Kyoto: Spring Flower, originally uploaded by micpohling.
OECD: Pedestrian in Road Traffic Accidents
April 30, 2007 at 4:47 am (OECD, Social, Statistic)
The table above shows the number of persons killed and injured (per 100 000 population) as pedestrian involved in road traffic accidents. Out of 100 000 persons, 3.4 Hungarian, 2.68 Portugese and 2.43 Greek pedestrians are killed in accident. Iceland, Netherlands, Sweden and Norway are the safe place for pedestrians, which all less than 1 persons died as pedestrian in road traffic accidents.
On the other hand, Portugese has highest number of people injured as pedestrian in traffic accident: 71.4 out of 100 000 population. The unusual high number is also observed in UK (63.5 persons) and Austria (54.4 persons). Again, Netherlands is the safest place for pedestrian among these countries: only 12.9 persons out of 100 000 will get injured as a result of road traffic accidents, or almost 5.5x lower the probability compared to Portugal.
This table shows the breakdown of pedestrian killed according to major age group. Overall, 5.6% of persons killed are children aged 0-9 years old, 16.2% of 10 to 24 years old, 39.1% 25 to 64 years old and 43.8% for senior citizen more than 65 years old. It is noted that old folks are subjected to the risk of high fatality. The countries which have more than 50% of their fatalities attributed from age group >65 are Austria (50.9%), Greece (56.0%) and Switzerland (58.8%).
Overall, the pedestrians injured in road traffic accidents according to the age group breakdown are as below: 13.1 % for children 0-9 yo, 30.7% adolescent/young adult 10-24 yo, 38.5% adult and 20.7% of senior citizens aged 65 or more. This is probably more consistent to the breakdown of age in the demography.
Source: UNECE, Statistic of Road Traffic Transport in Europe and North America, 2001 to 2003
Gene: Schizophrenia
April 30, 2007 at 4:24 am (Gene, Health)
Source: New Medical Research, 12-09-2006
Baby girls who possess a specific immune gene that too closely resembles their mothers’ immune gene are significantly more likely to develop schizophrenia later in life, say scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles. The gene, HLA-B, is linked to other prenatal complications such as pre-eclampsia and low birth weight, says a report in the American Journal of Human Genetics (Oct).
The whole article is here, and the abstract:
Schizophrenia and human leukocyte antigen (HLA) matching between couples or between mothers and offspring have independently been associated with prenatal/obstetric complications, including preeclampsia and low birth weight. Here, we report the results of a family-based candidate-gene study that brings together these two disparate lines of research by assessing maternal-fetal genotype matching at HLA-A, -B, and -DRB1 as a risk factor of schizophrenia. We used a conditional-likelihood modeling approach with a sample of 274 families that had at least one offspring with schizophrenia or a related spectrum disorder. A statistically significant HLA-B maternal-fetal genotype–matching effect on schizophrenia was demonstrated for female offspring (P=.01; parameter estimate 1.7 [95% confidence interval 1.22–2.49]). Because the matching effect could be associated with pregnancy complications rather than with schizophrenia per se, these findings are consistent with the neurodevelopmental hypothesis of schizophrenia and with accumulating evidence that the prenatal period is involved in the origins of this disease. Our approach demonstrates how genetic markers can be used to characterize the biology of prenatal risk factors of schizophrenia.
On the other hand, a method called Whole Genome Association (WGA) is used to determine potential susceptibility genes for the disease, from this article, 21-03-2007.
A genetic basis for schizophrenia found on both the X and Y chromosomes, is presented online in Molecular Psychiatry. Todd Lencz and colleagues examined over 500,000 genetic markers through WGA method.
The results from this analysis show a link with schizophrenia from a marker located in a chromosomal region called pseudoautosomal region 1 (PAR1), which is on both the X and Y chromosomes, and was located adjacent to two genes, CSF2RA and IL3RA. These genes, previously thought to play a role in inflammation and autoimmune disorders, produce receptors for two cytokines, GM-CSF and interleukin-3.
Abstract available online.
