Sentinelles network’s bulletin of 19 October 2016

According to the Sentinelles network’s weekly bulletin of 19 October 2016, the incidence rate of acute diarrhoea reached epidemic levels in metropolitan France last week, with 155 cases observed in general medicine clinics per 100 000 inhabitants.

The Sentinelles network adds that the current level of gastroenteritis is higher than the mean level observed in previous years in the same period. The Grand-Est, Ile-de-France and Pays de la Loire regions are particularly affected, with respective estimated incidence rates of 297, 213 and 211 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.

The Sentinelles network is national surveillance system developed by Inserm and Pierre and Marie Curie University. Made up of 1,300 general practitioners and about a hundred private paediatricians, it has allowed the development of large databases on several diseases, for health surveillance and research purposes.

To obtain further information on gastroenteritis in France, you may contact Thierry Blanchon, Deputy Head of the Sentinelles network.

To resist the temptation of a beer in order to save and buy a bike later? At the end of the day, fatigue would encourage us to choose the immediate reward instead. This is what is revealed by a study published in PNAS and conducted by Bastien Blain, a researcher at Inserm Unit 1127.

Behavioural experiments were carried out on 50 people with an average age of 24 years, divided into 3 groups. One group of participants had to solve complicated exercises for a period of over 6 hours. By comparison, the second group had to work on simple exercises, while the last group played video games or read articles. At regular intervals, the researchers asked all participants to choose between receiving a small sum of money immediately, or a larger sum of money later.

Results show that a prolonged cognitive task favours impulsive choice, and that this decision is linked to reduced activity in a region of the brain involved both in these exercises and in monetary choices.

In conclusion, several hours of intense work may lead us to choose the short-term reward instead of a greater, more long-term benefit. It is therefore better to avoid making an important decision, especially of a financial nature, at the end of the day.

(c) Fotolia

Organised by the French National Union of Dermatologists (SNDV), and supported by the French National Cancer Institute (INCa), the 18^th edition of the National Day of Screening for Skin Cancer will be held on Thursday, 26 May 2016, to highlight the risks of UV exposure, and to raise awareness about the measures for protecting oneself from this cancer, and for detecting it.

During this day, free screening consultations will be on offer throughout France.[1]

Although less common than carcinoma, melanoma is the most “serious” type of skin cancer, because of its propensity for rapid progression to the metastatic stages.

In 2015, melanoma was responsible for 14,325 new cases, and 1,773 deaths in France.[2]

At Inserm, research is actively underway to improve understanding of the mechanisms involved in metastatic spread, and to develop new therapeutic strategies.

Work done at Inserm Unit 981 by Caroline Robert, winner of the Inserm Research Prize 2015, has contributed to the development of immunotherapy and targeted therapies, major advances in the treatment of metastatic melanomas. Her team is currently focusing on the adverse effects of new drugs in order to develop more effective treatments.

[1] Further details available on: https://www.syndicatdermatos.org/

[2] Source: INCa

In 2015, a study conducted by Pierre Meneton, entitled “Unemployment is associated with high cardiovascular event rate and increased all-cause mortality in middle-aged socially privileged individuals,” was published in the International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health.

The results suggest that there may be an association between unemployment and poorer cardiovascular health, unlinked to other conventional risk factors, such as age.

Consult the scientific article to find out more

(c) Fotolia

This Thursday, 24 March, the Ministry of Agriculture confirmed an isolated case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, at a farm in Ardennes. The case was detected in a 5-year-old cow sent for rendering, “a method for processing animals that die on farms, and are therefore not intended for human consumption,” states AFP. In France, the last case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy dates back to 2011.

BSE is a prion disease that affected UK farms in the 1980s, and spread to Europe and the rest of the world. Feeding animals meat and bone meal contaminated with crushed carcasses resulted in the spread of BSE.

The appearance of a variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans in the UK and France, and then in many countries around the world in the 1990s, raised deep concerns among consumers who worried about the risk of transmission of the bovine prion to humans. The link between the BSE epidemic and the new variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans was easily established by researchers.

The ban on meat and bone meal, livestock surveillance and BSE testing are some of the measures that have been developed since then, in order to limit the risk of contamination.

In spring 2016, a new phase in the Elfe Child Cohort Study will take place in French nursery schools, with participation by middle-year teaching staff. Its objective: to collect information on early learning by children of approximately 5 years of age. It will hence be possible to analyse the manner in which children enter the various areas of learning provided by nursery schools, taking living conditions, family structures, and the child’s health and development into account.

This “School” component of the Elfe study calls for participation by teachers via playful exercises in the areas of reading and numbers, prepared by the researchers.

(c) Fotolia

The place of the School survey in monitoring the Elfe child cohort

Elfe is the first French study devoted to monitoring children from birth to adult age, which addresses the many aspects of their development and socialisation from the social sciences, health and environment perspective. When it was launched at national level in 2011, over 18,000 children were enrolled in the cohort.

The Elfe study is an innovative source of data for the large-scale analysis of the relationship, at every age, between parent biography, family life, socioeconomic characteristics, and child-minding arrangements and the development of children’s cognitive and social abilities.

The most important data are collected by conducting regular surveys with parents. Direct input is also sought from the children at age three and a half during a home visit, where they do a drawing and play various visual and picture-matching games. By continuing to monitor children at approximately 5 years of age, the School survey will be invaluable in offering a comprehensive and multifactorial approach to the world of early childhood and nursery school.

More information at:

www.elfe-france.fr/enseignant

The Sentinelles network, developed by Inserm and Pierre and Marie Curie University (UPMC), is a national surveillance system made up of 1,300 general practitioners and about a hundred private paediatricians, which allows the creation of large databases for several diseases, for purposes of health monitoring and research.

The Sentinelles physicians collect information from their patients on 8 health indicators, and submit it via the Internet. Analysis of these data allows estimation of the weekly incidence rate for each indicator, so that changes in these indicators can be monitored on the territory in real time.

According to the Sentinelles network’s weekly bulletin of 16 December, cases of gastroenteritis are up slightly in metropolitan France. 110,500 new cases were seen during visits to general practitioners last week. The incidence rate, estimated at 171 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, is, however, below the epidemic threshold. At regional level, Limousin, Aquitaine and Auvergne observed the highest incidence rates.

Spread of chickenpox remains moderate on the territory, with 22 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, with the most severely affected foci to be found in Picardy, Upper Normandy and Poitou-Charentes. For influenza, the incidence rate is well below the epidemic threshold.

In 2012, the Île-de-France Regional Health Agency initiated a regional project aimed at Reducing Infant and Perinatal Mortality (RéMI). This initiative was primarily focused on Seine-Saint-Denis, a district characterised by excess infant mortality (death before one year of age) and perinatal mortality (foetal deaths and deaths in the first week of life). The 2 research reports ordered by the Agency under this initiative—including one prepared by Inserm, and officially submitted to its Director General yesterday—bring new clarity to the situation in the department.

The audit has made it possible to identify risk factors associated with the women’s personal situations: 50% of them were overweight or obese. 7% did not have access to Social Security at the start of pregnancy, and 9% were in receipt of State Medical Aid (AME), or were in a scheme for access to urgent care.

The expert reports on the deaths also underline that for three-quarters of them, deviations from good practice were observed in the care of the pregnant women.

33% of the deaths were judged potentially or probably avoidable, by acting on one or more of these deviations from good practice

Given this observation, ARS is launching 3 workshops bringing together professionals and those involved in perinatal care in Seine-Saint-Denis, which will run from November 2015 until March 2016, based on these areas of reflection.