388 results match your criteria: "Institute for Social and Preventive Medicine[Affiliation]"

Background: We examined the effect of hepatitis C virus (HCV) seropositivity on risk of death among people receiving their first antiretroviral treatment (ART) for HIV infection.

Methods: In British Columbia, the HIV/ AIDS Drug Treatment Program is the only source of free ART. Patients who initiated a triple-drug ART regimen between July 31, 1996, and July 31, 2000, were included if they were ART-naive and had baseline HCV serological data.

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Vaccination against enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli, a cause of travelers' diarrhea.

J Travel Med

August 2005

Institute for Social and Preventive Medicine (ISPM), World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Center for Travelers' Health, University of Zurich, Switzerland.

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The effect of age on breast cancer survival is still a matter of controversy. Breast cancer in young women is thought to be more aggressive and to have worse prognosis but results from clinical research have been neither consistent nor definitive. In this study, we have assessed the impact of young age at diagnosis on tumor characteristics, treatment and survival of breast cancer.

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Background: Few studies have examined how physicians perceive guidelines, much less their perceptions of an Internet presentation of such guidelines. This study assessed physicians' acceptance ofan Internet-based guideline on the appropriateness of colonoscopy.

Methods: Gastroenterologists participating in an international observational study consulted an Internet-based guideline for consecutive patients referred for colonoscopy.

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Health economic research on vaccinations and immunisation practices--an introductory primer.

Vaccine

March 2005

Institute for Social and Preventive Medicine, University of Zurich, CH-8006 Zurich, Switzerland.

The economic importance of vaccines lies partly in the burden of disease that can be avoided and partly in the competition for resources between vaccines and other interventions. Up to the 1980s only few economic evaluations had been carried out. Since then the confrontation of most countries with escalating health care costs and tighter budgets have awakened the interest in pharmacoeconomic analysis.

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Questions Under Study: There is growing evidence for a link between body weight and cancer risk, but there is not a clear consensus yet.

Methods: We studied the association between body mass index (BMI) and overall, lung, prostate and colon cancer mortality. In 1971/73, weight and height were measured in 2974 men working in Basel, Switzerland.

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Background: The second Swiss Multicenter Adolescent Survey on Health (SMASH02) was conducted among a representative sample (n = 7428) of students and apprentices aged 16 to 20 from the three language areas of Switzerland during the year 2002. This paper reports on health needs expressed by adolescents and their use of health care services over the 12 months preceding the survey.

Methods: Nineteen cantons representing 80% of the resident population agreed to participate.

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Background And Purpose: Influenza continues to be a considerable health problem in Europe. Vaccination is the only preventive measure, reducing mortality and morbidity of influenza in all age groups. The objectives of this survey were to assess the level of influenza vaccination coverage in the 2002/2003 season compared with the 2003/2004 season in Germany, to understand the driving forces and barriers to vaccination, and to determine vaccination intentions for the following winter.

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Modelling neuromotor ratings with floor-effects.

Stat Med

December 2004

Department of Biostatistics, Institute for Social and Preventive Medicine, University of Zürich, Sumatrastrasse 30, CH-8006 Zürich, Switzerland.

Associated movements (AMs) are a classical diagnostic tool to assess differences between normal children and children with some motor dysfunction. This paper presents a methodology to produce age- and gender-dependent reference-curves for AMs of normal children, for various tasks of a test battery. Data available consist of separate ratings of duration and extent of AMs, which are ordinal quantities with few levels.

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Background And Aim: In Switzerland, the prevalence of health problems attributed to environmental exposures is unknown, and views differ regarding its magnitude. In the present study we investigated the frequency of environmentally related health problems amongst the patients of Swiss sentinel physicians and assessed symptoms and suspected environmental exposures.

Methods: During 2002, nearly 250 "Swiss Sentinel Surveillance Network" physicians were asked to record the number of patients presenting with environmental health problems and to complete a questionnaire inquiring about suspected environmental exposures and health problems.

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Background: The Internet has opened up new possibilities in public health, yet to date, there are few examples of online health interventions that go beyond information provision. This paper describes the users and return rates of an effective intervention for smoking cessation that has gone online.

Methods: Open enrollment of smokers via links and search engines with voluntary follow-up for an Internet-based expert system in French and English.

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Problem: To assess symptoms attributed to the environment from an interdisciplinary perspective and to evaluate the plausibility of the participants' individual theory of a causal relationship between exposure and health impairment.

Method: We assessed the medical, psychiatric and environmental background in every participant in an environmental medicine project and discussed the explanatory value of our findings for each reported symptom.

Results: Every second participant had at least one symptom that could be plausibly explained by simultaneously occurring medical, psychological or environmental findings.

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Objective: We examined the analytic validity of reported family history of hypertension and diabetes among siblings in the Seychelles.

Study Design And Setting: Four hundred four siblings from 73 families with at least two hypertensive persons were identified through a national hypertension register. Two gold standards were used prospectively.

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Background: The efficacy of angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors in decreasing blood pressure in African patients is controversial.

Objective: We examined the ambulatory blood pressure (ABP) response to a diuretic and an ACE inhibitor in hypertensive patients of East African descent and evaluated the individual characteristics that determined treatment efficacy.

Design: A single-blind randomized AB/BA crossover design.

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Stages of Change were assessed for three stage definitions and two modes of health-enhancing physical activity (HEPA) in a representative telephone survey in Switzerland (participation 55.8%; n = 1471). Two five-stage definitions focusing either on intention to change or current behavior were integrated into a seven-stage concept, taking into account both aspects.

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Malaria: from prehistory to present.

Infect Dis Clin North Am

June 2004

Institute for Social and Preventive Medicine, University of Zürich, Sumatrastrasse 30, 8006 Zurich, Switzerland.

Malaria is a protozoan (Plasmodium) infection transmitted by the biting female Anopheles mosquito. The disease affects approximately 40% of the world's population, and an estimated 50 to 70 million Western travelers are exposed to malaria infection annually. Malaria and travelers are inextricably linked since the dawn of time.

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Background: The impact of outdoor air pollution on infant mortality has not been quantified.

Methods: Based on exposure-response functions from a U.S.

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Background: This article evaluates the accuracy of family history of breast and ovarian cancer among first-degree relatives of breast cancer patients, retrospectively collected during the setting up of a population-based family breast cancer registry.

Patients And Methods: Family histories of cancer for all women with breast cancer recorded at the Geneva Cancer Registry from 1990 to 1999 were retrospectively extracted from medical files. The accuracy of these family histories was validated among Swiss women born in Geneva: all 119 with a family history of breast (n = 110) or ovarian (n = 9) cancer and a representative sample of 100 women with no family history of breast or ovarian cancer.

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Background: In a cohort survey on health-related lifestyles, four different measures of health were analysed with regard to their associations with gender, socio-economic and psychosocial factors.

Methods: The survey was carried out in Berne, Switzerland. Response rate was 64% in the initial interview and 83% in the second interview, from which the data presented were derived, resulting in 923 participants aged 56 to 66 years.

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Objective: The aim of this study was to assess the tuberculin skin test conversion incidence in Swiss medical students.

Methods: This was a prospective cohort study of medical students at the University of Zurich, using a standardized tuberculin skin test before and after clinical electives.

Results: Two hundred and sixty-two students accepted the invitation to the pre-clerkship test, and 155 (59.

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Breast-conserving surgery has equivalent effect as mastectomy on stage I breast cancer prognosis only when followed by radiotherapy.

Radiother Oncol

December 2003

Geneva Cancer Registry, Institute for Social and Preventive Medicine, University of Geneva, Bd de la Cluse 55, CH-1205 Geneva, Switzerland.

Background And Purpose: Early-stage breast cancer is increasing and consequently the use of breast-conserving surgery (BCS). We examined the effect of mastectomy and BCS on overall and breast cancer survival in routine health care in Geneva, Switzerland.

Patients And Methods: We included all stage I breast cancers treated by surgery (n=1046) recorded at the Geneva Cancer Registry between 1988 and 1999.

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Objective: To compare the tolerability of malaria chemoprophylaxis regimens in non-immune travellers.

Design: Randomised, double blind, study with placebo run-in phase.

Setting: Travel clinics in Switzerland, Germany, and Israel.

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EEG power and coherence in children with educational problems.

J Clin Neurophysiol

December 2003

Institute for Social and Preventive Medicine, University of Zurich, Switzerland.

SUMMARY This study deals with the quantitative EEG (QEEG) of children attending schools for the mentally retarded and learning disabled. Questions are in which way do the EEGs of these children differ from normal development and whether deviations are restricted to a subgroup of children. The topographic distribution of EEG power is of particular interest.

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