The word “hygiene” (etym: from Greek: “hugiainein” or “hugieinon” = to express good health and welfare) refers to this part of medicine dealing with the environment where human beings are due to live and to the way of manipulating it so as to maintain health and welfare (Larousse dictionary, 1972). In veterinary medicine, it embraces the rules and practices aimed at maintaining animal health an...

INTRODUCTION Infection by Pseudomonas aeruginosa represents a major cause of morbidity and mortality among immunocompromised patients. In Denmark, an increase in P. aeruginosa isolates from blood cultures from a haematology department prompted a hygienic audit in 2007. METHODS Blood cultures that tested positive for P. aeruginosa were collected from the laboratory information system (MADS, Sk...

1 Department of Environmental Health, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA. 2 Bureau of Environmental Disease Prevention, Division of Environmental Health, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, New York, NY. 3 Department of Genetics and Complex Diseases, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA. 4 Center for Environmental Health and Technology, Brown University, Provi...

Infection contributes to a significant proportion of neonatal death and disability worldwide, with the major burden occurring in the first week of life. Environmental conditions and gaps in water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) practices may contribute to the risk of infection, particularly in settings where health centers are expanding to meet the growing demand for skilled care at birth and ho...

Cancer is a leading cause of death in the United States and other developed countries, spiking in incidence in the 20 century. Along with other explanations, the hygiene hypothesis should be considered. The hygiene hypothesis posits that the rise in autoimmune and atopic diseases in the twentieth century arises from the decrease in exposure to microbial environmental factors that co-evolved wit...

INTRODUCTION Compliance with hand hygiene recommendations in hospital is typically less than 50%. Such low compliance inevitably contributes to hospital-acquired infections that negatively affect patients' well-being and hospitals' finances. The design of the present study is predicated on the assumption that most people who fail to clean their hands are not doing so intentionally, they just fo...

Department of Public Health, China Medical University, Taichung City, Taiwan Institute of Environmental Health, China Medical University, Taichung City, Taiwan Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, School of Public Health, University of North Texas Health Science Centre, Fort Worth, Texas, USA Department of Integrative Physiology and Cardiovascular Research Institute, University ...

PROBLEM/CONDITION Acute gastroenteritis (AGE) is a major cause of illness in the United States, with an estimated 179 million episodes annually. AGE outbreaks propagated through direct person-to-person contact, contaminated environmental surfaces, and unknown modes of transmission were not systematically captured at the national level before 2009 and thus were not well characterized. REPORTIN...

This review article describes different forms of tobacco usage and its direct relationship with the prevalence of dental caries. Smoking along with co-existing factors like old age, bad oral hygiene habits, food habits, limited preventive dental visits and over all health standards, can be associated with high caries incidence. However, a direct etiological relationship is lacking. Environmenta...