An epidemiological survey of proximal femoral fracture (PFF) was carried out in Gran Canaria (Canary Islands) in 1990. We identified 211 cases of PFF affecting residents, which gave an incidence of 161 per 100,000 per year (92 per 100,000 per year for men and 176 for women). Three quarters of all fractures occurred to residents of urban areas and nearly all fractures were caused by falls indoors. There was a higher incidence in winter than in summer months.

Corneal transplantation is one of the most common forms of tissue transplantation worldwide. Donor corneal tissue used in transplantation is provided by eye banks, which store the tissue in culture medium after procurement. To date, the effects of cell culture on human corneal tissue have not been fully elucidated. Using the 3′ RNA sequencing method for massive analysis of cDNA ends (MACE), we show that cultivation of corneal tissue leads to significant changes in a variety of molecular processes in human corneal tissue that go well beyond aspects of previously known culture effects. Functionally grouped network analysis revealed nine major groups of biological processes that were affected by corneal organ culture, among them keratinization, hypoxia, and angiogenesis, with genes from each group being affected by culture time. A cell type deconvolution analysis revealed significant modulations of the corneal immune cell profile in a time dependent manner. The results suggest that current culture conditions should be further refined and that prolonged cultivation may be detrimental. Recently, we showed that MACE enables transcriptional profiling of formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded (FFPE) conjunctival tissue with high accuracy even after more than 10 years of storage. Here we demonstrate that MACE provides comparable results for native and FFPE corneal tissue, confirming that the technology is suitable for transcriptome analysis of a wide range of archived diseased corneal samples stored in histological archives. Finally, our data underscore the feasibility of bioinformatics cell-type enrichment analysis in bulk RNA-seq data to profile immune cell composition in fixed and archived corneal tissue samples, for which RNA-seq analysis of individual cells is often not possible.

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Background Infectious conjunctivitis is contagious and may lead to an outbreak. Prevention systems can help to avoid an outbreak. Objective We aimed to evaluate if Google search data on conjunctivitis and associated terms can be used to estimate the incidence and if the data can provide an estimation for outbreaks. Methods We obtained Google search data over 4 years for the German term for conjunctivitis (“Bindehautentzündung”) and 714 associated terms in 12 selected German cities and Germany as a whole using the Google AdWords Keyword Planner. The search volume from Freiburg was correlated with clinical data from the Freiburg emergency practice (Eye Center University of Freiburg). Results The search volume for the German term for conjunctivitis in Germany as a whole and in the 12 German cities showed a highly uniform seasonal pattern. Cross-correlation between the temporal search frequencies in Germany as a whole and the 12 selected cities was high without any lag. Cross-correlation of the search volume in Freiburg with the frequency of conjunctivitis (International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems [ICD] code group “H10.-”) from the centralized ophthalmologic emergency practice in Freiburg revealed a considerable temporal association, with the emergency practice lagging behind the frequency. Additionally, Pearson correlation between the count of patients per month and the count of searches per month in Freiburg was statistically significant (P=.04). Conclusions We observed a close correlation between the Google search volume for the signs and symptoms of conjunctivitis and the frequency of patients with a congruent diagnosis in the Freiburg region. Regional deviations from the nationwide average search volume may therefore indicate a regional outbreak of infectious conjunctivitis.