Seismic, structural, and individual factors associated with earthquake related injury.

Background: Earthquakes cause thousands of deaths worldwide every year, and systematic study of the causes of these deaths can lead to their prevention. Few studies have examined how multiple types of risk factors are related to physical injury during an earthquake.

Methods: A population based case-control study was conducted to examine how individual characteristics, building characteristics, and seismic features of the 1994 Northridge, California, earthquake contributed to physical injury.

Risk factors associated with moderate and serious injuries attributable to the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, Los Angeles, California.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to use emergency department data to estimate levels of morbidity and risk factors due to earthquake-related mechanisms of injury subsequent to an urban night-time earthquake.

Methods: Data were abstracted from 4190 medical records for the month of January, 1994. Injuries attributable to the earthquake were identified through emergency department and medical records.

GIS mapping of earthquake-related deaths and hospital admissions from the 1994 Northridge, California, Earthquake.

Purpose: Earthquakes pose a persistent but unpredictable health threat. Although knowledge of geologic earthquake hazards for buildings has increased, spatial relations between injuries and seismic activity have not been explained.

Methods: Fatal and hospital-admitted earthquake injuries due to the 1994 Northridge Earthquake were identified.

An anion-exchange chromatographic method for measuring bilirubin covalently bound to albumin.

After alkalinizing the diazo products of serum bilirubins, we apply them to a column of anion-exchange resin. The azodipyrroles derived from unconjugated and sugar-conjugated bilirubins, as well as from one half of the tetrapyrrole covalently linked to albumin ("Bil-Alb"), are anionic and protein-free and adsorb to the resin. The other half of the azo product of Bil-Alb, with absorptivity similar to that of the protein-free azodipyrroles, remains attached to albumin (Clin Chem 28:629-637, 1982) and passes through the resin unadsorbed.

Irreversible binding of conjugated bilirubin to albumin in cholestatic rats.

A diazo-positive fraction of serum bilirubin that is irreversibly bound to albumin has been shown to accumulate in serum of patients with cholestasis. In the present study, a cholestatic animal model was used to determine the chemical nature of the bilirubin species involved in its formation. The data indicate that conjugated bilirubin is the precursor of "albumin-bound bilirubin" and that the presence or absence of light does not affect its formation.