Home Healthcare Nursing Visits for Nonhomebound Patients With Heart Failure After Hospital Discharge: A Quality-Improvement Pilot Project.

Frequent rehospitalizations among patients with heart failure (HF) result in patient burden and high cost. Homebound patients with HF qualify for home healthcare after hospital discharge. It is not known if nonhomebound patients with HF could also benefit from home healthcare nursing (HHN) visits to improve the transition from hospital to home.

Early Reading Abilities of Bilingual Children With Nonsyndromic Orofacial Clefts.

Objective: To investigate the early reading abilities, and related cognitive-linguistic processes, in bilingual children with nonsyndromic cleft lip and/or palate (CL/P), and to identify deficits that might be amenable to intervention.

Design And Participants: Bilingual participants with CL/P aged 5 to 6 years who were English-dominant ( n=17) or Mandarin-dominant ( n=18) were recruited using consecutive sampling from a national cleft treatment center and matched pairwise to a sample of typically developing (TD) children on language dominance, age, and socioeconomic status. All participants were assessed in English on single-word reading accuracy using the Wide Range Achievement Test (4th Ed), and key cognitive-linguistic factors associated with reading development: phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming (RAN), receptive and expressive vocabulary, and verbal short-term and working memory.

Identity management, negotiation and resistance among women in the sex trade in London, Ontario.

Sex work, and ideas about women in the trade, have long been represented as tragic and/or threatening. However, such portrayals tell us very little about how women think about themselves and the kinds of work they do. The data for this paper come from an ethnographic, community-based study in London, Ontario, that involves women in street-based, indoor and transactional sex work.

Lung endothelial cell platelet-activating factor production and inflammatory cell adherence are increased in response to cigarette smoke component exposure.

An early event in the pathogenesis of emphysema is the development of inflammation associated with accumulation of polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMN) in small airways, and inflammatory cell recruitment from the circulation involves migration across endothelial and epithelial cell barriers. Platelet-activating factor (PAF) promotes transendothelial migration in several vascular beds, and we postulated that increased PAF production in the airways of smokers might enhance inflammatory cell recruitment and exacerbate inflammation. To examine this possibility, we incubated human lung microvascular endothelial cells (HMVEC-L) with cigarette smoke extract (CSE) and found that CSE inhibits PAF-acetylhydrolase (PAF-AH) activity.

Tryptase activates calcium-independent phospholipase A2 and releases PGE2 in airway epithelial cells.

Human small airway epithelial cells (HSAEC) form the boundary between the external environmental allergens and the internal lung milieu. Mast cells are present in human lung tissue interspersed within the pulmonary epithelium and can secrete a host of pre- and newly formed mediators from their granules, which may propagate small airway inflammation. In this study, tryptase stimulation of HSAEC increased membrane-associated, calcium-independent phospholipase A(2)gamma (iPLA(2)gamma) activity, resulting in increased arachidonic acid and PGE(2) release.

New leptin receptor mutations in mice: Lepr(db-rtnd), Lepr(db-dmpg) and Lepr(db-rlpy).

Three new spontaneous recessive mouse mutations in the leptin receptor gene (Lepr), Lepr(db-rtnd), Lepr(db-dmpg) and Lepr(db-rlpy), originated in the CBA/J (CBA), B10.D2-H8(b)(57N)/Sn (B10) and NU/J strains, respectively. Lepr(db-rtnd) and Lepr(db-dmpg) were maintained on C57BL/6J (B6), resulting in congenic lines of B6.

Evaluation of child therapy and caregiver training in the treatment of school refusal.

Objective: To evaluate the relative efficacy of (1) child therapy, (2) parent/teacher training, and (3) the combination of child therapy and parent/teacher training in the treatment of anxiety-based school refusal.

Method: Sixty-one school-refusing children (aged 7-14 years) from throughout Melbourne, Australia, were randomized to a child therapy program, a parent and teacher training program, or a combination of the two. Children were assessed before and after treatment, and at 4.