AIM This paper reports a systematic review conducted to determine the effectiveness of the use of risk assessment scales for pressure ulcer prevention in clinical practice, degree of validation of risk assessment scales, and effectiveness of risk assessment scales as indicators of risk of developing a pressure ulcer. BACKGROUND Pressure ulcers are an important health problem. The best strateg...

The connexion between pellagra and maize consumption has occupied the interest of many workers for a number of years. It has been suggested that maize owes its pellagragenic property to an imbalance of amino-acids, tryptophan being especially low. This imbalance was said to increase the need for nicotinic acid (Krehl, Henderson, de la Huerga & Elvehjem, 1946; Krehl, 1949). The presence of a ‘to...

In 1866, Hoppe Seyler was appointed to the Chair of Physiological Chemistry at the University of Tubingen, eight years after Virchow had published his lectures on cellular pathology. Buchner was no more than 6 years old at the time. Biochemistry, as we understand it, did not exist. To-day the dynamic approach which is the essential feature of modern biochemical teaching has produced advances in...

It has been suggested (Houlihan, 1991) that the consumption of 1 g of protein in a variety of species of fish stimulates the synthesis of, approximately, an equal amount of protein. Although synthesis of protein may account for as much as 40 % of the whole-animal oxygen consumption (Lyndon et al. 1992), only about 30 % of the synthesized proteins are retained as growth (Houlihan et al. 1988; Ca...

Waterlow's (1981) Sixth Boyd Orr Lecture on a 'crisis of identity for nutrition' stimulated the Nutrition Society's drive to professionalisation. Twenty-five years on, the Society begins a new stage; first, towards an independent voluntary regulator, and then towards statutory regulation. It is timely to reflect on progress and identify the remaining challenges. The Society has made impressive ...

Leaves are a potential source of low cost protein. By dry weight, leaves of 23 plant types contained protein from 6 to 41%, of which 14 contained 20% or more. Notable were castor bean (Ricinus communis) 41%, balsam pear (Momordica charantia) 33%, cowpea (Vigna sinensis) 32%, and cassava (Manihot esculenta) 32%. The leaves had large quantities of the es sential amino acids lysine, leucine and is...

On the 23rd of April the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) launched an expert report on diet (http://www. who.int/hpr/global.strategy.shtml) which will serve as the basis for developing a global strategy, to be finalized for the WHO Executive Board in January 2004. The FAO/WHO Joint Expert Report was based on the collective judgement of a group o...

It is commonly accepted that polar marine invertebrates and fish have slow annual growth rates compared to animals from lower latitudes. The first intuitively appealing explanation is that temperature slows down physiological rates in the cold, but this explanation ignores the possibility that over the course of evolution, polar species may have achieved some degree of compensation for the rate...

INTRODUCTION Capacity to provide end-of-life care in India is scored as 0.6/100, and very few people in India have access to palliative and end-of-life care. Lack of end-of-life care provision in India has led to a significant number of people receiving inappropriate medical treatment at the end of life, with no access to pain and symptom control and high treatment costs. The International Coll...