Impact on health

D. F. Cadogan, Plasticisers N Consideration of Their Impact on Health and the Environment, Plasticizers Sector Group, CEFIC, Brussels, Belgium, 1992. 

Consider this example. There are two manufacturing facilities in central North Carolina facing each other on opposite sides of the street. One facility manufactures implantable pacemakers the other cuts stripped pine into tongue depressors. Both utilize the same software package to track shipments and potentially to recall problem deliveries. A pacemaker recall must be perfect and timely, or a patient death is the likely result. A tongue depressor recall (hard to imagine) has little or no impact on health and safety. 

Carmen Socaciu was bom in Cluj-Napoca, Romania and earned a BSc in chemistry in 1976, an MSc in 1977, and a PhD in 1986 from the University Babes-Bolyai in Cluj-Napoca, an important academic centre located in the Transylvania region. Dr. Socaciu worked as a researcher in medical and cellular biochemistry for more than 10 years, and became a lecturer in 1990 and full professor in 1998 in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry of the University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine (USAMV) in Cluj-Napoca. She extended her academic background in pure chemistry (synthesis and instrumental analysis) to the life sciences (agrifood chemistry and cellular biochemistry). Her fields of competence are directed especially toward natural bioactive phytochemicals (carotenoids, phenolics, flavonoids), looking to advanced methods of extraction and analysis and to their in vitro actions on cellular metabolism, their effects as functional food ingredients, and their impacts on health. 

To summarize, it should be highlighted that in general terms the issue of prescribing incentives is approached with a marked lack of consideration of such fundamental concerns as their impact on health, although this aspect is indirectly addressed by non-financial incentives and mixed formulas such as those discussed above. Financial incentives alone appear to lack effectiveness as instruments of pharmaceutical policy. Incentives aimed at prescribers should under no circumstances create a clash of interests between their fees and the quality of the care they provide for their patients, and therefore adjustment must be made in these terms. In turn, we cannot ignore that the effect of this type of mechanism on physicians behaviour will depend on, among other factors, the quality of available information on the aspects taken into consideration in their application. 

Osteoporosis is currently defined as a skeletal disorder characterized by compromised bone strength predisposing to an increased risk of fracture. Bone strength reflects the integration of two main features bone density and bone quality (NIH Consensus 2001). Thus, osteoporosis is a debilitating condition of the skeleton that propends to fractures and is associated with advanced age. The disease has a high prevalence in western countries, as it is a condition associated with advanced age, and it is on the rise since fife expectancy has risen dramatically in the last several decades. It is, therefore, a major public health problem because it not only induces morbidity (fractures and chronic sequelae) with a substantial impact on health-related quality of life, but is also associated with increased mortality (Badia et al. 2001, 2004). 

Understanding the human genome should lead to improved therapies that may have a favorable impact on health care expenditure. In many cases, pharmacogenomics-based therapies will be therapeutic (and economic) substitutes for other more invasive procedures such as surgery or will reduce the need for expensive support care such as long-term assisted living or skilled nursing care. 

OA is a prevalent disease in the workplace with significant impact on health and quality of life. Management of OA is based on a multidisciplinary approach including methods to identify allergens, use of appropriate exposure control methods, education of the workforce and surveillance (air levels and medical). 

In the first section of my talk I hope to show why measurement of these effects as a function of regulatory actions under TSCA is not practical. If such effects are not measurable, then for regulatory purposes they must be estimated, usually by extrapolation from animal experiments. I will briefly indicate that quantitative extrapolation is an uncertain business. In the second section, I will summarize TSCA s probable impact on health, methodological difficulties in measurement notwithstanding. I will conclude with some remarks about recent regulatory pronouncements which seem to indicate that if past policies have had little discernible health impact, future ones may have even less. 

No, only a small percentage of mutations cause genetic disorders—most have no impact on health or development. For example, some mutations alter a gene s DNA base sequence but do not change the function of the protein made by the gene. 

This chapter will describe the potential of carbon nanotubes in biomedicine. It will illustrate the methodologies to render nanotubes biocompatible, the studies on their cell uptake, their application in vaccine delivery, their interaction with nucleic acids and their impact on health. 

Griffin JP. New drugs and their Impact on Health Care. Report on the Workshop New Provider Structures for Health insurance and Tax - Based Health care Systems, WHO Collaborating Centre for Public Health Research. Kiel 27S30th Nov 1995. Publ WHO, Keil, 1996 71-83. 

The discovery of new medicines and their introduction into the market will not optimally have positive impacts on health if the needed essential medicines are not available and affordable, if they are not of good quality and if they are not properly utilized by the health care providers and consumers. This chapter will highlight the issues related to commonly occurring problems in the area of medicines in developing countries, and relevant policies and programme to deal with them. In particular, the chapter will highlight the problems of access to... 

Donor funding for and donations of medicines can have an impact on health in low- and middle-income countries in the short term. In the medium term these donations should be targeted at specific diseases and planned as additional supplies integrated into the national medicines supply system. But in the long term, self-sufficiency is the only viable means to tackle increasing disease burdens. 

Because of its direct impact on health, counterfeiting medicines should combated and punished accordingly. 

Endocrine diseases and their treatment have a major impact on health throughout the world, particularly in terms of diabetes, thyroid disease, steroid therapy, and control of fertility. Most endocrine therapy is simple and relatively cheap, but a clear understanding of their actions and uses is essential for safe and cost-effective treatment. In this chapter we will focus mainly on well established and validated endocrine therapies that are widely used throughout the world, with briefer mention of drugs that have recently been introduced. In the sections that follow we outline the major issues in the current clinical pharmacology of endocrine disease, covering each of the major endocrine systems in turn. 

However, a main defect of the Unified Environmental Code of 1998 and its accompanying explanations remains. Left unanswered is what degree of certainty (or uncertainty) is required to trigger actions based on the vague PP. Another serious shortcoming of the Swedish legislation is that it makes anyone who undertakes any action that may have a potential impact on health or the environment responsible for implementation of the PP. 

Beneficial nutritional properties or other positive impacts on health... 

Overall, these studies show that despite the failure of most studies to show definitive direct effects on health, production methods probably affect food quality to the extent that they have a significant impact on health. These studies show that there is now a good basis for designing studies that can elucidate which production factors are important in this regard, and that the next step is to define and test these factors. 

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