Background The importance of needs assessment for service development has been widely recognised. Several studies have focused on the associations between ratings of needs by patients and staff and have found clear differences, especially concerning the unmet needs. Methods The present study is part of a Nordic Multicentre study that investigates the life and care of outpatients with a schizophren

In this essay we discuss effects of growing interdependence and internationalization upon national political institutions. More exactly we address the question of how these processes are reflected in matters handled by the Standing Committees of the Swedish Parliament. Generally speaking, the proportion of international issues has increased continuously during the 1970s and the early 1980s. The in

Background Patients with severe chronic hand eczema (CHE) refractory to topical corticosteroids currently have limited treatment options suited for chronic use, and few controlled clinical studies have investigated new therapies in this setting. Objectives To assess the efficacy and safety of oral alitretinoin (9-cis retinoic acid) taken at 10 mg or 30 mg once daily for up to 24 weeks, compared wi

Background Dietary fibre is thought to protect against colorectal cancer but this view has been challenged by recent prospective and intervention studies that showed no protective effect. Methods We prospectively examined the association between dietary fibre intake and incidence of colorectal cancer in 519 978 individuals aged 25-70 years taking part in the EPIC study, recruited from ten European

BdbD is a thiol: disulfide oxidoreductase (TDOR) from Bacillus subtilis that functions to introduce disulfide bonds in substrate proteins/peptides on the outside of the cytoplasmic membrane and, as such, plays a key role in disulfide bond management. Here we demonstrate that the protein is membrane-associated in B. subtilis and present the crystal structure of the soluble part of the protein lacki

We reviewed nine patients at a mean period of 11 years ( 6 to 16) after curettage and cementing of a giant-cell tumour around the knee to determine if there were any long-term adverse effects on the cartilage. Plain radiography, MRI, delayed gadolinium-enhanced MRI of the cartilage and measurement of the serum level of cartilage oligomeric matrix protein were carried out. The functional outcome wa

When a limiting resource (e.g. food) varies drastically between years, and population density is measured in the conventional way as individuals per area, demographic processes such as productivity and survival may erroneously be considered density-independent. We tested the hypothesis that if the variation in a limiting resource is not taken into account in the density measure, this may lead to e

The interaction between beta-cyclodextrin (CD) and gemini surfactant of the type alkyl-alpha,omega-bis(dodecyldimethyl-ammonium bromide) with different spacer lengths of 2, 8, and 10 carbons has been investigated by means of electric conductivity (EC) and proton self-diffusion NMR at 298 K. The formation of a 2: 1 (CD: gemini) complex in a two-step mechanism is observed with the first association

Experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) was induced in a mouse model (C57/BL6) to investigate the antioxidant status of animals at various clinical stages of the disease. For this purpose, blood, brain and spinal cord samples from EAE mice were collected and examined at different scores following post-immunization with myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein (MOG). The clinical sign of mobilit

Limb-girdle muscular dystrophy types 2E and F are characterized by skeletal muscle weakness and often cardiomyopathy and are due to mutations in the genes encoding beta- and delta-sarcoglycan. We previously demonstrated that loss of sarcoglycans in smooth muscle leads to constrictions of the microvasculature that contributes to the cardiac phenotype. It is unclear how vasculature abnormalities aff

Neurofibromatosis is associated with mid-aortic dysplasia, renal artery aneurysms and renal artery ostial stenosis, or occlusions in about 1% of cases. We describe a novel approach to recanalize an occluded renal artery in a 10-year-old girl with neurofibromatosis and difficulty in pharmacologically controlling her hypertension. Normally, when reconstruction is required, an open operative techniqu

Introduction: Radiofrequency ablation of atrial fibrillation (AF) is associated with energy delivery on the posterior left atrial (LA) wall with small but significant risk of life-threatening complications. Anatomy of LA walls has been described, but wall thickness in patients with AF has not been studied systematically. The aim of the present study was to describe LA posterior wall thickness in p

During puberty the mammary gland develops from a rudimentary tree to a branched epithelial network of ducts which can support alveolar development and subsequent milk production during pregnancy and lactation. This process involves growth, proliferation, migration, branching, invasion, apoptosis and above all, tight regulation which allows these processes to take place simultaneously during the co

The bactericidal/permeability-increasing protein (BPI), stored in human neutrophil granulocytes, is cytotoxic against Gram-negative bacteria. Several genes related to BPI cluster on human chromosome 20 and on mouse chromosome 2, but expression and characterization of a BPI ortholog in the mouse have not been reported. We asked whether BPI is structurally and functionally conserved between humans a

This paper focuses on propagation of transient electromagnetic waves in waveguides of general cross section with perfectly conducting walls. The solution of the transient wave propagation problem relies on a wave splitting technique, which has been frequently used in direct and inverse scattering problems during the last decade. The field in the waveguide is represented as a time convolution of a