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War and healthcare are inextricably linked. In fact, the prevalence of disease in the armed forces can inflict more damage than the enemy. The case of endemic malaria during the Italian campaign of 1943–1945 in the Second World War is an excellent example. The region of Puglia was one of the most malarial regions in Italy and provides a noteworthy case of Anglo-American endeavours to eliminate the mosquito during the Second World War. The high prevalence of endemic malaria in the area represented a substantial threat to the health of Allied forces and as a result to the Allied war effort. This article explores Allied efforts to protect both Italian civilians and Allied troops from malaria, in order to demonstrate how Allied health policies affected the Allied–Italian relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: There are well-known associations of ionizing radiation with female breast cancer, and emerging evidence also for male breast cancer. In the United Kingdom, female breast cancer following occupational radiation exposure is among that set of cancers eligible for state compensation and consideration is currently being given to an extension to include male breast cancer. OBJECTIVES: We compare radiation-associated excess relative and absolute risks of male and female breast cancers. METHODS: Breast cancer incidence and mortality data in the Japanese atomic-bomb survivors were analyzed using relative and absolute risk models via Poisson regression. RESULTS: We observed significant (p ≤ 0.01) dose-related excess risk for male breast cancer incidence and mortality. For incidence and mortality data, there are elevations by factors of approximately 15 and 5, respectively, of relative risk for male compared with female breast cancer incidence, the former borderline significant (p = 0.050). In contrast, for incidence and mortality data, there are elevations by factors of approximately 20 and 10, respectively, of female absolute risk compared with male, both statistically significant (p < 0.001). There are no indications of differences between the sexes in age/time-since-exposure/age-at-exposure modifications to the relative or absolute excess risk. The probability of causation of male breast cancer following radiation exposure exceeds by at least a factor of 5 that of many other malignancies. CONCLUSIONS: There is evidence of much higher radiation-associated relative risk for male than for female breast cancer, although absolute excess risks for males are much less than for females. However, the small number of male cases and deaths suggests a degree of caution in interpretation of this finding. CITATION: Little MP, McElvenny DM. 2017. Male breast cancer incidence and mortality risk in the Japanese atomic bomb survivors -- differences in excess relative and absolute risk from female breast cancer. Environ Health Perspect 125:223-229; http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/EHP151 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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We investigate long-run effects of World War II on socioeconomic status and health of older individuals in Europe. We analyze data from SHARELIFE, a retrospective survey conducted as part of SHARE in Europe in 2009. SHARELIFE provides detailed data on events in childhood during and after the war for over 20,000 individuals in thirteen European countries. We construct several measures of war exposure: experience of dispossession, persecution, combat in local areas, and hunger periods. Exposure to war and, more important, to individual-level shocks caused by the war significantly predicts economic and health outcomes at older ages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The consequences of radiation exposure alone are relatively well understood, but in the wake of events such as the World War II nuclear detonations and accidents such as Chernobyl, other critical factors have emerged that can substantially affect patient outcome. For example, ~70% of radiation victims from Hiroshima and Nagasaki received some sort of additional traumatic injury, the most common being thermal burn. Animal data has shown that the addition of thermal insult to radiation results in increased morbidity and mortality. To explore possible synergism between thermal injury and radiation on brain, C57BL/6J female mice were exposed to either 0 or 5 Gy whole-body gamma irradiation. Irradiation was immediately followed by a 10% total-body surface area full thickness thermal burn. Mice were sacrificed 6 h, 1 week or 6 month post-injury and brains and plasma were harvested for histology, mRNA analysis and cytokine ELISA. Plasma analysis revealed that combined injury synergistically upregulates IL-6 at acute time points. Additionally, at 6 h, combined injury resulted in a greater upregulation of the vascular marker, ICAM-1 and TNF-α mRNA. Enhanced activation of glial cells was also observed by CD68 and Iba1 immunohistochemistry at all time points. Additionally, doublecortin staining at 6 months showed reduced neurogenesis in all injury conditions. Finally, using a novel object recognition test, we observed that only mice with combined injury had significant learning and memory deficits. These results demonstrate that thermal injury lowers the threshold for radiation-induced neuroinflammation and long-term cognitive dysfunction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This project aims to contribute to our understanding of the fraught relations of sleep and wakefulness in late modern America. The essay argues that the experience of sleep loss has been a widely prevalent phenomenon within the ranks of the modern American military. The study focuses on the Second World War, an inflection point in the trend toward sustained and continuous operations and other marathon activities. The nature of much combat in that global conflict demanded of fighting men unprecedented levels of stamina and resiliency, levels which often exceeded the limits of human endurance in terms of maintaining alertness and even consciousness. Under considerable pressure to perform and commonly faced with inhospitable conditions for obtaining rest, fighters struggled to meet the steep challenge of prolonged wakefulness through self-discipline and ingenuity. In this ongoing effort from the 1940s up to the present, American warriors have been aroused by fear, chemical stimulants, and a desire not to betray their comrades' trust. This essay seeks to complicate somewhat our sense of modern manhood by drawing attention to wakeful self-denial as a significant factor in gender identity formation. Acceptance, and sometimes celebration, of sleep deprivation in the armed forces reflected and reinforced cultural values and social practices of “tough-guy” masculinity, and carried those hard values and practices into civil society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Hospital admission and mortality statistics suggested that peptic ulcer reached a peak prevalence in the mid-1950s. During the Second World War, against this background of serious and common pathology, an epidemic of dyspepsia afflicted both service personnel and civilians alike. In the absence of reliable diagnostic techniques, physicians struggled to distinguish between life-threatening illness and mild, temporary disorders. This article explores the context in which non-ulcer stomach conditions flourished. At a time when fear was considered defeatist and overt psychological disorder attracted stigma, both soldiers and civilians exposed to frightening events may have unconsciously translated their distress into gastrointestinal disorders. While the nature of army food was initially identified as the cause of duodenal ulcer in servicemen, the pre-war idea that conscientious and anxious individuals were at high risk gathered support and fed into post-war beliefs that this was a stress-related illness. Diet continued to be employed as a means of management at a time when the nation was preoccupied by food because of the constraints imposed by rationing. The peptic ulcer phenomenon set much of the medical agenda for the war years and conflicted with the commonly held view that the British people had never been healthier. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the intersections of gender, wartime nationalist rhetoric and the production of 'healthy' and 'unhealthy' bodies in both the Canadian workplace and the home during the Second World War. Analysing government, industry and media discourses in relation to oral history interviews with thirty-eight women aircraft workers, we discuss women's distinctive role in shaping the health and morale of the social body during wartime, to ensure the maintenance of family, nation and the Allied war effort. While health in wartime was defined in terms of worker productivity for both men and women, anxiety about women's expanded roles heightened the emphasis on moral respectability as a marker of the 'healthy' female body. This was further complicated by the wartime emphasis on women's responsibilities to boost morale as part of their role in maintaining health and productivity for both men and women. Through such examples as workplace regulations and domestic advice, we examine the increased monitoring of women's individual and collective bodies and the intensified demands on female war workers as they crossed between the public and private spheres. We use our oral histories to examine women's embodied memories of 'healthy' and 'unhealthy' bodies within a regional context and their responses to government, industry and media discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses stress and abdominal illness in Great Britain during World War II. The author explains that Great Britain experienced unexpected changes in abdominal problems during this time. Gastric ailments prevalent during this time include dyspepsia, peptic ulcers, and duodenal ulcers. The author relates this increase in stomach ailments to the incorporation of psychological medicine into the treatment of conditions of the gastrointestinal tract. The article also discusses the historical context of wartime medical complaints.

This paper reappraises the position of medical refugees in Britain between the 1930s and 1950s. Advocates of reforming British medicine in terms of its knowledge base and social provision emerged as strongly supportive of the medical refugees. By way of contrast, an élite in the British Medical Association attempted to exercise a controlling regime through the Home Office Advisory Committee. The effects of these divisions are gauged by reconstructing the complete spectrum of refugees as a total population. Applying this methodology of population reconstruction provides a corrective to the notion of a cohesive ‘medical establishment’ exercising rigid and discriminatory controls. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the relation between war and medical progress, exploring the credibility of the hypothesis stating that the positive medical progress stimulated from the circumstances of war outweigh the miseries produced from the violence of war. The article focuses on medical research undertaken during World War II in prisons, concentration camps, and the ghetto in Warsaw, Poland, which advanced medical knowledge on such subjects as malnourishment, disease processes, and war wounds. The social, moral, and humanitarian aspects of such medical research is also discussed.

Focuses on the military aspects of the health programs of the United States Institute of Inter-American Affairs (IIAA) in Brazil in World War II. Background on IIAA; Institutional setting of the IIAA and the Servicio Especial de Saude Publica (SESP); Malaria control in US military bases of Northeast Brazil; Program in the Amazon region; Program in the Rio Doce Valley.

The article focuses on a study conducted by the War Research Laboratory on public health in Honolulu, Hawaii during the first critical period of World War II. In the period from December 1942 to March 1943, the members of the research staff interviewed 54 physicians in all medical fields and of various racial ancestries: 27 haoles, one Korean, eight Chinese and 17 Japanese. The blackout and curfew were so involved in the various changes of the whole way of life that it would have been difficult to isolate them as factors. Several epidemics or near-epidemics have confronted the community. In the summer of 1943, Hawaii had its first cases of dengue fever. On one side it is argued that the large number of male war workers away from home require more than the normal amount of care from physicians, dentists and nurses because they are not able to get the minor care that women in the home usually give. Servicemen, for instance, were used extensively as mosquito inspectors and were very helpful in virtually eradicating dengue from the community. While doctors of all racial groups have declared their willingness, even eagerness, to be recruited the services in practice seldom accept Oriental physicians.

Studies whether veterans who had scrub thypus in World War II have significant residual damage from the disease. Clinical manifestations; Evidence of psychopathology; Electroencephalographic abnormalities; Causes of acoustic nerve damage.

In Orkney and Shetland (the UK's northernmost islands), during World War II, local people were outnumbered by servicemen stationed there in case of a northern invasion. Such rural-urban population mixing promotes contact between susceptible and infected individuals. We compared childhood leukaemia mortality in wartime and postwar cohorts of Orkney and Shetland children. Childhood leukaemia increased 3.6-fold, (p=0.001) in the wartime, but not in the postwar, cohort compared with national Scottish rates. These findings add to the evidence for infection as a cause of childhood leukaemia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigates the incidence of meningioma among survivors of Hiroshima's atomic bomb in relation to radiation exposure. Details of the 68 patients involved; The high incidence of meningioma among Nagasaki atomic-bomb survivors; Conclusion.