[Social and demographic characteristics and perinatal risks for highly deprived mothers]. / Caractéristiques socio-démographiques et risques périnatals des mères en situation de précarité.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the frequency of deprivation in pregnant women and estimate the associated medical risks. MATERIAL: and methods. A retrospective study of the hospital's computerised data (6149 women) and two prospective studies with health staff (n=534) and social workers (n=85) in two maternity hospitals. RESULTS: In the retrospective study, 17.5% of mothers were deprived. Deprivation was associated both with more difficulties during pregnancy and the perinatal period and with longer hospital stays. The prospective studies confirmed the prevalence of deprivation and gave a more detailed idea of the associated social and demographic characteristics. Deprivation was related with a combination of risk factors with a particularly important influence of economic risk. A quarter of deprived mothers had unwanted pregnancies and according to the social workers approximately 10% of them were not in a position to take care of their baby. CONCLUSION: This study emphasizes the importance of deprivation as a perinatal medical risk factor. Screening should take place in early pregnancy in order to find the best way to help such families.

[Self-evaluation of the quality of life of children aged 6 to 12 years old: analysis of the concept and development of a prototype tool]. / Auto-evaluation de la qualité de vie d'enfants de 6 à 12 ans: analyse du concept et élaboration d'un outil prototype.

The objective of this work was to assess the quality of life of children aged 6 to 12 years old. The authors present the different conceptual and operational steps which lead to the construction of a prototype tool. It was a generic tool composed of 63 items which covered the classically described areas of life. Its originality was due to the method of construction used which included children's involvement, to the pictorial representation of real-life situations for children, and to its adaptation for gender. The evaluation of this tool showed a good level of acceptability but statistical analysis revealed some metrological inadequacies leading to the reconsideration of the initial concepts and their methods of exploration. Therefore a new tool was constructed whose validation is presented in a second article in the next issue.

[Self-evaluation of the quality of life of children aged 6 to 12 years old: construction and first steps in the validation of kidlQol, a generic computer-based tool]. / Auto-evaluation de la qualité de vie d'enfants de 6 a 12 ans: construction et premières etapes de validation du KidlQol, outil générique présenté sur ordinateur.

The KidlQol is a self-evaluation computer-based instrument to assess the quality of life of children aged 6 to 12 years old. This self-evaluation comprises three areas of their subjective quality of life: physical, psychological and social. A computer-assisted tool, composed of 62 items, was developed and set up based upon the results from the evaluation of the initial prototype tool which underwent a series validation steps, tested among children with and without psychological problems. This evaluation lead to the production of a final tool called KidlQuol, which is composed of 44 items. This tool, which utilises computer images to represent real-life situations, is adapted for and accessible to children with a French cultural background aged between 6 and 12 years old. As a generic tool, it could be used among a population of children with various types of handicaps, chronic diseases or psycho-social difficulties.

[Pregnancy and labor of women born in Maghreb and Black Africa followed to delivery at the Maternity Hospital of Toulouse]. / Grossesse et accouchement de femmes originaires du Maghreb et d'Afrique noire suivies à la maternité du CHU de Toulouse.

OBJECTIVE: To identify risk factors related to maternal ethnic origin. METHODS: Retrospective review of 5808 cases of French, Maghrebian and Black African women who delivered between 1988 and 1994 at the Maternity of La Grave Hospital in Toulouse. RESULTS: Pathological pregnancies were more frequent (60% vs 45%), specifically anemia OR = 10.2[6.3-16.7] and OR = 5.7[4.0-8.3]) and genital infections (OR = 1.7[1.2-2.6] and OR = 1.7[1.4-2.1]) in African and Maghrebian respectively. than in French women. These differences cannot be referred to any classical risk factors but only to the mother's ethnic origin. Moreover, cesarean delivery occurred almost twice as much in African women 34% vs 19%) and no specific medical indication was found to explain this increase. CONCLUSION: Our data concluded that important risk factors were related to the mother's ethnic origin. This finding demonstrates that management of perinatal care and epidemiologic studies should take maternal ethnic origin into account.

[Social situations and health care of immigrant foreign populations in France over the course of the last 5 decades]. / Situations sociales et besoins de santé des populations étrangères immigrées en France au cours des 5 dernières décennies.

The goal of this study is to define possible characteristics in social and medical needs with immigrant foreigners who arrived in France during the last fifty years; and because of the grave situation, it should be necessary to take appropriate and special action. Except identical needs related to similar social and economic situations shared by french and foreign people, the immigration introduces new risk factors: related to ethnologic expression of the illness and cultural breaking, a special assistance is claimed; ethnopsychiatry is one of many possible solutions.

Recovery of nanogram quantities of DNA from plasma and quantitative measurement using labeling by nick translation.

A method which allows for the quantitative measurement of DNA in plasma is described. After treatment of plasma with phenol, DNA is precipitated by ethanol using gelatin as a coprecipitating agent. DNA is then measured by nick translation labeling. This assay takes a few hours. It is suitable for the measurement of DNA within a range of 0.02 to 20 ng in 10 microliters of plasma. For example, it is applied to the measurement of DNA in plasma from mice injected with bacterial lipopolysaccharide.

Chronical administration of anti-DNA antibodies by subcutaneous injection of hybridoma clones in BALB/c and NZBxNZW/F1 mice. Experimental model of the pathogenic role of DNA in acute lupus disease.

Several sets of data suggest that specific classes of anti-DNA antibodies could be implicated in the genesis of glomerular lesions in SLE. The goal of this work is to investigate if this pathogenic role could be related to the antibodies' genetic origin--from BALB/c or NZBxNZW/F1 mice--or to their physiological origin--induced either by DNA or by polyclonal B cell activation in normal mice. For this purpose, anti-DNA antibody hybridoma clones produced from different origins were subcutaneously injected in BALB/c or NZBxNZW/F1 female mice, followed by studies of immunological parameters and kidney lesions. Results concur that the induced anti-DNA antibodies can play a role in fatal disease development, related to clonal specificity but not to the way of stimulation which was either polyclonal B cell activation or DNA immunization. Also, they emphasize the possible very lethal role of serum circulating DNA.

Sustained effect of angiotensin II on tyrosine phosphorylation of annexin I in glomerular mesangial cells.

By means of selective extraction in a Ca(2+)-chelating medium and immunoblotting, four annexins (I, II, V, and VI) were identified in both isolated rat renal glomeruli and rat glomerular mesangial cells. Upon 32P labeling of these cells in culture, annexin I was immunoprecipitated using a specific polyclonal antibody and was found to incorporate radioactivity in a constitutive manner. However, as with epidermal growth factor (200 ng/ml), addition of angiotensin II (10(-7) M), arginine-vasopressin (10(-7) M), or endothelin I (10(-7) M) resulted in a 2-3-fold stimulation of annexin I phosphorylation. The basal phosphorylation as well as the stimulating effect of angiotensin II were also detected by immunoblotting annexin extracts using an antiphosphotyrosine antibody. In addition, among various phosphotyrosyl proteins isolated from EGTA extracts by adsorption onto an anti-phosphotyrosine antibody, annexin I was specifically recognized by Western blotting using a monoclonal anti-annexin I antibody, and displayed the same increase upon cell stimulation with angiotensin II. Moreover, thin layer chromatographic analysis of phosphoamino acids present in immunoprecipitated [32P]annexin I showed an exclusive labeling of phosphotyrosine residue(s). Finally, the effect of angiotensin II was detectable after 10 min, maximal at 6 h, and present until 12 h of incubation. Using 12-h stimulation, tyrosine phosphorylation of annexin I displayed a maximum at 10(-7) to 10(-6) M angiotensin II. These data report for the first time the stimulation of annexin I tyrosine phosphorylation by biologically active peptides acting via receptors belonging to the superfamily of seven hydrophobic domain, G-protein-linked receptors, which lack an intrinsic protein tyrosine kinase. This suggests a possible role of annexin I in the mitogenic effect of angiotensin II, arginine-vasopressin, and endothelin I, which was previously observed on rat glomerular mesangial cells as well as on other cells.