Enablers and barriers to non-dispensing pharmacist integration into the primary health care teams of Aboriginal community-controlled health services.

Background: The primary health care management of chronic disease affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples requires healthcare quality and equity demands to be met, and systems that foster better team-based care. Non-dispensing pharmacists (NDPs) integrated within primary healthcare settings can enhance the quality of patient care, although factors that enable or challenge integration within these settings need to be better understood.

Objectives: To investigate enabling factors and barriers influencing integration of NDPs within Aboriginal community-controlled health services delivering primary health care.

Integrating pharmacists into Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services (IPAC project): Protocol for an interventional, non-randomised study to improve chronic disease outcomes.

Background: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples experience a higher burden of chronic disease yet have poorer access to needed medicines than other Australians. Adverse health outcomes from these illnesses can be minimised with improved prescribing quality. This project aims to improve quality of care outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adult patients with chronic disease by integrating a pharmacist within primary health care teams in Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services (ACCHSs).

Structure and Efficiency in Bacterial Photosynthetic Light Harvesting.

Photosynthetic organisms use networks of chromophores to absorb and deliver solar energy to reaction centers. We present a detailed model of the light-harvesting complexes in purple bacteria, including explicit interaction with sunlight, radiative and nonradiative energy loss, and dephasing and thermalizing effects of coupling to a vibrational bath. We capture the effect of slow vibrations by introducing time-dependent disorder.

How Markovian is exciton dynamics in purple bacteria?

We investigate the extent to which the dynamics of excitons in the light-harvesting complex LH2 of purple bacteria can be described using a Markovian approximation. To analyse the degree of non-Markovianity in these systems, we introduce a measure based on fitting Lindblad dynamics, as well as employing a recently introduced trace-distance measure. We apply these measures to a chromophore-dimer model of exciton dynamics and use the hierarchical equation-of-motion method to take into account the broad, low-frequency phonon bath.

The validity of the Brain Injury Cognitive Screen (BICS) as a neuropsychological screening assessment for traumatic and non-traumatic brain injury.

Objective: The Brain Injury Cognitive Screen (BICS) was developed as an in-service cognitive assessment battery for acquired brain injury patients entering community rehabilitation. The BICS focuses on domains that are particularly compromised following TBI, and provides a broader and more detailed assessment of executive function, attention and information processing than comparable screening assessments. The BICS also includes brief assessments of perception, naming, and construction, which were predicted to be more sensitive to impairments following non-traumatic brain injury.

The impact of an educational film on promoting knowledge and attitudes toward HIV in soldiers of the Serbian Armed Forces.

Background/aim: Millions of soldiers around the world represent one of the most vulnerable populations regarding exposure to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. The programs for HIV prevention remain the most viable approach to reducing the spread of HIV infection. Very few studies have tested the effectiveness of HIV preventive interventions undertaken in military population.

Life and death of a child with down syndrome and a congenital heart condition: experiences of six couples.

Individuals with Down syndrome are at increased risk of congenital heart conditions (CHCs), and mortality is higher in people with Down syndrome and a CHC than those without (J. C. Vis et al.

Evaluating the long-term effectiveness of the Maternity Emergency Care course in remote Australia.

Background: The Council for Remote Area Nurses of Australia deliver the MEC course which is the only short-course on maternity emergencies offered to non-midwifery qualified remote area nurses and Aboriginal Health Workers. The aim of the course is to improve the maternity emergency skills and knowledge of health service providers who do not have midwifery qualifications. There has been no long-term evaluation of the course since its inception.

Parental bereavement and the loss of a child with intellectual disabilities: a review of the literature.

Inequalities in health care and other risk factors mean that children with intellectual disabilities are more likely to predecease their parents. Research on the effects on family members when a child with intellectual disability dies is sparse. In the present review, the authors describe 5 studies of bereavement in intellectual disability and then turn to general parental bereavement research to inform the field of intellectual disability.

Traumatic brain injury and substance misuse: a systematic review of prevalence and outcomes research (1994-2004).

A systematic review of the evidence on substance misuse prevalence in patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI) and outcomes associated with this population is presented. Building upon an earlier review of the area by Corigan (1995), this review is limited to research published between 1994 and 2004. Psycinfo and Medline abstract databases were searched for English-language publications citing research from Western countries on the epidemiology and outcomes of adult TBI patients (aged 15 years or older).

Spatial negative priming in early Alzheimer's disease: evidence for reduced cognitive inhibition.

Some studies of negative priming and other tasks assumed to reflect inhibitory functions suggest a decline in inhibitory processes in Alzheimer's disease. However, none of the measures used in previous studies can be interpreted as an unambiguous reflection of distractor inhibition. The present study investigates whether reductions in negative priming associated with Alzheimer's disease reflect reduced distractor inhibition, rather than perceptual review processes.

The impact of community rehabilitation for acquired brain injury on carer burden: an exploratory study.

Objectives: This study evaluated the relative efficacy of a community rehabilitation service and a more traditional outpatient service for carers of people with an acquired brain injury.

Methods: Seventeen carers who had received a community intervention were retrospectively compared with 24 carers who had received an outpatient service. Dependent variables were level of met family need, a measure of family dysfunction, carer psychopathology, and carer emotional acceptance.

The feasibility of using cognitive behaviour therapy for depression associated with Parkinson's disease: a literature review.

Clinicians and researchers have called for more information on how to treat depression in Parkinson's disease. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) has been identified as the treatment of choice for a range of psychological disorders and is increasingly applied to depression associated with chronic medical conditions. The present paper will review the relevant literature on CBT treatment effectiveness and the nature of depression in Parkinson's disease before suggesting how CBT might be adapted to assist this client group.

Isolation, purification, and cultivation of murine and human keratinocytes.

The architecture of mammalian skin incorporates an outer layer of stratified epithelium. This enables the organism to conserve internal homeostasis and maintain protection from adverse environmental exposure. The keratinocyte is the cell primarily responsible for this structure.

Mental retardation and memory for spatial locations.

Although memory for spatial location has been frequently investigated with mentally retarded populations, it is not clear that these individuals possess the same spatial memory skills as do their peers without mental retardation. We compared 30 persons with and 30 persons without mental retardation. Following either intentional or incidental learning, participants recalled and then relocated 16 objects on a matrix.

DNA repair in primary human keratinocyte cultures after low level exposure to bis(2-chloroethyl)sulfide.

The literature has reported the appearance and disappearance of single-strand breaks (SSBs) in the DNA of rat keratinocytes after exposure to low levels of bis(2-chloroethyl) sulfide (BCES). Since SSBs are a consequence of depurination or depyrimidination followed by excision of the apurinic or apyrimidinic site and deoxyguanosine (GdR) is the major alkylation site in DNA exposed to BCES, it was hypothesized that repair occurred by a GdR-specific base replacement and not by large section repair. To test this hypothesis, cultures of human keratinocytes (HK) were preincubated with 5-bromo-2'-deoxyuridine (BUdR), a heavy analog of thymidine (TdR) incorporated into replicating DNA, immediately before exposure to BCES.

Cultured keratinocytes in in vitro dermatotoxicological investigation: a review.

The keratinocyte is responsible for the architecture of the epidermis, that portion of the skin that forms the environmental barrier necessary for survival. It also interacts with other cell types in the epidermis in response to various environmental influences. This cell type is used frequently for in vitro cutaneous toxicological investigations as an alternative to whole-animal studies.

Formation of interstrand DNA cross-links by bis-(2-chloroethyl)sulfide (BCES): a possible cytotoxic mechanism in rat keratinocytes.

Interstrand cross-links in the DNA of epidermal basal keratinocytes may be responsible for cell death and consequent vesication in skin exposed to BCES. The formation of cross-links and cytotoxicity were compared when cells in primary monolayer cultures of rat epidermal keratinocytes, synchronized at the G1/S boundary or in the G1 phase of the cell cycle, were exposed to BCES. The dose-responsive formation of cross-links, measured with an ethidium bromide-fluorescence assay, was determined immediately after exposure of cells at either position of the cycle.

Bis(2-chloroethyl)sulfide (BCES) disturbs the progression of rat keratinocytes through the cell cycle.

Epidermal basal keratinocytes are the primary target in BCES-induced cutaneous injury. DNA synthesis is inhibited by exposure to BCES which could relate to the mustard's cytotoxic effect. The effects of BCES on the cell cycle in keratinocytes synchronized by aphidicolin were investigated.

Appearance of interleukin 1 alpha relates DNA interstrand cross-links and cytotoxicity in cultured human keratinocytes exposed to bis-(2-chloroethyl) sulfide.

The utility of an increase in the level of interleukin 1 alpha (IL-1 alpha) as an indicator of cytotoxicity from exposure to bis-(2-chloroethyl) sulfide (BCES) was evaluated in submerged monolayer cultures of human cutaneous keratinocytes. Four-day-old cultures were exposed to 1-100 microM BCES at 37 degrees for 30 min. The amounts of IL-1 alpha in the medium at and in cells 72 h after exposure were measured immunologically with an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay using monoclonal antibody to human IL-1 alpha.

Failure to observe a relationship between bis-(beta-chloroethyl)sulfide-induced NAD depletion and cytotoxicity in the rat keratinocyte culture.

It has been proposed that the activation of poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (Papirmeister et al., 1985), which results from the presence of strand breaks in bis-(beta-chloroethyl)sulfide (BCES) damaged DNA, causes depletion in the level of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) leading to cell death. This hypothesis has now been evaluated in the primary submerged culture of rat keratinocytes.

The effect of 2,2'-dichlorodiethyl sulfide on DNA synthesis of a murine stratified keratinocyte culture system.

A primary stratified keratinocyte culture resembling the epidermis in situ was used as a model for studying the effects of exposure to 2,2'-dichlorodiethyl sulfide, or sulfur mustard (SM), on DNA synthesis. A method that distinguishes between semi-conservative (s.c.

Production and isolation of guinea pig IgE antibody.

Immunoglobulins of the IgE and IgG classes have been causally associated with hypersensitivity reactions in man and in numerous animal species including mice, rats and guinea pigs. The use of the guinea pig as an animal model for both pulmonary and dermal hypersensitivity reactions, and the recent recognition of the importance of IgE antibodies in both early- and late-onset hypersensitivity responses, has heightened interest in production, separation, and isolation of this immunoglobulin class from the guinea pig. IgE antibodies were produced by treatment of strain 13 guinea pigs with cyclophosphamide followed by injection with S.

Stratified cornified primary cultures of human keratinocytes grown on microporous membranes at the air-liquid interface.

It was previously reported that rat keratinocytes grown at the air-liquid interface on collagen gels or on nylon membranes produce multilayered cultures of uniformly stratified cells, comparable to the epidermis in situ by morphological and biochemical criteria. A protocol has now been developed by which primary human keratinocytes grown for two weeks submerged on microporous nylon membranes and raised to the air-liquid interface for an additional three weeks, exhibit most of the comparable characteristics of the epidermal cells in vivo. Staining with fluorescein isothiocyanate-conjugated monoclonal antibodies indicated the presence of 56,5 and 65-67 kDa keratins as well as filaggrin-type proteins in the upper cellular layers.