence and the cutting edge of the outcome is or can be applied to space-dedicated components. This paper focus on features and developments from which astrophysics observation would benefit in the near future on the European market. This encompassed “traditionnal” developments such as format enlargement, low dark current technology such as p/n structure but it also shade light on promising and thrilling development such as avalanche photodiode array. It eventually gives some hints of none MCT technologies processed at LETI.

CNES (French Space Agency) continuously drives the development of detectors for Space based Astronomy. Several promising infrared HgCdTe technologies are being developed at CEA and Sofradir. This paper gives a status on these developments as well as an overview of the associated roadmap.

Calculations to predict the radiation environment for spacecraft in low earth orbit sometimes ignore the contribution from secondary radiation products. However, the contribution of secondaries, particularly neutrons, on heavy spacecraft or in planetary bodies can be of concern for biological systems. The Shuttle Activation Monitor (SAM) and Cosmic Radiation Effects and Activation Monitor (CREAM) experiments provide valuable data on secondary (as well as primary) radiation effects. Comparisons have been made between induced activity from flight-exposed samples, induced activity in a ground-irradiated sample, and Monte Carlo-derived predictions with and without secondaries. These comparisons show that for a flight-exposed sample, predictions which omit the secondary contribution result in a spectrum that is too low by a factor of 2. The addition of the secondaries results in a predicted spectrum that closely matches the measured data.

Zhang et al. (2004) have traced the evolution of epidemiologic concepts through the “fossil record” of selected textbooks, one of which is my 1986 book, Modern epidemiology (Rothman, 1986). I would like to report that it feels better to be the author of a fossil than to be a fossil oneself, however fine that distinction may be — but some might argue with my premise.

A synthetic peptide (CKS-17) homologous to a highly conserved region of the retroviral transmembrane protein p15E was tested for its effect on receptor expression on monocytes. The CKS-17 amino acid sequence is present in several retroviruses including human T-cell lymphotropic virus types I and II and human immunodeficiency virus. The CKS-17 peptide has been previously shown to inhibit monocyte superoxide production, natural killer cell activity, polyclonal B-cell activation, and monocyte-mediated killing by inactivation of interleukin-1. In this study, we demonstrated that the anti-CD4 monoclonal antibody OKT4 binds strongly in vitro to CKS-17-treated human blood monocytes, whereas other antibodies tested were not reactive. This observed binding was the result of direct interaction of OKT4 antibody with the CKS-17 peptide. Moreover, a partial homology was found in amino acid sequence analysis of the CD4 epitope and the CKS-17 peptide.

The hemin enhancing activity on colony formation of leukemic and normal bone-marrow (BM) cells is described. The colony growth of Friend erythroleukemic cells (FL) and mastocytoma cells (M) was markedly enhanced. On the other hand, myeloid leukemic cells (P) and normal bone-marrow cells (BM) were only slightly affected. Inhibition of colony formation was observed with lymphoid leukemic cells (L). For M and BM cells, the horse serum could be replaced by BSA with preservation of hemin enhancing activity.

In the present study we investigated the serum replacing and enhancing activities of erythrocyte lysates, obtained from different animal species, on the growth of murine mastocytoma cells and normal granulocyte/macrophage precursor cells (CFU-C) present in bone marrow. The soft agar technique for cloning hemopoietic cells in vitro was used to quantitate the growth of these cells in culture. Rat, rabbit, guinea pig, mouse and sheep hemolysates were tested for their capacity to replace or to enhance serum as a growth promoter. All hemolysates except mouse were able to replace serum efficiently when mastocytoma cells were cloned. On the other hand, only rat hemolysate proved to be efficient for cloning normal murine CFU-C. Since increasing the concentration of hemolysates in the soft agar medium did not change these results, the differences in activity are unlikely to reflect quantitative variations. However, hemolysates with little or no serum replacing capacity enhanced the clonal growth of normal CFU-C when added to small amounts (2.5%) of horse serum. Trypsin treatment of rat hemolysate destroyed its serum replacing capacity but not its enhancing activity. No correlation was found between the amount of hemoglobin and the replacing activity of each hemolysate. The data obtained in the present study point to the presence of at least two distinct activities in hemolysate: serum replacing and growth enhancing capacities.

The present study was undertaken to test whether lysates prepared from rat erythrocytes can replace serum as in vitro growth promoters for murine leukemic and normal hemopoietic progenitor cells (CFU-C). Normal bone marrow and three leukemic cell lines (P-1081, L-1210 and P-815) were used in all the experiments. The soft agar technique for cloning hemopoietic cells was used to quantitate cell proliferation. Addition of hemolysate to the agar medium at a final concentration of 4% promoted the growth of a maximal number of leukemic colonies, similar to the number of colonies obtained when 20% serum was added to the soft agar. As for normal CFU-C, addition of 10% hemolysate or 40% horse serum promoted the growth of comparable numbers of colonies. Rat hemolysate can therefore replace horse serum as a growth promoter of leukemic and normal CFU-C present in culture. It was also shown that rat hemolysate cannot substitute for the colony stimulating factor (CSF) needed for the cloning of CFU-C. However, addition of hemolysate, CSF and serum to the soft agar cultures promoted a potentiated rather than an additive growth of CFU-C.