A cross-national epidemiological resource: the Swedish and Finnish cohort studies of like-sexed twins.

Two large-scale studies of adult like-sexed twin pairs are ongoing in Sweden and Finland. Both studies comprise an unselected series that has been studied in a comparable fashion. Zygosity determination and health questionnaire data-gathering were carried out in 1973 for the Swedish study and in 1975 for the Finnish study for the comparable age groups.

Failure of hand disinfection with frequent hand washing: a need for prolonged field studies.

In a prolonged field trial a 4% chlorhexidine digluconate detergent scrub (Hibiscrub(R)), that had earlier proved to be an effective hand disinfectant, was studied in hospital wards. Finger tips were found to harbour more bacteria than the hand dorsum and the samples collected from them yielded more information on the bacteriological and dermatological effects of hand disinfectants in practice.In wards with a relatively low hand-washing frequency (less than 20 times in 8 hours) the bacteriological results resembled those obtained by in-use tests with volunteers.