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Introduction: Individuals with psychosis spectrum disorders may be negatively affected by exclusion and rejection. It is important to answer “why”? This article presents social representations of schizophrenia in Polish society. Aims: The study’s aim was to examine the properties of the sixty-item questionnaire on attitudes, attribution and beliefs about schizophrenia in the Polish sample and to compare the results with the results obtained in the English-Chinese sample. Methods: The study included 398 participants (aged 19–74); all were working persons. Furnham and Chan created the questionnaire, a tool containing 60 items describing general beliefs about schizophrenia, causal explanations in the etiology of schizophrenia, as well as beliefs about the role of hospitals and society in the treatment of schizophrenia. Factor analysis (PAF) was carried out separately for three parts of the tool. Results: The structure of the questionnaire that was obtained on the Polish sample differs from that obtained on the English-Chinese sample. Some factors remain similar. Reliability analysis based on Cronbach’s Alpha values reached satisfactory levels in most of the factors revealed. Conclusions: The questionnaire is a reliable tool for examining social representations of schizophrenia. The Polish sample does not show punitive inclinations, does not attribute negative traits to schizophrenics, and does not agree to creating social distance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the present paper was to examine the associations between anthropometric parameters, overweight, obesity, and socioeconomic status (SES) of children and adolescents in Poland. Data were collected in the 'Elaboration of reference blood pressure ranges for children and adolescents in Poland' OLAF-PL0080 (OLAF) study, a nationally representative survey on growth and blood pressure references for children and adolescents aged 7-18 years. Body height, weight, and waist circumference (WC) were measured, and body mass index (BMI) was calculated. Anthropometric parameters were standardized for age and gender and expressed as z-scores. Statistical analyses were conducted on 10,950 children and adolescents whose parents provided socioeconomic questionnaires. The associations between anthropometric parameters, overweight (including obesity), and SES were analyzed using multiple regression and multiple logistic regression. The height was positively associated with higher levels of maternal education and, in the case of girls, also with paternal education. Higher level of income per capita, but not the highest, was associated with higher weight, BMI, and WC and, in the case of boys, also tall stature. The height, weight, BMI, and waist were significantly inversely associated with number of children in the family. Lower number of children in the family and higher level of income, but not the highest, increased odds of overweight and obesity. In the case of girls, the odds of obesity decreased with paternal higher level of education. Conclusion: The social position associated with parents' education, better environment, and SES correlate with body height and weight of a child. However, it is associated with higher risk of overweight and abdominal obesity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growth references are useful in monitoring a child's growth, which is an essential part of child care. The aim of this paper is to provide updated growth references for Polish preschool children and to assess how well children in Poland match or diverge from the World Health Organization (WHO) growth standards/references and recent German height-for-age references. The height-, weight-, body mass index-for-age, and weight-for-height references were constructed with the LMS method using data from a recent, large, population-representative sample of 4,941 preschool children aged 3 to 6 years (the OLA study). In the case of boys, the third, 50th, and 97th height percentiles of new Polish and German references overlap almost completely, whereas the WHO growth standards/references percentiles are systematically lower. In the case of girls, comparison between the new Polish and German height references showed conformity on the third and 50th percentile, whereas body height values of the WHO standards/references are shorter. Polish children aged 3 to 6 years from for the nation representative sample, had significantly greater than zero mean z scores of height-, weight-, and BMI-for-age and weight-for-height, relative to the WHO growth standards/references. The number of children in the sample with height-for-age below −2 SD was significantly lower than expected and number of children with height-for-age above +2 SD was significantly higher than expected. Conclusion: The OLA study growth references can be recommended as national references for preschool children in Poland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays it is possible to notice a quick development of health care companies on Polish market and in accordance to it entrepreneurship in health care is becoming very important. One of the most important factors is a customer, in this case a patient. In this article is shown an outcome of the survey conducted among patients of a private health care units, showing the factors determining with doctor to chose, and the satisfaction of their services. The conclusion is that most of the patients chose the family doctors, dentists, oculists, gynecologists, dermatologists and pediatricians. The biggest group of patients are women between the age of 31 and 50 years old, and over a half of respondents rarely goes to private health care. Average distance of drive to a doctor is between 31 and 50 kilometers. Over 40% of surveyed evaluates medical services positively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Germline mutations in the DNA mismatch repair genes MSH2 and MLH1 account for a significant proportion of hereditary non-polyposis colorectal cancer (HNPCC) families. One approach by which development of an efficient DNA-testing procedure can be implemented is to describe the nature and frequency of common mutations in particular ethnic groups. Two hundred and twenty-six patients from families matching the Amsterdam II diagnostic criteria or suspected HNPCC criteria were screened for MSH2 and MLH1 germline mutations. Fifty different pathogenic mutations were found, 25 in MSH2 and 25 in MLH1. Twenty-four of these had not previously been described in other populations. Among our 78 families with MSH2 or MLH1 mutations, 54 (69.2%) were affected by recurrent mutations including 38 found at least twice in our own series. Two of the most frequent alterations were a substitution of A to T at the splice donor site of intron 5 of MSH2 and a missense change (A681T) of MLH1 found in 10 and eight families, respectively. Among large deletions detected by the multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification assay, exon 9 deletions in the MSH2 gene were found in two families. Our results indicate that a screening protocol specific for the Polish population that is limited to the detection of all reported mutations will result in the identification of the majority of changes present in MLH1 and MSH2 genes in Polish HNPCC kindreds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is increasing evidence that hereditary factors play a greater role in ovarian cancer than in any of the other common cancers of adulthood. This is attributable, to a large extent, to a high frequency of mutations in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes. In Poland, 3 common founder mutations in BRCA1 account for the majority of families with identified BRCA mutations. Our study was conducted in order to estimate the prevalence of any of 3 founder BRCA1 mutations (5382insC, C61G and 4153delA) in 364 unselected women with ovarian cancer, and among 177 women with ovarian cancer and a family history of breast or ovarian cancer. A mutation was identified in 49 out of 364 unselected women with ovarian cancer (13.5%) and in 58 of 177 women with familial ovarian cancer (32.8%). The majority of women with ovarian cancer and a BRCA1 mutation have no family history of breast or ovarian cancer. The high frequency of BRCA1 mutations in Polish women with ovarian cancer supports the recommendation that all Polish women with ovarian cancer should be offered testing for genetic susceptibility, and that counseling services be made available to them and to their relatives. It is important that mutation surveys be conducted in other countries prior to the introduction of national genetic screening programs. © 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the total reflection X-ray fluorescence (TXRF) analysis was used for determination of element concentrations in three isolated peripheral blood components: lymphocytes, erythrocytes, and plasma, collected from 36 healthy donors (15 men and 21 women) from eastern Poland. The studied blood components were isolated from whole peripheral blood using Histopaque-1077 density gradient centrifugation. In the lymphocytes, the following elements were measured: P, S, Cl, K, Ca, Fe, Zn, Br, Sr, and Pb. In the erythrocytes: P, S, Cl, K, Cr, Mn, Fe, Cu, Zn, Se, Br, Rb, and Pb, while in the plasma samples: P, S, Cl, K, Ti, V, Cr, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, Br, Se, Sr, and Pb. The descriptive statistics parameters of concentration such as: mean value, standard deviation, median, first and third quartiles, 10th and 90th percentiles were calculated for all samples of the studied blood components, as well as separately for male and female groups. The measured element concentrations and calculated parameters can be used as the reference values. Element concentration distributions for male and female groups were statistically compared using the non-parametric Mann–Whitney test and statistical significance differences (α = 0.05) were found for: P (in lymphocytes), Se and Rb (in erythrocytes), and V (in plasma). The multigroup statistical comparison of element concentration distribution for different blood components was also done (Mann–Whitney and Kruskal–Wallis tests). The statistical tests show that the concentration levels are usually different, except in the following cases: Zn, Fe (lymphocytes and plasma, Fe only for female group), Cr (erythrocytes and plasma). The obtained concentration ranges were compared with literature-based data available for element concentration in lymphocytes, erythrocytes, and plasma. In this work, the application of the TXRF method allowed additionally for the simultaneous determination of the concentrations of such elements as: P, S, Cl, Br, Sr and Pb in lymphocytes, S, Cl and Br in erythrocytes, and P, S, Cl, K, Ti, Br and Pb in plasma. From an analytical point of view, the article describes in detail the measurement procedure including the isolation of blood components and samples preparation for TXRF measurements, and later the detection limit of the method is discussed. Graphical Abstract [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Breast cancer is the most common malignant tumour among females worldwide, including low and middleincome countries. It affects 25% of the female population and yearly is diagnosed in 1.5 million women. Aim of the research: To determine the trends and distributions for invasive and in situ breast cancer incidence rates between 1999 and 2014 in Poland overall and in the voivodeships with the greatest proportion of females aged = 65 years old. Material and methods: Data for 226,146 invasive (C50) and 7865 in situ (D05) breast cancer incidence (1999-2014) for all females was obtained from published data of the Polish National Cancer Registry (NCR). Age-standardised rates (ASRs) per 105 person-years for all ages of combined females with 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated. Joinpoint regression was performed to identify log-linear trends in both invasive and carcinoma in situ incidence rates in the analysed voivodeships and in Poland overall. Results: The ASRs of both invasive and in situ breast cancers showed increasing trends over the 1999-2014 period, with different patterns between analysed voivodeships. On average, average annual percent changes (AAPCs) varied from 1.6% to 7.9% annually, while in the Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship AAPCs remained below 0.9% annually. Conclusions: In situ and invasive breast cancer ASRs in Poland increased between 1999 and 2014. The Annual Percentage Change have slowed since 2004 in the analysed voivodeships, but not in Poland overall. It remains uncertain if breast cancer incidence rates will continue to increase or stabilise over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The total reflection X-ray fluorescence method was applied to study the trace element concentrations in human breast malignant and breast benign neoplasm tissues taken from the women who were patients of Holycross Cancer Centre in Kielce (Poland). These investigations were mainly focused on the development of new possibilities of cancer diagnosis and therapy monitoring. This systematic comparative study was based on relatively large (∼100) population studied, namely 26 samples of breast malignant and 68 samples of breast benign neoplasm tissues. The concentrations, being in the range from a few ppb to 0.1%, were determined for thirteen elements (from P to Pb). The results were carefully analysed to investigate the concentration distribution of trace elements in the studied samples. The measurements of concentration of trace elements by total reflection X-ray fluorescence were limited, however, by the detection limit of the method. It was observed that for more than 50% of elements determined, the concentrations were not measured in all samples. These incomplete measurements were treated within the statistical concept called left-random censoring and for the estimation of the mean value and median of censored concentration distributions, the Kaplan–Meier estimator was used. For comparison of concentrations in two populations, the log-rank test was applied, which allows to compare the censored total reflection X-ray fluorescence data. Found statistically significant differences are discussed in more details. It is noted that described data analysis procedures should be the standard tool to analyze the censored concentrations of trace elements analysed by X-ray fluorescence methods. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]