Annals of Agricultural and Environmental Medicine最新文献

Introduction and objective: Health-related quality of life (HRQL) should be used more extensively in monitoring the health of school-aged children. The presented study aimed to evaluate trends in KIDSCREEN-10 indices, considering mean scores and the level of social inequalities.

Material and methods: 3,937 children aged 13 participated in three Health Behavior in School-aged Children (HBSC) cross-sectional surveys conducted in Poland between 2010-2018. Subgroups were distinguished according to gender, health status, and three social factors (family affluence, neighbourhood social capital, and local deprivation).

Results: The average KIDSCREEN-10 index value was equal to: 22.36±4.54; 25.41±6.75; and 24.74±6.53 in 2010, 2014, and 2018,respectively. However, in 2018 no deterioration was recorded in boys, in poorer families or in regions with high social capital. The improvement in HRQL in 2014 was accompanied by an increase in disparities in health status and family wealth, as well as a decrease in disparities in local deprivation. An especially high increase in Glass index values was recorded for neighbourhood social capital (increasing from 0.542 in 2010 to 0.938 in 2018). The multivariate general linear model revealed the main effect of the year of the study, gender, chronic disease status, and the three social factors, as well as six significant 2-way interactions.

Conclusions: Changes in the well-being of adolescents should be tracked over time using HRQL indices with proven psychometric properties. The level of social inequalities faced by young people should be included in policies and when designing interventions. The relevant initiatives should be targeted at different populations in order to properly address the needs of different groups of children and adolescents.

Introduction and objective: Little is known about interspecific contacts between ticks. Therefore, this study focused on the investigation of factors that may influence interspecific contacts between Ixodes ricinus and Dermacentor reticulatus ticks.

Material and methods: Ixodes ricinus males and D. reticulatus females involved in oral-anal contacts (group I) and questing specimens with no such behaviour (group II) collected in eastern Poland were examined using molecular techniques to detect Borrelia burgdorferi s.l. (Bb), Rickettsia spp. (Rs), Anaplasma phagocytophilum, Babesia microti, and Toxoplasma gondii.

Results: An extremely high infection rate of Bb and Rs was determined in I. ricinus males (in groups I: 100% and 46.15% and group II: 90% and 40%, respectively) and D. reticulatus females (in group I: 84.61% and 61.53% and in group II: 90% and 20%, respectively). The prevalence of other pathogens in these ticks was substantially lower. Co-infection with pathogens was detected in approximately 53% of ticks.

Conclusions: The study suggests that tick-borne pathogens may have influenced the sexual behaviour of their vectors. The oral-anal contacts between I. ricinus and D. reticulatus ticks are probably stimulated by Bb and/or Rs. The presence of five pathogens and numerous co-infections in the analysed ticks indicates a risk of various human infectious diseases in the study region. Further studies are required to clarify the implications of oral-anal interspecific tick interactions.

Introduction and objective: Head and neck injuries are a heterogeneous group in terms of both clinical course and prognosis. For years, there have been attempts to create an ideal tool to predict the outcomes and severity of injuries. The aim of this study was evaluation of the use of selected artificial intelligence methods for outcome predictions of head and neck injuries.

Material and methods: 6,824 consecutive cases of patients who sustained head and neck injuries, treated in hospitals in the Lublin Province between 2006-2018, whose data was provided by National Institute of Public Health / National Institute of Hygiene, were analyzed retrospectively. Patients were qualified using International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (10th Revision). The multilayer perceptron (MLP) structure was utilized in numerical studies. Neural network training was achieved with the Broyden-Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shanno (BFGS) method.

Results: In the designed network, the highest classification efficiency was obtained for the group of deaths (80.7%). The average value of correct classifications for all analyzed cases was 66%. The most important variable influencing the prognosis of an injured patient was diagnosis (weight 1.929). Gender and age were variables of less significance with weight 1.08 and 1.073, respectively.

Conclusions: Designing a neural network was hindered due to the large amount of cases and linking of a large number of deaths with specific diagnosis (S06). With a predictive value of 80.7% for mortality, ANN can be a promising tool in the future; however, additional variables should be introduced into the algorithm to increase the predictive value of the network. Further studies, including other types of injuries and additional variables, are needed to introduce this method into clinical use.