ABSTRACT
There is a considerable discrepancy between the number of identified occupational-related bladder cancer cases and the estimated numbers particularly in emerging nations or less developed countries where suitable approaches are less or even not known. Thus, within a project of the World Health Organisation Collaborating Centres in Occupational Health, a questionnaire of the Dortmund group, applied in different studies, was translated into more than 30 languages (Afrikaans, Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, Georgian, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Kazakh, Kirghiz, Korean, Latvian, Malay, Persian (Farsi), Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese/Brazilian, Romanian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, Spanish, Spanish/Mexican, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Urdu, Vietnamese). The bipartite questionnaire asks for relevant medical information in the physician's part and for the occupational history since leaving school in the patient's part. Furthermore, this questionnaire is asking for intensity and frequency of certain occupational and non-occupational risk factors. The literature regarding occupations like painter, hairdresser or miner and exposures like carcinogenic aromatic amines, azo dyes, or combustion products is highlighted. The questionnaire is available on www.ifado.de/BladderCancerDoc.
Subject(s)
Urinary Bladder Neoplasms/etiology , Documentation , Humans , Linguistics , Occupational Exposure , Surveys and Questionnaires , Urinary Bladder Neoplasms/pathologyABSTRACT
Orthosiphon stamineus Benth. ( Orthosiphon Grandiflorus Bold. or Clerodendranthus spicatus Thunb.) is an Indonesian medicinal herb traditionally used for diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, and kidney stones. Despite the importance of this last application, there are very few reports on it. Diuretic action is an important factor in kidney stone treatment, as an increase in the volume of fluid flowing through the kidney will help to dissolve the stones, assist their passing to avoid further retention, and flush out the deposits. Among the diverse roles of adenosine A (1) receptor antagonists in renal protection, many studies have shown that they can induce diuresis and sodium excretion. A bioassay-guided fractionation of a methanol-water extract of Orthosiphon stamineus leaves using the adenosine A (1) receptor binding assay resulted in the isolation of seven methoxy flavonoids as active ligands with K(i) values in the micromolar range. The Hill slope values are not significantly different from unity (within 0.9 - 1.4), which indicates the antagonist effect to A (1)-R. The results of this study thus provide a scientific foundation for the traditional use ofOrthosiphon stamineus in kidney stone treatment, as the affinity of the active compounds isolated from it as adenosine A (1) receptor ligands allows them to be associated with diuretic activity, which is one possible treatment for renal lithiasis.
