BACKGROUND An aging population and better management of various heart diseases explain the exponential growth in incidence and prevalence of chronic heart failure, with poor prognosis and heavy health costs. Medical management is codified in international guidelines. The management of heart failure in over-80 year-old patients follows these guidelines, but no clinical trials have been able to c...

BACKGROUND Obesity is the most common health problem in developed countries. Recently, several physicians' organizations have issued recommendations for treating obesity to family physicians, including instructions in nutrition, physical activity and medications. The aim of this study was to examine if effective weight-reducing treatment can be given by a family physician. It compares regular t...

BACKGROUND The United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) and its predecessors have conducted three distinct series of epidemiological studies beginning in 1948 on the relationship between bathing water quality and swimmers' illnesses. Keeping pace with advances in microbial technologies, these studies differed in their respective microbial indicators of water quality. Another differ...

Clinical manifestations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), including airflow limitation, dyspnea, and activity limitation, ultimately lead to impaired health-related quality of life (HRQoL). This 9-month, randomized, double-blind, multicenter study compared the effect of once-daily tiotropium 18 microg and placebo on HRQoL, spirometric parameters, and exacerbations in 554 patients...

BACKGROUND Stroke, diabetes, and coronary heart disease (CHD) remain leading causes of death in the United States and are largely attributable to lifestyle behaviors. Integrative medicine can provide a supportive partnership that focuses on improving health by identifying and implementing lifestyle changes based upon personal values and goals. OBJECTIVE This prospective observational study wa...

1 Operational Research Unit, Medical Department, Operational Centre Brussels, Medecins sans Frontieres, MSFLuxembourg, Luxembourg, Germany 2 Medecins sans Frontieres, Geneva, Switzerland 3 Department of Molecular and Cellular Interactions, Flemish Institute of Biotechnology, Brussels, Belgium 4 Department of Microbiology, Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, Belgium 5 Medecins Sans Frontier...

BACKGROUND Routinely collected electronic patient records are already widely used in epidemiological research. In this work we investigated the potential for using them to identify endpoints in clinical trials. METHODS The events recorded in the West of Scotland Coronary Prevention Study (WOSCOPS), a large clinical trial of pravastatin in middle-aged hypercholesterolaemic men in the 1990s, we...

This paper presents an application for studying the death records of WW2 casualties from a prosopograhical perspective, provided by the various local military cemeteries where the dead were buried. The idea is to provide the end user with a global visual map view on the places in which the casualties were buried as well as with a local historical perspective on what happened to the casualties t...