The effect of patient, provider and financing regulations on the intensity of ambulatory physical therapy episodes: a multilevel analysis based on routinely available data.

Background: Many studies have found considerable variations in the resource intensity of physical therapy episodes. Although they have identified several patient- and provider-related factors, few studies have examined their relative explanatory power. We sought to quantify the contribution of patients and providers to these differences and examine how effective Swiss regulations are (nine-session ceiling per prescription and bonus for first treatments).

Screening primary-care patients forgoing health care for economic reasons.

Background: Growing social inequities have made it important for general practitioners to verify if patients can afford treatment and procedures. Incorporating social conditions into clinical decision-making allows general practitioners to address mismatches between patients' health-care needs and financial resources.

Objectives: Identify a screening question to, indirectly, rule out patients' social risk of forgoing health care for economic reasons, and estimate prevalence of forgoing health care and the influence of physicians' attitudes toward deprivation.

Disease identification based on ambulatory drugs dispensation and in-hospital ICD-10 diagnoses: a comparison.

Background: Pharmacy-based case mix measures are an alternative source of information to the relatively scarce outpatient diagnoses data. But most published tools use national drug nomenclatures and offer no head-to-head comparisons between drugs-related and diagnoses-based categories. The objective of the study was to test the accuracy of drugs-based morbidity groups derived from the World Health Organization Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical Classification of drugs by checking them against diagnoses-based groups.

The relation of body mass index and abdominal adiposity with dyslipidemia in 27 general populations of the WHO MONICA Project.

Background And Aims: The association between adiposity measures and dyslipidemia has seldom been assessed in a multipopulational setting.

Methods And Results: 27 populations from Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Canada (WHO MONICA project) using health surveys conducted between 1990 and 1997 in adults aged 35-64 years (n = 40,480). Dyslipidemia was defined as the total/HDL cholesterol ratio >6 (men) and >5 (women).

Reproducibility and relative validity of a food-frequency questionnaire for French-speaking Swiss adults.

Background: Due to the distinct cultural and language differences that exist in Switzerland, there is little information on the dietary intake among the general Swiss population. Adequately assessing dietary intake is thus paramount if nutritional epidemiological studies are to be conducted.

Objective: To assess the reproducibility and validity of a food-frequency questionnaire (FFQ) developed for French-speaking Swiss adults.

Cardiovascular risk factors attributable to obesity and overweight in Switzerland.

Background And Aims: Obesity increases the risk for cardiovascular risk factors (CVRFs), including hypertension, dyslipidaemia and type 2 diabetes. In this study, we assessed the burden of overweight and obesity on CVRFs in Switzerland, using Swiss-specific population attributable fractions (PAFs).

Methods And Results: The number of cases of CVRFs that could have been prevented if the increase in overweight and obesity in Switzerland had been contained was estimated using gender-specific, age- and smoking-adjusted PAFs for overweight and obesity.

High expectation in non-evidence-based smoking cessation interventions among smokers--the CoLaus study.

Objective: To assess the preferred methods to quit smoking among current smokers.

Method: Cross-sectional, population-based study conducted in Lausanne between 2003 and 2006 including 988 current smokers. Preference was assessed by questionnaire.

Peroxynitrite induces HMGB1 release by cardiac cells in vitro and HMGB1 upregulation in the infarcted myocardium in vivo.

Aims: High-mobility group box 1 (HMGB1) is a nuclear protein actively secreted by immune cells and passively released by necrotic cells that initiates pro-inflammatory signalling through binding to the receptor for advance glycation end-products. HMGB1 has been established as a key inflammatory mediator during myocardial infarction, but the proximal mechanisms responsible for myocardial HMGB1 expression and release in this setting remain unclear. Here, we investigated the possible involvement of peroxynitrite, a potent cytotoxic oxidant formed during myocardial infarction, on these processes.