Light-dark (LD) can support or challenge the circadian organization of physiology and health. As an indoor species, the built environment inevitably influences the patterns and intensities of our LD exposures, thereby affecting health. We reviewed to what extent architectural features have been studied alongside LD and circadian biology.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Many systematic reviews identify support animals or animal assisted activity as a beneficial and standard practice in several medical disciplines for patients (children, adolescents, and adults) and residents in care homes. A variety of animals are used such as dogs, cats, ponies, horses, alpacas, reindeer, penguins, rabbits, and tarantulas. Our objective was to explore the evidence regarding effects of animal assisted activity on a further population of interest; namely, healthcare staff.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA Cochrane 2016 review indicated cycled light might benefit neonatal health in hospital. We systematically reviewed chronobiological factors for neonatal health in hospital units, identifying 56 relevant studies on light-dark cycles, feeding, noise, massage therapy, rooming-in, incubators vs. cribs, neonatal units vs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTrends Pharmacol Sci
September 2023
Posters are important vectors for science. During the pandemic, poster presentations via virtual platforms came to the fore due to necessary online conferences. For the post-pandemic era, we offer approaches for poster presenters and session organizers at modern, more sustainable conferences, which can be in-person, online, or combined (hybrid) formats.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA historical Christmas card connecting two pioneers of modern chronobiology (Colin Pittendrigh and Jürgen Aschoff) brings together key evolutionary facets of the field at Christmas time. The importance of the field to physiology and medicine is conveyed by the Nobel Prize award in 2017 for discoveries of how body clocks facilitate the temporal organization of physiology across days and nights. Temporal organization can have relevance for dietary Christmas excesses and dietary New Year resolutions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To complement the 2020 ANZJPH editorial "How COVID-safe Santa can save Christmas". In addition to a concise update regarding SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19, we aimed to explore some risks of Christmas in terms of adverse health effects, which we call 'Chrishaps'. Our overall study question was "which hazards have been scientifically associated with old Christmas essentials such as decoration, gifts, menus, and Santa himself, as well as new challenges associated with COVID-19?"
Method: We searched the PubMed, Web of Science, and Open Grey databases systematically and Google unsystematically.
The SARS-CoV-2/Covid-19 pandemic is a challenge for public health and occupational medicine and developing prevention and protection strategies needs expertise from many disciplines. To make prevention successful, individuals have to be motivated to participate and, in turn, motivation depends on understanding how and why prevention measures are implemented. We present a structured approach (the Cycle of prevention) which involves different stakeholders and perspectives to develop, and monitor, prevention strategies in transparent and effective ways.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNowadays, the roots of left-hand traffic (LHT) and right-hand traffic (RHT) - including fighting on horse-back and whipping horses that are drawing carriages - are at an all-time low; thus, it is time to assess and appreciate the nexus of road-safety practices and human neurophysiology. We hypothesize that safety of LHT and RHT can be associated with neurophysiology. We summarize scattered empirical research into plausible links between neurophysiological aspects such as handedness, eye movement bias, and hemispheric lateralisation and how safe, in theory, LHT vs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn June of 2019, a working group convened by the International Agency for Research on Cancer [IARC] concluded that "night shift work" is probably carcinogenic to humans (a Group 2A carcinogen). This was based on sufficient evidence of cancer and strong mechanistic evidence in experimental animals and limited evidence from human epidemiological studies. The biological basis from experimental work is clear and compelling: Disturbed chronobiology such as due to alterations in the light-dark schedule which shift-workers experience is associated with carcinogenicity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: In 2007, the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified shift work involving circadian disruption (CD) as probably carcinogenic to humans. Circadian disruption could be conceptualised as the overlap of activity, such as work, with an individual's biological night. The latter can be approximated from a worker's chronotype (or morning/evening preference).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA thought experiment places Henry Ford and Thomas Alva Edison in a modern regulatory environment. In a utopian occupational world devoid of night-shifts or artificial light, Ford wants to experiment with "working through the night". To support Ford's project, Edison offers his patented electric lamps to "turn nights into days".
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnimals are crucial for biomedical research, but rarely receive credit, let alone authorship—with a few exceptions. To better acknowledge their important role, the 3R approach could be expanded by “Recognition”. [Image: see text]
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnasthesiol Intensivmed Notfallmed Schmerzther
January 2013
Placement and removal of central venous catheters (CVC) are routine procedures in anesthesiology and on the intensive care unit. There are numerous possible complications associated with those interventions. Here, we report on a patient who developed respiratory failure immediately after removal of a CVC.
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