Air pollution in moderately polluted urban areas: How does the definition of "neighborhood" impact exposure assessment?

Environmental health studies commonly quantify subjects' pollution exposure in their neighborhood. How this neighborhood is defined can vary, however, leading to different approaches to quantification whose impacts on exposure levels remain unclear. We explore the relationship between neighborhood definition and exposure assessment. NO2, benzene, PM10 and PM2.5 exposure estimates were computed in the vicinity of 10,825 buildings using twelve exposure assessment techniques reflecting different definitions of "neighborhood". At the city scale, its definition does not significantly influence exposure estimates. It does impact levels at the building scale, however: at least a quarter of the buildings' exposure estimates for a 400 m buffer differ from the estimated 50 m buffer value (±1.0 µg/m(3) for NO2, PM10 and PM2.5; and ±0.05 µg/m(3) for benzene). This variation is significantly related to the definition of neighborhood. It is vitally important for investigators to understand the impact of chosen assessment techniques on exposure estimates.

High-resolution array-CGH in patients with oculocutaneous albinism identifies new deletions of the TYR, OCA2, and SLC45A2 genes and a complex rearrangement of the OCA2 gene.

Oculocutaneous albinism (OCA) is caused by mutations in six different genes, and their molecular diagnosis encompasses the search for point mutations and intragenic rearrangements. Here, we used high-resolution array-comparative genome hybridization (CGH) to search for rearrangements across exons, introns and regulatory sequences of four OCA genes: TYR, OCA2, TYRP1, and SLC45A2. We identified a total of ten new deletions in TYR, OCA2, and SLC45A2. A complex rearrangement of OCA2 was found in two unrelated patients. Whole-genome sequencing showed deletion of a 184-kb fragment (identical to a deletion previously found in Polish patients), whereby a large portion of the deleted sequence was re-inserted after severe reshuffling into intron 1 of OCA2. The high-resolution array-CGH presented here is a powerful tool to detect gene rearrangements. Finally, we review all known deletions of the OCA1-4 genes reported so far in the literature and show that deletions or duplications account for 5.6% of all mutations identified in the OCA1-4 genes.

[Explarotory study about professional characteristics of suicide attempters]. / Étude exploratoire des caractéristiques professionnelles d'un échantillon de suicidants hospitalisés.

We aimed to describe the professional characteristics of suicide attempters. One investigator asked 87 consecutive patients, aged 18 to 25 years, who had been hospitalized in a university hospital in Angers after having attempted suicide anytime during a 6.5-month period (November 2008-April 2009) to complete a questionnaire about their working conditions. The working conditions of both sexes were approximatively the same. Many patients described situations where work organization was known to produce given mental disorders. Patients hospitalized for suicide attempts are in professions that leaves them more stressed than the general population of workers (Sumer, Samotrace etc.). This evidence could favour a link between attempted suicide and mental factors of strain at work. The results of this study should be interpreted with caution because of the phenomena of circuitous data and small sample size.