from McKeganey are that drug treatment services have been very successful in recruiting drug users, that methadone has now overwhelmed the provision of other drug treatment services in Scotland and that the expansion of methadone services has occurred without clear evidence of the benefits of that provision. Whilst there remains no accurate data on the number of drug users prescribedmethadone i...

OBJECTIVE To determine the changes in incidence of and mortality from gastric cancer in Scotland between 1978 and 1987 and in the operative workload in Lothian between 1979 and 1988. DESIGN Analysis of national incidence statistics for gastric cancer derived from the Scottish national cancer registry, deaths from gastric cancer recorded by the registrar general for Scotland, and Lothian surgi...

The aim of this article will be to examine the politics of Scottish Law reform and to explore the 'Scottish dimension' in certain areas oflegislation which have involved morality and conscience. Specifically, attention will be focused upon three Scottish 'issues of conscience' of the 1970s the Licensing (Scotland) Act 1976, the Divorce (Scotland) Act 1976 and the 'non-reform' in Scotland throug...

Escherichia coli O26 and O157 have similar overall prevalences in cattle in Scotland, but in humans, Shiga toxin-producing E. coli O26 infections are fewer and clinically less severe than E. coli O157 infections. To investigate this discrepancy, we genotyped E. coli O26 isolates from cattle and humans in Scotland and continental Europe. The genetic background of some strains from Scotland was c...

The theory has recently been put forward by Renwick (1972a) that anencephalus and spina bifida are caused by exposure early in pregnancy to potatoes which are affected by blight or are imperfect for other reasons. In support of this, a temporal correlation was claimed to exist between the severity of blight and the frequency of anencephalus, largely because of a strong correlation between the a...

OBJECTIVES To examine the trends in inhospital mortality for England and Scotland over a 17-year period to determine whether and if so to what extent the time trends differ after controlling for differences in the patients treated. DESIGN Analysis of retrospective administrative hospital data using descriptive aggregate statistics of trends in inhospital mortality and estimates of a logistic ...

OBJECTIVES In the UK there are approximately 850 000 new fractures seen each year. Rates of non-union of 5-10% of fractures have been suggested, the cost to the National Health Service of treating non-union has been reported to range between £7000 and £79 000 per person yet there are little actual data available. The objective of this epidemiological study therefore is for the first time to rep...

Director and Consultant with EM Diagnostics Ltd., in Alford, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, since August 2001. He has 42 years’ experience covering the installation, maintenance, design, performance, and condition monitoring of electrical drives. Professor Thomson has worked as electrician, R&D engineer, academic, and consultant. In 1990, he was appointed Professor at Robert Gordon University in Aber...

In Scotland, rates of cryptosporidiosis infection in humans peak during the spring, a peak that is coincident with the peak in rates of infection in farm animals (during lambing and calving time). Here we show that, during the outbreak of foot and mouth disease (FMD) in 2001, there was a significant reduction in human cases of cryptosporidiosis infection in southern Scotland, where FMD was pres...

To the editor: Since late 2012, Scotland has seen a significant increase in norovirus activity and the norovirus season began earlier than usual [1]. The article by van Beek et al. published in last week’s issue of Eurosurveillance described the emergence of a new variant of norovirus GII.4 (Sydney strain) in a number of countries [2]. To examine whether this was also the case in Scotland, we e...