The value of comparative research in major day surgery.

Objective: To measure time trends in major day surgery rates according to hospital ownership and other hospital characteristics among the providers of the public healthcare network of Catalonia, Spain.

Method: Data from the Statistics of Health Establishments providing Inpatient Care. A generalized linear mixed model with Gaussian response and random intercept and random slopes.

MMR vaccine effectiveness in an outbreak that involved day-care and primary schools.

Objective: In 2006, a large measles outbreak occurred in Catalonia (Spain), where the immunization schedule included two doses of MMR vaccine at 15 months and 4 years. The aim of this study was to investigate the vaccine effectiveness (VE) of MMR in children attending day-care and pre-school centres and to estimate the number of cases that would have been avoided by administering the first dose of MMR at 12 months.

Methods: A retrospective cohort study was carried out between October 2006 and January 2007 in day-care and pre-school centres with confirmed measles cases.

Identification of novel differentially expressed genes by the effect of a high-fat n-6 diet in experimental breast cancer.

In previous studies, we demonstrated that high corn oil diets promote the development of 7,12-dimethylbenz(alpha)anthracene (DMBA)-induced mammary tumors. In this study, we have investigated whether modulation of gene expression is one of the mechanisms by which this high-fat diet exerts such effects. Female Sprague-Dawley rats were induced with DMBA and fed normolipidic (3% corn oil) or high-fat (20% corn oil) diet.