Smoking and height as risk factors for prevalence and 5-year incidence of hearing loss. A questionnaire-based follow-up study of employees in Denmark aged 18-59 years exposed and unexposed to noise.

This paper investigated whether smoking and short stature in adulthood were independent risk factors for hearing loss. We reanalyzed data from the Danish Work Environment Cohort Study (an existing cohort study), on prevalence of self-reported hearing loss among 7,221 employees and on five-year incidence among 4,610 employees. We found that smoking predicted hearing loss incidence and prevalence.

Anticonvulsant and antiepileptogenic effects of GABAA receptor ligands in pentylenetetrazole-kindled mice.

Although animal models based on pentylenetetrazole (PTZ) are widely used, the mechanism by which PTZ elicits its action is not very well understood. At the molecular level, a generally accepted mechanism of PTZ is noncompetitive antagonism of the gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA)(A) receptor complex. By a systematic pharmacological investigation of various GABA(A) receptor ligands, our aim was to gain a better understanding of the GABAergic mechanisms involved in different PTZ-induced seizures.