Evaluation of a health service adopting proactive approach to reduce high risk of lung cancer: The Liverpool Healthy Lung Programme.

Objectives: This Liverpool Healthy Lung Programme is a response to high rates of lung cancer and respiratory diseases locally and aims to diagnose lung cancer at an earlier stage by proactive approach to those at high risk of lung cancer. The objective of this study is to evaluate the programme in terms of its likely effect on mortality from lung cancer and its delivery to deprived populations.

Methods: Persons aged 58-75 years, with a history of smoking or a diagnosis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) according to general practice records were invited for lung health check in a community health hub setting.

Valuing conservation benefits of disease control in wildlife: A choice experiment approach to bovine tuberculosis management in New Zealand's native forests.

We assess the non-monetary environmental benefits that accrue incidentally in New Zealand (NZ) from pest management conducted primarily to control an animal disease, bovine tuberculosis (TB). TB is an infectious disease that is one of the world's most serious animal health problems and, in many parts of the developing world, still a major mortality risk for humans. The incidence of TB in New Zealand (NZ) farmed livestock has been reduced progressively over the last 20 years, largely due to extensive and sustained population control of the main wildlife reservoir of disease, the introduced brushtail possum.

Rural geriatric glue: a nurse practitioner-led model of care for enhancing primary care for frail older adults within an ecosystem approach.

Objectives: This article describes the implementation of the Care for Seniors model of care, an innovative approach to improving care coordination and integration, and provides preliminary evidence of effective use of specialist resources and acute care services.

Design: Retrospective.

Setting: Primary care; cross-sector.

Do consumers of manufactured cigarettes respond differently to price changes compared with their Roll-Your-Own counterparts? Evidence from New Zealand.

Background: Price-based mechanisms are an important tobacco cessation policy tool in New Zealand (NZ) and so measurement of smokers' reaction to price changes is crucial in determining efficacy of this approach. Although approximately two-thirds of NZ tobacco demand is for manufactured cigarettes (MC) and one-third is for Roll-Your-Own (RYO) tobacco, previous price elasticity estimates have ignored differences between RYO tobacco and MC consumers.

Methods: We employ a seemingly unrelated regression econometric approach applied to quarterly data over the period 1991-2011 to estimate price elasticities of demand separately for MC and RYO tobacco.

Ferritin functions as a proinflammatory cytokine via iron-independent protein kinase C zeta/nuclear factor kappaB-regulated signaling in rat hepatic stellate cells.

Unlabelled: Circulating ferritin levels reflect body iron stores and are elevated with inflammation in chronic liver injury. H-ferritin exhibits a number of extrahepatic immunomodulatory properties, although its role in hepatic inflammation and fibrogenesis is unknown. Hepatic stellate cells respond to liver injury through production of proinflammatory mediators that drive fibrogenesis.

A unique set of 11,008 onion expressed sequence tags reveals expressed sequence and genomic differences between the monocot orders Asparagales and Poales.

Enormous genomic resources have been developed for plants in the monocot order Poales; however, it is not clear how representative the Poales are for the monocots as a whole. The Asparagales are a monophyletic order sister to the lineage carrying the Poales and possess economically important plants such as asparagus, garlic, and onion. To assess the genomic differences between the Asparagales and Poales, we generated 11,008 unique ESTs from a normalized cDNA library of onion.