Results of the 10 HON survey on health and medical internet use.

The Internet is increasingly being used as a means to search and communicate health information. As the mission of Health on the Net Foundation (HON) is to guide healthcare consumers and professionals to trustworthy online information, we have been interested in seeing the trend of the attitudes towards Internet use for health purposes since 1996. This article presents the results of the 10th HON survey conducted in July-August 2010 (in English and French). It was hosted on the HON site with links from Facebook and Twitter and from HONcode certified web sites. There were 524 participants coming mainly from France (28%), the UK (18%) and the USA (18%). 65% of participants represented the "general public", while the remaining 35% were professionals. Information quality remains the main barrier users encounter while looking for health information online; at the same time, 79% believe they critically assess online content. Both patients and physicians consider the Internet to be helpful in facilitating their communication during consultations, although professionals are more sceptic than the general public. These results justify the continuing efforts of HON to raise public awareness regarding online health information and the ethical, quality and transparency issues, and to educate and guide users towards trustworthy health information.

Improving the transparency of health information found on the internet through the honcode: a comparative study.

This study aims to show that health websites not asking for HONcode certification (Control sample websites A) do not respect elementary ethical standards such as the HONcode. The HONcode quality and ethical standards and the certification process have been developed by the Health on the Net Foundation to improve the transparency of the health and medical information found on the Internet. We compared the compliance with the 8 HONcode principles, and respectively the respect of principles 1 (authority), 4 (assignment), 5 (justification) and 8 (honesty in advertising and editorial policy) by certified websites (A) and by health websites which have not requested the certification (B). The assessment of the HONcode compliance was performed by HON evaluators by the same standards for all type of sites. Results shows that 0.6% of health websites not asking for HONcode certification does respect the eight HONcode ethical standards vs. 89% of certified websites. Regarding the principles 1, 4, 5 and 8, 1.2% of B respect these principles vs. 92% for A. The certification process led health websites to respect the ethical and quality standards such as the HONcode, and disclosing the production process of the health website.

Numerical modelling of the V-J combinations of the T cell receptor TRA/TRD locus.

T-Cell antigen Receptor (TR) repertoire is generated through rearrangements of V and J genes encoding alpha and beta chains. The quantification and frequency for every V-J combination during ontogeny and development of the immune system remain to be precisely established. We have addressed this issue by building a model able to account for Valpha-Jalpha gene rearrangements during thymus development of mice. So we developed a numerical model on the whole TRA/TRD locus, based on experimental data, to estimate how Valpha and Jalpha genes become accessible to rearrangements. The progressive opening of the locus to V-J gene recombinations is modeled through windows of accessibility of different sizes and with different speeds of progression. Furthermore, the possibility of successive secondary V-J rearrangements was included in the modelling. The model points out some unbalanced V-J associations resulting from a preferential access to gene rearrangements and from a non-uniform partition of the accessibility of the J genes, depending on their location in the locus. The model shows that 3 to 4 successive rearrangements are sufficient to explain the use of all the V and J genes of the locus. Finally, the model provides information on both the kinetics of rearrangements and frequencies of each V-J associations. The model accounts for the essential features of the observed rearrangements on the TRA/TRD locus and may provide a reference for the repertoire of the V-J combinatorial diversity.