Acknowledgment Several organizations and individuals significantly contributed to this publication. The continued support of Health Canada, in particular, Philip Neufeld and Andrew Douglas, was invaluable to the completion of these guidelines. We would also like to thank the Canadian Healthcare Association and Laurel LemchukFavel for their expertise in the development of this important manuscri...

BACKGROUND In recent years, allergy to natural rubber latex has emerged as a major allergy among certain occupational groups and patients with underlying diseases. The sensitization and development of latex allergy has been attributed to exposure to products containing residual latex proteins. Although improved manufacturing procedures resulted in a considerable reduction of new cases, the pote...

Latex is the milky sap that is found in many different plants. It is produced by specialized cells known as laticifers and can comprise a mixture of proteins, carbohydrates, oils, secondary metabolites and rubber that may help to prevent herbivory and protect wound sites against infection. The wound-induced browning of latex suggests that it contains one or more phenoloxidizing enzymes. Here we...

BACKGROUND The natural biomembrane of latex extracted from Hevea brasiliensis has been used as a dressing for skin ulcers. OBJECTIVES To evaluate how safe the natural biomembrane is in relation to hypersensitivity to latex when used as a dressing. METHODS We selected patients with skin ulcers, forming the following groups: control - low occupational exposure to latex (n = 17); latex-exposed...

The prevalence of sensitization to natural rubber latex in the general population is around 1%. However, occupational latex allergy is considerably higher in people who work wearing latex gloves. Furthermore, almost 50% of these allergic patients also show hypersensitivity to some plant foods, especially chestnut, banana, and avocado, but also to kiwi, papaya, tomato and others. The name "latex...

Aims: To assess the potential health risks of fresh produce grown on irrigated soils treated with manure in Kano State, a large produce region in Nigeria. Methodology: Fresh produce irrigated with wastewater on manure treated soils were assessed for the prevalence, serotype distribution and toxigenicity of Escherichia coli O157, Salmonella spp and Vibrio cholerae in a large produce region in Ni...

LATEX is an authoring language designed for producing documents through native TEX compilers. Over the years many other applications have been developed to accept LATEX inputs via alternative engines programmed from scratch. These engines are restricted in power to subsets of LATEX features. The first part of this report shows how TEX4ht can translate general LATEX constructs into the restricte...

Transfusion-acquired cytomegalovirus (CMV) infections should be prevented in seronegative immunocompromised patients by providing blood products from donors who are also seronegative. Latex agglutination was investigated as a simple and rapid method for detecting antibody against CMV. Latex beads were coated with CMV antigen, incubated for 8 min at room temperature with 25 microliter of sera, a...

INTRODUCTION Latex allergy is one of the main reasons of anaphylaxis in the operating room. The prevalence of this condition is higher among patients with myelomeningocele. Epidemiological data obtained from Argentine patients is scarce. OBJECTIVE To estimate the prevalence of latex sensitivity and latex allergy in a population of patients with myelomeningocele and to describe associated risk...