BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES The sudden occurrence of the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake not only devastated people's health, but also may have impacted on the psychological and dietary attitudes and behaviours of the survivors. Although the influence of natural disaster on people's health has been extensively investigated, there is a lack of information about the effects on people's dietary attitudes a...

Human response to any adverse situation can be greatly enhanced through training and mind-body experience. Earthquake is one such phenomenon where human response to minimise injuries/deaths is constrained due to disorientation of the victims. People in regions with frequent earthquakes often exhibit better response due to past experience. Training of the mind and body can also be achieved in a ...

BACKGROUND The 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in China resulted in great loss of life and property, and previous studies have focused on psychopathological symptoms in survivors after disasters. This study examined perceived family functioning and its predictors in disaster bereaved individuals eighteen months after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake. METHODOLOGY/FINDINGS This was a cross-sectional study...

BACKGROUND It remains unclear whether disease activity of vasospastic angina (VSA) is altered during a disaster. METHODS AND RESULTS Before and after the Great East Japan Earthquake, we examined Rho-kinase activity in circulating neutrophils of 11 VSA patients and their mental stress with the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) questionnaire. Rho-kinase activity was significantly increased ...

BACKGROUND Antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody-associated vasculitis is triggered by environmental factors, including silica dust exposure. Repeated tsunami waves brought a large volume of silica-containing sludge inland after the Great East Japan earthquake in 2011. We aimed to determine if the serious disaster influenced the clinical features of the microscopic polyangiitis. METHODS This is...

Military, governmental, and civilian agencies routinely respond to disasters around the world, including large-scale mass casualty events such as the earthquake in Pakistan in 2005, Hurricane Katrina in the United States in 2005, and the earthquake in Haiti in 2010. Potential exists for improved coordination of medical response between civilian and military sectors and for the creation of a pla...

An objective of earthquake study is to estimate possible disaster when a large earthquake hits a metropolis. The disaster is the accumulation of buildings and structures. Thus, a numerical simulation method must compute the strong motion with the spatial and temporal resolution high enough to calculate structural responses during the quake and to evaluate their damages. Due to the advancement o...

BACKGROUND In the past 10 years, 13 fatal earthquakes have occurred in Iran and led to death of 30,000 people whom most of them were killed in the earlier hours of the disaster. Disaster Medical Assistance Teams are groups of trained medical and non-medical personnel with various combinations that on the optimal conditions are deployed just within 8 hours of notification and are able to work se...

Aim of the study was the assessment of coping strategies, specifically substance use and post-traumatic growth (PTG), in 411 college students two years after 2009 L'Aquila earthquake. Post-Traumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI) was used to assess PTG and one question about substance use (alcohol, tobacco, cannabis) was asked to verify if students had modified their use in the post-earthquake compare...