In high-risk patients undergoing non-cardiac surgery, perioperative aspirin reduced the risk of MACE without increasing bleeding complications. However, the study was not powered to evaluate bleeding complications.

Carbohydrate-deficient transferrin (CDT) in serum was studied as a possible marker of heavy drinking in a sample of 187 female and 102 male 1st year university students from Finland. CDT was measured by a new radioimmunoassay (Pharmacia CDT RIA). Alcohol consumption was measured on a quantity-frequency scale. For female students CDT was 18.2 +/- 0.45 units/liter (mean +/- SEM) and for male students 13.3 +/- 0.48 units/liter. 9.6% of female students and 7.8% of male students had elevated CDT with a cut-off level of 26 units/liter for females and 20 units/liter for males. The correlation between CDT and reported alcohol consumption was 0.30 (p less than 0.001) for females and 0.25 (p = 0.014) for males. Those reporting a consumption of at least 10 kg of pure ethanol per year were considered as heavy drinkers (3.7% of females and 22.5% of males). In female students the average CDT of heavy drinkers did not differ significantly from that of social drinkers but in teetotalers CDT was significantly (p less than 0.03) lower than in female alcohol users. In male students the average CDT of heavy drinkers was higher than the average of social drinkers (p less than 0.1) and significantly higher than the average of teetotalers (p less than 0.001). In the detection of heavy drinking among male students elevated CDT had a specificity of 96.2% and a sensitivity of 21.7%.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

In a sample of 1663 female and 707 male Finnish university students in their first study year, the female students reported less negative and less positive consequences of alcohol drinking than their male counterparts. The female students also drank less, less frequently and less often for intoxication. However, the profile of negative and positive consequences of drinking was similar for both genders; 74.6% of the female students and 80.0% of the males had more positive than negative experiences from alcohol. Both the positive and negative consequences of drinking correlated positively to alcohol consumption and drinking for intoxication. About half of the students who had many positive consequences of drinking were not heavy drinkers and did not report many negative consequences. Depression, anxiety, stress or psychosomatic symptoms did not correlate with either with positive or negative consequences of drinking, nor with alcohol consumption. Drinking for anxiety, depression, stress or the reduction of tension appeared to be infrequent. Young Finnish university students mostly drink for the positive consequences of drinking.

Background: The Archetype formalism and the associated Archetype Definition Language have been proposed as an ISO standard for specifying models of components of electronic healthcare records as a means of achieving interoperability between clinical systems. This paper presents an archetype editor with support for manual or semi-automatic creation of bindings between archetypes and terminology systems.

SummaryThe effect of endotoxic lipopolysaccharide (LPS) on platelet shape change (PSC; a preaggregation event) was investigated. PSC is accompanied by an increase in median platelet volume (MPV), which was measured using a channelyzer. In whole blood, but not in platelet rich plasma (PRP), LPS (final concentration 80 mg/1) caused an increase in MPV that could be detected for 2 h. When PRP (prepared from LPS- and saline-pretreated whole blood) was incubated for 40 min, the LPS-mediated increase in MPV could no longer be detected. Taken together, these data imply that PSC is both initiated and maintained by a labile factor(s) present in whole blood, but not in PRP.PRP was prepared from LPS-pretreated whole blood and incubated for 40 min to allow reversal of the LPS-induced PSC; further stimulation with LPS caused PSC. Platelets from LPS-pretreated whole blood also showed enhanced PSC with seioloum (J-HT), diminished PSC with platelet activating factor (PAF), and no change of response to ADP and collagen. Hence, LPS pretreatment of whole blood differentially alters responses of platelets to further stimulation with LPS and other agonists. A specific PAF antagonist completely abolished the effect of LPS on MPV. These data may contribute to an understanding of the cascading thrombotic events and thrombocylopeuia assoeialed wiib septicaemia.