Developing country efforts to enforce basic public health standards are often hindered by limited agency resources and poorly designed enforcement mechanisms, including excessive reliance on slow and erratic judicial systems. Traditional public health regulation can therefore be difficult to implement. This article examines innovative approaches to the implementation of public health regulation...

As President of the United States from 1909 to 1913, William Howard Taft's minimum body mass index was 42 kg/m(2). This article presents evidence that he suffered from obstructive sleep apnea, manifested by excessive daytime somnolence, snoring, systemic hypertension and, perhaps, cognitive and psychosocial impairment. As president, Taft's hypersomnolence was severe and obvious, but never promp...

European clinical trials of zonisamide as adjunctive therapy for refractory partial seizures included a 12-week double-blind, placebo-controlled study and a 15-month open-label extension study. In the double-blind study, patients (n = 144) were randomized to placebo or zonisamide (400 mg QD) after baseline evaluation. Patients completing the double-bind study (n = 115) continued on open-label z...

BACKGROUND Tetrabenazine is the only US Food and Drug Administration-approved drug for Huntington's disease, and deutetrabenazine was recently tested against placebo. A switching-trial from tetrabenazine to deutetrabenazine is underway, but no head-to-head, blinded, randomized controlled trial is planned. Using meta-analytical methodology, the authors compared these molecules. METHODS RCTs co...

This paper studies rigidities in sharing joint payoffs (non-transferability) as a source of excessive segregation in labor or education markets. The resulting distortions in ex-ante investments, such as education acquisition, link such mismatches to the possibility of simultaneous under-investment by the underprivileged and over-investment by the privileged. This creates an economic rationale f...

Results based on traac accident analysis indicate that a leading cause for automobile accidents is due to a diminished vigilance on the part of the driver. Two major factors that may result in a reduction of a driver's alertness are drowsiness and intoxication. Developing eeective technologies for measuring drowsiness/intoxication is therefore imperative for reducing automobile accidents. The d...

BACKGROUND We found a benefit of citalopram for agitation in the Citalopram for Agitation in Alzheimer's Disease study (CitAD), and wondered if this was mediated by a sedative effect. CitAD was a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind, parallel group trial conducted at 8 academic centers in the United States and Canada from August 2009 to January 2013. One hundred sixty-two participants w...

SIX obese patients have been observed during the past 3 years, with remarkably similar symptoms and findings. These consisted of somnolence, cyanosis, periodic breathing, polycythemia, rightward electric axis by electrocardiogram, and the clinical picture of congestive heart failure. The syndrome appears to be related to obesity and may be reversed by weight reduction. The present report outlin...

PURPOSE Perampanel (PER) and lacosamide (LCM) are antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) approved for the adjunctive treatment of partial-onset seizures. At the time of market entry, information on clinical effectiveness of new AEDs is limited to results from pivotal trials, real-life or comparative data are missing. This analysis of data collected retrospectively in a German epilepsy center used unified e...

Yawning is a phylogenetically old behaviour that can be observed in most vertebrate species from foetal stages to old age. The origin and function of this conspicuous phenomenon have been subject to speculations for centuries. Here, we review the experimental evidence for each of these hypotheses. It is found that theories ascribing a physiological role to yawning (such as the respiratory, arou...