Adenocarcinoma of the oesophagus has been increasing in incidence in most developed countries in the last two decades (Powell and McConkey, 1990;Blot et al, 1991). The incidence of this condition in British women is among the highest in the world, with half of all cases in Europe occurring in the UK (Black et al, 1997). Previous studies, which had predominantly included men, had identified obesity, diet low in fruit and vegetables, and smoking as the main risk factors (Brown et al, 1995;Vaughan et al, 1995;Gammon et al, 1997;Chow et al, 1998;Lagergren et al, 1999). Little is known about the causes of this cancer in women. Here we report a multi-centre, population-based case-control study among British women together with an estimate of the overall population attributable risk of important risk factors in a multivariate fashion. This population-based case-control study was conducted in the former Regional Health Authorities (RHA) of East Anglia and Oxford, part of Trent RHA and Eastern Scotland covering the Health Boards of Highland, Grampian, Tayside, Fife, Lothian and Forth Valley. Ethical approval was given by all the local research ethics committees.Cases comprised all women aged under 75 years of age (80 years in Trent) resident in the study areas at the time of their diagnosis with oesophageal cancer. Results on adenocarcinoma only are reported here. Cases were identified through pathology departments, treating clinicians and cancer registries and all tumours were histologically confirmed. Care was taken to exclude tumours established as arising in the cardia of the stomach but a small number of cases of those arising at the gastro-oesophageal junction may be included.Cases were accrued over a 2-year period in each study region between 1993 and 1996. A single female control was matched to each case by age (within 5 years) and general practice. Potential controls were randomly selected using the Family Health Service Authority (FHSA) or Health Board primary care registers. Eligible controls who declined to take part were replaced.Women were approached with consultant or General Practitioner (GP) permission and asked for a personal interview. Trained interviewers used a standard form to conduct interviews either in hospital or at home. Information was collected on sociodemographic characteristics, smoking, alcohol, tea and coffee consumption, diet, previous medical and obstetric histories, and a number of other factors, including weight, height and use of vitamin supplements. Smoking was measured in pack years and total years of smoking whilst units of alcohol were categorized by average weekly and total lifetime consumption. A dietary questionnaire was used to obtain information for recent diet (3 years prior to interview) and at age 30 years. Consumption of fresh fruit, salad and vegetables was assessed by questions on food frequency. Categories for analysis were based on quartiles of the frequency of consumption per week among all controls (including those for cases of other histological diagnoses)...

Oesophageal cancer rates in women in the UK are more than 3 times higher than in most other European populations. A population-based matched case–control study of histologically confirmed squamous cell carcinoma of the oesophagus in women was carried out in 4 regions in England and Scotland. Interviews were carried out in hospital or at home and topics included: smoking; alcohol; tea and coffee consumption; medical and obstetric history; and diet. Response rates were 62% for cases and 65% for first-chosen controls. There were 159 case–control pairs. Significant results were found for: eating salads (odds ratio (OR) 0.42, 95% CI 0.20–0.92 in the highest quartile of consumption) and a light (as distinct from no) breakfast (OR 0.18, 95% CI 0.07 – 0.48) were protective; quantity of tea was a risk factor and there was a significant positive trend with temperature at which hot drinks were consumed (P = 0.03). Alcohol consumption was unrelated to risk, but there was a significant trend with years of smoking (P = 0.015). A protective effect of aspirin consumption was confined to the English centres (OR 0.08, 95% CI 0.01–0.56). Comparison with a parallel study of adenocarcinoma indicated a common protective effect of a healthy diet but otherwise distinct risk factors. © 2001 Cancer Research Campaign http://www.bjcancer.com

Mutations in the CF Transmembrane Conductance Regulator (CFTR) gene affect both male and female fertility; however, not all CFTR mutations appear to cause infertility. Although most men with CF have significant anatomical abnormalities of the reproductive tract causing infertility, most women with CF have anatomically normal reproductive tracts and up to half may be able to conceive spontaneously. Less is known about how CF affects female fertility or the treatment options available.

Neurogenesis occurs throughout life but significantly decreases with age. Human umbilical cord blood mononuclear cells (HUCB MNCs) have been shown to increase the proliferation of neural stem cells (NSCs) in the dentate gyrus (DG) of the hippocampus and the subgranular zone of aging rats (Bachstetter et al., BMC Neurosci 9:22, 2008), but it is unclear which fraction or combination of the HUCB MNCs are responsible for neurogenesis. To address this issue, we examined the ability of HUCB MNCs, CD4+, CD8+, CD3+, CD14+, and CD133+ subpopulations to increase proliferation of NSCs both in vitro and in vivo. NSCs were first grown in conditioned media generated from HUCB cultures, and survival and proliferation of NSC were determined with the fluorescein diacetate/propidium iodide and 5-bromo-2′-deoxyuridine incorporation assays, respectively. In a second study, we injected HUCB cells intravenously in young and aged Fisher 344 rats and examined proliferation in the DG at 1 week (study 2.1) and 2 weeks (study 2.2) postinjection. The effects of the HUCB MNC fractions on dendritic spine density and microglial activation were also assessed. HUCB T cells (CD3+, CD4+, and CD8+ cells) induced proliferation of NSCs (p < 0.001) and increased cell survival. In vivo, HUCB-derived CD4+ cells increased NSC proliferation at both 1 and 2 weeks while also enhancing the density of dendritic spines at 1 week and decreasing inflammation at 2 weeks postinjection. Collectively, these data indicate that a single injection of HUCB-derived T cells induces long-lasting effects and may therefore have tremendous potential to improve aging neurogenesis.

Facial recognition has always gone through a consistent research area due to its non-modelling nature and its diverse applications. As a result, day-to-day activities are increasingly being carried out electronically rather than in pencil and paper. Today, computer vision is a comprehensive field that deals with a high level of programming by feeding the input images/videos to automatically perform tasks such as detection, recognition and classification. Even with deep learning techniques, they are better than the normal human visual system. In this article, we developed a facial recognition system based on the Local Binary Pattern Histogram (LBPH) method to treat the real-time recognition of the human face in the low and high-level images. We aspire to maximize the variation that is relevant to facial expression and open edges so to sort of encode edges in a very cheap way. These highly successful features are called the Local Binary Pattern Histogram (LBPH).