Does unemployment worsen babies' health? A tale of siblings, maternal behaviour, and selection.

We study in-utero exposure to economic fluctuations on birth outcomes by exploiting geographical variation in the unemployment rate across local areas in England, and by comparing siblings born to the same mother. Using rich individual data from hospital administrative records for 2003-2012, babies' health is found to be strongly pro-cyclical. This overall result masks marked differences between babies born in the most affluent areas whose health at birth improves in a recession, and babies born in the average-to-lowest income deprived areas whose health deteriorates.

The 5-Phosphatase SHIP2 Promotes Neutrophil Chemotaxis and Recruitment.

Neutrophils, the most abundant circulating leukocytes in humans have key roles in host defense and in the inflammatory response. Agonist-activated phosphoinositide 3-kinases (PI3Ks) are important regulators of many facets of neutrophil biology. PIP3 is subject to dephosphorylation by several 5' phosphatases, including SHIP family phosphatases, which convert the PI3K product and lipid second messenger phosphatidylinositol 3,4,5-trisphosphate (PIP3) into PI(3,4)P2, a lipid second messenger in its own right.

Are more GPs associated with a reduction in emergency hospital admissions? A quantitative study on GP referral in England.

Background: Recent studies have found an association between access to primary care and accident and emergency attendances, with better access associated with fewer attendances. Analyses of an association with emergency admissions, however, have produced conflicting findings.

Aim: This study investigated whether emergency admission rates in an area are associated with 1) the number of GPs, and 2) mean size of GP practice.

Will policy to constrain GP referrals damage health? Evidence using practice level NHS emergency admissions administrative data.

Attempts to control hospital expenditure by managing down General Practitioner (GP) referrals are reoccurring features of UK health policy. However, despite the best efforts of GPs to benchmark referral criteria, patient health may be damaged and other costs created by constraining referrals to targets. This paper adopts an indirect method to indicate whether rationing practice referrals may damage population health by distorting the use of health resources away from patients' interests.

A Negative Feedback Loop Regulates Integrin Inactivation and Promotes Neutrophil Recruitment to Inflammatory Sites.

Neutrophils are abundant circulating leukocytes that are rapidly recruited to sites of inflammation in an integrin-dependent fashion. Contrasting with the well-characterized regulation of integrin activation, mechanisms regulating integrin inactivation remain largely obscure. Using mouse neutrophils, we demonstrate in this study that the GTPase activating protein ARAP3 is a critical regulator of integrin inactivation; experiments with Chinese hamster ovary cells indicate that this is not restricted to neutrophils.

HoxB8 neutrophils replicate Fcγ receptor and integrin-induced neutrophil signaling and functions.

Neutrophils are short-lived, terminally differentiated leukocytes that form an essential part of host immunity and play a key role in acute and chronic inflammation. The analysis of these important cells is hindered by the fact that neutrophils are not amenable to culture, transfection, or transduction. Conditionally HoxB8-immortalized mouse hematopoietic progenitors are suitable for in vitro differentiation of a range of myeloid cells, including neutrophils.

Comparative morbidities and the share of emergencies in hospital admissions in deprived areas: a method and evidence from English administrative data.

Objective: Various studies find that the share of emergencies in hospital admissions is higher in deprived areas, but both the explanation and policy implications are unclear. We estimate the extent to which this finding is due to a different disease mix in deprived areas, rather than other explanations such as patient behaviour and general practitioner effectiveness.

Design: Secondary analysis using English Hospital Episode Statistics data, with disease for elective and emergency admissions in 2008/2009 coded at 186 blocks or 1230 categories and aggregated to lower layer super output area of residence.

Small GTPase-dependent regulation of leukocyte-endothelial interactions in inflammation.

Inflammation is a complex biological response that serves to protect the body's tissues following harmful stimuli such as infection, irritation or injury and initiates tissue repair. At the start of an inflammatory response, pro-inflammatory mediators induce changes in the endothelial lining of the blood vessels and in leukocytes. This results in increased vascular permeability and increased expression of adhesion proteins, and promotes adhesion of leukocytes, especially neutrophils to the endothelium.

Melatonin limits paclitaxel-induced mitochondrial dysfunction in vitro and protects against paclitaxel-induced neuropathic pain in the rat.

Chemotherapy-induced neuropathic pain is a debilitating and common side effect of cancer treatment. Mitochondrial dysfunction associated with oxidative stress in peripheral nerves has been implicated in the underlying mechanism. We investigated the potential of melatonin, a potent antioxidant that preferentially acts within mitochondria, to reduce mitochondrial damage and neuropathic pain resulting from the chemotherapeutic drug paclitaxel.

The ageing society and emergency hospital admissions.

There is strong policy interest, in England as elsewhere, in slowing the growth in emergency hospital admissions, which for older people increased by 3.3% annually between 2001/2 and 2012/3. Resource constrains have increased the importance of understanding rising emergency admissions, which in policy discourse is often explained by population aging.

Inflammatory Pain Reduces C Fiber Activity-Dependent Slowing in a Sex-Dependent Manner, Amplifying Nociceptive Input to the Spinal Cord.

C fibers display activity-dependent slowing (ADS), whereby repetitive stimulation (≥1 Hz) results in a progressive slowing of action potential conduction velocity, which manifests as a progressive increase in response latency. However, the impact of ADS on spinal pain processing has not been explored, nor whether ADS is altered in inflammatory pain conditions. To investigate, compound action potentials were made, from dorsal roots isolated from rats with or without complete Freund's adjuvant (CFA) hindpaw inflammation, in response to electrical stimulus trains.

Cross-talk between Rho GTPases and PI3K in the neutrophil.

Neutrophils are short-lived, abundant peripheral blood leukocytes that provide a first line of defense against bacterial and fungal infections while also being a key part of the inflammatory response. Chemokines induce neutrophil recruitment to inflammatory sites, where neutrophils perform several diverse functions that are aimed at fighting infections. Neutrophil effector functions are tightly regulated processes that are governed by an array of intracellular signaling pathways and initiated by receptor-ligand binding events.

Hospital care and costs for homeless people.

The national picture of the comparative costs and diagnoses of hospitalised homeless patients are examined using the 'no fixed abode' flag in English hospital statistics. Comparable studies sample patients in single cities, eg New York and Toronto. The most common diagnosis is substance misuse; the share of homeless NHS patients with this diagnosis is rising, and now equals that found in North American cities.

Randomised controlled trial of GP-led in-hospital management of homeless people ('Pathway').

Homeless people have complex problems. GP enhanced care (Pathway) has shown benefits. We performed a randomised, -parallel arm trial at two large inner city hospitals.

Use of vocalic information in the identification of /s/ and /sh/ by children with cochlear implants.

Objective: When a syllable such as "sea" or "she" is spoken, listeners with normal hearing extract evidence of the fricative consonant from both the fricative noise and the following vocalic segment. If the fricative noise is made ambiguous, listeners may still perceive "s" or "sh" categorically, depending on information in the vocalic segment. Do children whose auditory experience comes from electrical stimulation also display this effect, in which a subsequent segment of speech disambiguates an earlier segment?

Design: Unambiguous vowels were appended to ambiguous fricative noises to form tokens of the words "she," "sea," "shoe," and "Sue.