Real-life practice of reflectance confocal microscopy in France: A prospective multicenter study.

Background: Studies demonstrating the potential utility of reflectance confocal microscopy (RCM) have been performed under experimental conditions.

Objective: To provide an overview of RCM practice in real-life.

Methods: A multicenter, prospective study carried out in 10 university dermatology departments in France.

The use of digital dermoscopy in the surveillance of melanocytic skin lesions: A real-life retrospective study comparing university hospital and private practices.

Background: Few studies have evaluated the role of digital dermoscopy (DD) in the surveillance of pigmented lesions in real-life practice.

Patients And Methods: Patients followed with DD by 4 hospital dermatologists (group 1) and 4 private dermatologists (group 2) were retrospectively included if they had had at least 2 DD examinations for a minimum of 4 pigmented lesions. Their characteristics, risk factors, history of excision of benign nevi and melanomas prior to and during the DD follow-up, and characteristics of detected melanomas, were recorded.

Fear of Missing Out Predicts Distraction by Social Reward Signals Displayed on a Smartphone in Difficult Driving Situations.

Smartphones are particularly likely to elicit driver distraction with obvious negative repercussions on road safety. Recent selective attention models lead to expect that smartphones might be very effective in capturing attention due to their social reward history. Hence, individual differences in terms of Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) - i.

Reward history modulates perceptual load effects.

The reward history of a stimulus can yield strong attentional selection biases. Indeed, attentional capture can be triggered by previously rewarded items which are neither salient nor relevant for the ongoing task, even when selection is clearly counter-productive to actually obtain the reward outcome. Therefore, value-driven attentional capture (VDAC) has been argued to be an automatic attention mechanism.

Differential effects of visual uncertainty and contextual guidance on perceptual decisions: Evidence from eye and mouse tracking in visual search.

Visual search can be seen as a decision-making process that aims to assess whether a target is present or absent from a scene. In this perspective, eye movements collect evidence related to target detection and verification to guide the decision. We investigated whether, in real-world scenes, target detection and verification are differentially recruited in the decision-making process in the presence of prior information (expectations about target location) and perceptual uncertainty (noise).

[Clinical patterns and treatment of pyoderma gangrenosum in a French department].

Background: Pyoderma gangrenosum (PG) is a rare inflammatory neutrophilic dermatosis for which accurate epidemiological data are limited and therapy remains a challenge. The primary study aim was to examine all cases of PG observed in our regional department over a 15-year period in order to describe the relevant characteristics and outcome under therapy.

Patients And Methods: The medical records of all patients with PG from 1997 to 2012 in the Marne department of France were studied retrospectively.

Real-time mobile teledermoscopy for skin cancer screening targeting an agricultural population: an experiment on 289 patients in France.

Background: The incidence of skin cancer has reached epidemic proportions in the white population and is significantly elevated in agricultural populations, who are exposed to ultraviolet radiation during their professional activities. In 2014, the Agricultural Social Insurance Mutual Benefit Fund (MSA) offered its customers who work in agriculture and live in rural areas with reduced access to dermatologists the ability to participate in a 1-day teledermoscopic (TDS) screening event.

Objective: This study's aim was to assess the feasibility of real-time mobile TDS triage of a large number of agricultural workers by trained medical officers and occupational physicians.

Combined effects of expectations and visual uncertainty upon detection and identification of a target in the fog.

Detecting a pedestrian while driving in the fog is one situation where the prior expectation about the target presence is integrated with the noisy visual input. We focus on how these sources of information influence the oculomotor behavior and are integrated within an underlying decision-making process. The participants had to judge whether high-/low-density fog scenes displayed on a computer screen contained a pedestrian or a deer by executing a mouse movement toward the response button (mouse-tracking).

Measuring the effect of the rainfall on the windshield in terms of visual performance.

Driving through rain results in reduced visual performance, and car designers have proposed countermeasures in order to reduce the impact of rain on driving performance. In this paper, we propose a methodology dedicated to the quantitative estimation of the loss of visual performance due to the falling rain. We have considered the rain falling on the windshield as the main factor which reduces visual performance in driving.

Efficacy of a general practitioner training campaign for early detection of melanoma in France.

Background: To date, no strategy for improving early diagnosis of melanoma has been evaluated on a population basis in France.

Objective: To evaluate the efficacy of a general practitioner (GP) awareness and training campaign in a pilot French geographical region (Champagne-Ardenne), including 1.34 million inhabitants, 1241 GPs, 56 dermatologists and a population-based melanoma registry.

Ceftazidime-hydrolysing β-lactamase OXA-145 with impaired hydrolysis of penicillins in Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

Objectives: To describe a novel extended-spectrum oxacillinase, named OXA-145, differing from narrow-spectrum OXA-35 (from the OXA-10 group) by deletion of residue Leu-165. The genetic environment of bla(OXA-145) and the biochemical properties of OXA-145 are reported. We also assessed the impact of the Leu-165 deletion on the hydrolysis spectrum of the ancestor OXA-10.

Light scattering in artificial fog and simulated with light scattering filter.

Disability glare, affecting e.g. road safety at night, may result either from intraocular light scattering or from external conditions such as fog.

[Diagnostic modalities of visceral metastases during follow-up of patients with stage I-II melanoma].

Introduction: Although not recommended in France at the consensus conference of 1994, routine monitoring of patients with stage I melanoma using imaging techniques is commonly carried out. The aim of this retrospective regional study was to define methods for diagnosing transition to the metastatic stage of melanoma.

Patients And Methods: This was a retrospective study based on questionnaires among dermatologists in the Champagne-Ardenne and southern Aisne regions of France.

Involvement of complement pathways in patients with bacterial septicemia.

The complement system is a major humoral portion of the innate immune system, playing a significant role in host defence against microorganisms. The biological importance of this system is underlined by the fact that at least three different pathways for its activation exist, the classical, the MBL and the alternative pathway. To elucidate the involvement of the classical and/or the MBL pathway during bacterial septicemia, 32 patients with gram-positive and 30 patients with gram-negative bacterial infections were investigated.

Color stimuli perception in presence of light scattering.

Perception of different color contrast stimuli was studied in the presence of light scattering: in a fog chamber in Clermont-Ferrand and in laboratory conditions where light scattering of similar levels was obtained, using different light scattering eye occluders. Blue (shortest wavelength) light is scattered in fog to the greatest extent, causing deterioration of vision quality especially for the monochromatic blue stimuli. However, for the color stimuli presented on a white background, visual acuity in fog for blue Landolt-C optotypes was higher than for red and green optotypes on the white background.

[Non infectious skin conditions associated with diabetes mellitus: a prospective study of 308 cases].

Introduction: Non-infectious dermatoses during diabetes appear frequent if one refers to some of the studies in the literature that have attempted to assess its prevalence.

Patients And Methods: From November 2000 to November 2001, 308 randomly selected, hospitalized, diabetic patients were examined. The data were collected prospectively and systematically in a pre-established questionnaire.

Analysis of low molecular weight intracellular associations of a human mannan binding lectin (MBL).

Human mannan binding lectin (MBL) is a member of the collectins, a group of proteins that contain a dual structure with a lectin and a collagenous moieties. The collectins are considered as major actors of innate immunity. We report the presence of low molecular weight intracellular MBL forms in human hepatocytic cell lysates, with binding capacities associated to its lectin and/or its collagen moiety.

T lymphocytes infiltrating the liver during chronic hepatitis C infection express a broad range of T-cell receptor beta chain diversity.

Background/aims: During viral chronic hepatitis C (CHC), the intra-hepatic lymphocyte infiltrate is mainly composed of T lymphocytes expressing alphabeta T-cell receptors (TCR). Since little is known about the TCRalphabeta diversity of intra-hepatic T lymphocytes (IHL), we evaluated the IHL repertoire from CHC patients (n=8) as compared to healthy subjects (n=4), total peripheral blood mononuclear cells, and purified peripheral and intra-hepatic CD8(+) cells (n=2).

Methods: The diversity of TCRalphabeta receptors was evaluated by determining the size and the sequence of the TCRbeta chain complementarity determining region 3 (CDR3).

Evaluation and clinical interest of mannan binding lectin function in human plasma.

The mannan binding lectin (MBL) plays a major role in innate immunity through its ability to activate complement upon binding to carbohydrate arrays on the surface of various microorganisms. The question of a possible association of the MBL structural gene polymorphism and the oligomeric state of MBL was poorly documented. For these reasons, it appears difficult to evaluate MBL in blood patients on the only basis of protein contents, even in combination with MBL genotyping.

["Vein School." A program of education for chronic venous insufficiency patients at the La Léchère Hotspring].

Chronic venous insufficiency is a frequent and invalidating condition, which also represents an important socio-economical burden. As it is a chronic disease with no effective curative therapy, the preventive and educational means are of particular interest. The present health policy insists on the education given to patients suffering from chronic disease, but contrasting with other chronic conditions (diabetes, asthma, chronic back pain), to our knowledge, there is no published structured educational training programme dedicated to people suffering from CVI.

Chemical constituents of diesel exhaust particles induce IL-4 production and histamine release by human basophils.

Background: An epidemiologic relationship between airway allergic diseases and exposure to atmospheric pollutants has been demonstrated and suggested to be one factor in the increasing prevalence of asthma. Diesel exhaust particles (DEPs) have been shown to participate in the development of allergic airway inflammation, in which the targets include macrophages, B and T cells, epithelial cells, and mast cells. In addition to the adjuvant effect of DEPs on total and allergen-specific IgE production, DEPs also act to induce chemokines and cytokines and may play a key role in primary sensitization.

Complement C4 monitoring in the follow-up of chronic hepatitis C treatment.

The overall role of complement in the host--pathogen relationship is now well understood. However, its involvement at a chronic stage of infection, such as chronic hepatitis C, is less well documented. Here, results are reported which point to the use of specific C4 monitoring in the follow-up of HCV patients.

Distance perception of vehicle rear lights in fog.

Perceptual difficulty is one of the main explanations given for the behavioral modifications and high accident rate associated with driving in fog. The present study investigates how fog and the characteristics of vehicle rear lights affect distance perception. Two experiments in a fog chamber (meteorological visibility range of 5-15 m) were run under conditions simulating nighttime fog.

[Incidence of erysipelas of the lower limbs in a spa resort. Efficacy of a strategy of sanitation education (La Lechere: 1992-1997)].

Objective: Erysipela is a common skin infection readily found in patients with venous insufficiency or lymphedema. The aim of this work was to measure the incidence of erysipela in a spa resort specialized in the treatment of venous and lymphatic diseases and to evaluate the influence of a preventive strategy principally based on education of patients at risk.

Patients And Methods: The measurement of incidence was based on the detection of the reasons for which the patients did not attend their thermal care sessions.