P atterns of cancer incidence and mortality across Europe are as varied as the continent’s geography. But a new report finds that, in general, obesity and tobacco use are driving cancer incidence, mortality, and survival across Europe: Overall cancer incidence has decreased since the mid-1990s in northern and western Europe except for obesityrelated cancers, and incidence of and mortality from ...

Social Protection as an Automatic Stabilizer This paper analyzes the effectiveness of social protection systems in Europe and the US to provide (income) insurance against macro level shocks in terms of automatic stabilizers. We find that automatic stabilizers absorb 38% of a proportional income shock and 47% of an idiosyncratic unemployment shock in Europe, compared to 32% and 34% in the US. Th...

Sex-selective abortion is not specific to Asia. Christophe Guilmoto and Géraldine Duthé explain why European countries in the Western Balkans and Southern Caucasus are affected too. Although the problem was described for the first time more than ten years ago, it is only now that the authorities in these countries and in Europe are starting to show concern. Masculinization of births in Eastern ...

A total of 3,051 methicillin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA) isolates and methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) isolates in Europe were compared. MRSA isolates constituted 25% of all isolates and were more prevalent in southern Europe. MRSA isolates appeared to be more prevalent in intensive care units than in outpatient departments. Only a small minority of MSSA isolates were multidr...

The authors describe the clinical profile and epidemiology of contagious bovine pleuropneumonia in Europe. This disease, once considered to have been eradicated several years ago, has now become endemic in southern countries of Europe. The status of contagious bovine pleuropneumonia in Portugal and Italy, and the evolution of the disease during the last ten years, are analysed in detail, in add...

Ulcerative colitis (UC), a member of the family of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), occurs worldwide. It has an incidence which in recent years has been rising in areas such as Southern Europe and Asia, while remaining relatively constant in Northern Europe and North America. Complications associated with UC include toxic dilatation, perforation, carcinoma and massive haemorrhage. Extra-intest...

Methods The secondary data on infant mortality was obtained on countries in Eastern Africa, Western Europe and Southern Asian countries between 1950 and 2010 expressed as deaths per 1,000 births. Countries in Western Europe were used for comparison purposes. The data also included inpatients (admissions and deaths in 2007) of water-related diseases such as malaria and diarrhoea, in Eastern Afri...

Hantavirus hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome is endemic in Europe and Asia, while hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome (HCPS) is endemic in Northern, Central and Southern America. The first case of imported HCPS involving an Italian traveller returning from Cuba is reported.

In 1950/51, only a handful of developed countries had populations in which those aged 65 comprised 10 per cent, or slightly more, of the total. By 1996, virtually all developed countries were in this position, and in most of Northern, Southern and Western Europe those over 65 accounted for 15 per cent or more of the population (Council of Europe, 1998). In much of Europe and North America recen...

Models for the development of species distribution in Europe typically invoke restriction in three temperate Mediterranean refugia during glaciations, from where recolonization of central and northern Europe occurred. The brown bear, Ursus arctos, is one of the taxa from which this model is derived. Sequence data generated from brown bear fossils show a complex phylogeographical history for wes...