We examined the degree of airway obstruction that developed in eight asthmatics who exercised while breathing air under four conditions: (a) ambient room temperature and water content; (b) body temperature and ambient water content; (c) ambient room temperature fully saturated; and (d) body temperature fully saturated. These test conditions were performed in random order. Multiple aspects of pu...

BACKGROUND In 1994 a small cluster of hepatitis-C cases in Rhesus-negative women in Ireland prompted a nationwide screening programme for hepatitis-C antibodies in all anti-D recipients. A total of 55 386 women presented for screening and a history of exposure to anti-D was sought from all those testing positive and a sample of those testing negative. The resulting data comprised 620 antibody-p...

BACKGROUND Cobalt has been shown to induce mainly asthma, allergic contact dermatitis and hard metal disease. The data on cobalt asthma are mainly based on case reports. AIMS To characterize all the cases of occupational cobalt asthma encountered in a cobalt plant at the time of diagnosis and 6 months later. We also evaluated the incidence of cobalt asthma in different departments on the basi...

The protective effect of liquorice plant extract (LPE) on CCl4-induced hepatotoxicity in common carp was evaluated using fifty adult carps. The fish were cultured in a standard environment in terms of water flow rate, oxygen, pH, food and temperature. The fish were assigned into 5 groups (N = 10) as control, sham, and tests. The test groups were pre-treated for 3 h with various concentrations o...

Background: Induction of cellular response after exposure to electromagnetic fields is limited to coherent fields. An incoherent noise field is supposed to suppress the bioeffects of regular RF electromagnetic fields. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of GSM mobile phone-induced radiofrequency (RF) on the induction of oxidative stress in SP2/0 cell line. Materials and Meth...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Although mass transit systems are convenient and efficient for urban people, little attention has been paid to the potential hearing hazard from their noise. The purpose of the current study was to measure and analyze levels of subway interior noise at peak commuter times and to provide information about commuters' daily dose of noise exposure. MATERIALS AND METHODS ...

There is a lack of studies assessing the exposure-response relationship between transportation noise and annoyance in North America. Our aims were to investigate the prevalence of noise annoyance induced by road traffic, trains and airplanes in relation to distance to transportation noise sources, and to total environmental noise levels in Montreal, Canada; annoyance was assessed as noise-induc...

BACKGROUND The wide range and complex combinations of factors that cause birth defects impede the development of primary prevention strategies targeted at high-risk subpopulations. METHODS Latent class analysis (LCA) was conducted to identify mutually exclusive profiles of factors associated with birth defects among women between 15 and 49 years of age using data from a large, population-base...

BACKGROUND Gastroschisis, a birth defect characterized by herniated fetal abdominal wall, occurs more commonly in infants born to teenage and young mothers. Ischemia of the vascular vitelline vessels is the likely mechanism of pathogenesis. Given that chronic stress and violence against women are risk factors for cardiovascular disease we explored whether these may represent risk factors for ga...