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Western Literature (western + literature)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Medical Sciences	60%

Selected Abstracts

Crohn's Disease runs a more aggressive course in young asian patients

INFLAMMATORY BOWEL DISEASES, Issue 1 2006
Kelvin Teck Joo Thia MRCP
Abstract Background: Crohn's disease is a heterogeneous inflammatory bowel disease. The impact of age at diagnosis on the clinical course of patients varies widely as reported in the Western literature. Using the Vienna Classification, we seek to determine whether young Crohn's disease patients in an Asian population followed a different clinical course than old patients. Methods: The case records of 100 Crohn's disease patients who were treated at the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center, Singapore General Hospital, were studied retrospectively. The age group and location of disease and behavior according to the Vienna classification were determined at diagnosis. Results: A1 group (age <40 years) defined as "young" and A2 group (age ,40) defined as "old" contained 65 and 35 patients, respectively. Median age for the young group was 27.4 years and that for the old group was 52.6 years. Of the young patients, 66.7% flared at least once compared with 28.6% of the old patients, odds ratio of 5.0 (P < 0.001). Young patients were more likely to be steroid dependent (20.0% of A1 versus 8.6% of A2, P = 0.14), received azathioprine (38.5% of A1 versus 5.7% of A2, P < 0.001) and experienced complications (31% of A1 versus 20% of A2, P = 0.25)-numerically higher rates that did not reach statistical significance. There was no significant difference between the age groups for the location and behavior of disease as well as requirement for surgery. Conclusion: In this first Asian study looking specifically at the impact of age at diagnosis of Crohn's disease, we found that young patients underwent a more aggressive clinical course. [source]

"The Other": Precursory African Conceptions of Democracy

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 3 2005
Matthew Todd Bradley
Democracy is a configuration of governance molded by the general values, biases, prejudices, and nuances of a given culture. Individuals in Western countries typically identify with the state as reflecting the desires of the body politic. However, in the African world, including Northeastern Africa (or the Middle East as it is labeled in Western literature), identity is primarily reflected in one's ethnicity, religion, and communal adaptations and traditions. That is, the state's conception of governance is not always congruent with the heterogeneous peoples of a particular nation-state. As a result, ways of governance and perceptions of the "good" life are often conflicting at the local, state, and national levels. These clashing ideas are viewed with incertitude and trepidation in the Western world of democracies. Thus, Western democracies label non-Western democratic experiments as "the other." Hence, without a more holistic understanding of why ethnicity, religion, and communal attachments are so salient in non-Western societies, Western democracies limit the "democratic playing field" as well as circumscribe cooperative, enduring relationships with "the other." A reappraisal of democracy as a form of governance is needed to find a paradigm that is more suitable to the context in which various African nation-states exist. That is, one size does not and should not fit all. [source]

Anosacral cutaneous amyloidosis: a study of 10 Chinese cases

BRITISH JOURNAL OF DERMATOLOGY, Issue 6 2000
W-J. Wang
Background,Primary cutaneous amyloidoses are rare in Western countries, but are relatively common in Taiwan. Anosacral cutaneous amyloidosis is a rare type of primary cutaneous amyloidoses, first reported in Japanese patients. Patients/methods,In the present study, we investigated the age of onset, sites of involvement, associated systemic diseases, and histopathological findings in 10 cases of anosacral cutaneous amyloidosis seen during the past 27 years. Results,In previous reports the aetiology of anosacral cutaneous amyloidosis was thought to be a senile change, but half of our patients developed the disease before the age of 60 years. Based on our histopathological findings, apoptosis may be the initial event causing amyloid deposition, although the precise mechanism causing apoptosis needs further investigation. Three patients were found to have diabetes mellitus, but any relationship to anosacral cutaneous amyloidosis is unclear. Conclusions,No cases of this cutaneous disorder have been reported in the Western literature; there seems to be a racial difference accounting for the disease, although the precise factor is not clarified yet. The disease could easily be misdiagnosed as lichen simplex chronicus, postinflammatory hyperpigmentation or tinea cruris; therefore, a thorough history, a careful physical examination and a skin biopsy is needed to establish a firm diagnosis. [source]

Supply Chain Strategy, Product Characteristics, and Performance Impact: Evidence from Chinese Manufacturers,

DECISION SCIENCES, Issue 4 2009
Yinan Qi
ABSTRACT Supply chain management has become one of the most popular approaches to enhance the global competitiveness of business corporations today. Firms must have clear strategic thinking in order to effectively organize such complicated activities, resources, communications, and processes. An emerging body of literature offers a framework that identifies three kinds of supply chain strategies: lean strategy, agile strategy, and lean/agile strategy based on in-depth case studies. Extant research also suggests that supply chain strategies must be matched with product characteristics in order for firms to achieve better performance. This article investigates supply chain strategies and empirically tests the supply chain strategy model that posits lean, agile, and lean/agile approaches using data collected from 604 manufacturing firms in China. Cluster analyses of the data indicate that Chinese firms are adopting a variation of lean, agile, and lean/agile supply chain strategies identified in the western literature. However, the data reveal that some firms have a traditional strategy that does not emphasize either lean or agile principles. These firms perform worse than firms that have a strategy focused on lean, agile, or lean/agile supply chain. The strategies are examined with respect to product characteristics and financial and operational performance. The article makes significant contributions to the supply chain management literature by examining the supply chain strategies used by Chinese firms. In addition, this work empirically tests the applicability of supply chain strategy models that have not been rigorously tested empirically or in the fast-growing Chinese economy. [source]

Clinical implications of nodal marginal zone B-cell lymphoma among Japanese: study of 65 cases

CANCER SCIENCE, Issue 1 2007
Masaru Kojima
To clarify the clinical presentation and outcome of nodal marginal zone B-cell lymphoma (NMZBL), 65 Japanese patients with this disease were studied and compared with the published literature from western countries. The clinical findings of our 65 cases were similar to those of their cases in some aspects: (1) 58% of the patients were >60 years old (median age, 64 years); (2) there was a slight female predominance; (3) 90% of the patients exhibited asymptomatic lymphadenopathy in the head and neck area; (4) only a minority of patients had B symptoms (6%) and poor performance status (8%); and (5) only 5% of patients were positive for M-protein. However, the 65 patients in this series exhibited relatively longer 5-year overall survival (85%) and failure-free survival (60%) than the NMZBL series published in western literature, suggesting that NMZBL should be classified as indolent lymphoma. Moreover, based on the histological findings, we further classified four histological subtypes as follows: (1) splenic type (n = 7); (2) floral type (n = 9); (3) mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue (MALT) type (n = 29); and (4) diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) + MALT type (n = 20). DLBCL + MALT type exhibited significantly poorer 5-year overall survival than the splenic variant. The recognition of DLBCL + MALT type appears important. No API2,MALT1 fusion transcript was detected in any of the 14 cases examined. (Cancer Sci 2007; 98: 44,49) [source]