Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine
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The Compression of Morbidity hypothesis envisions a potential reduction of overall morbidity, and of health care costs, now heavily concentrated in the senior years, by compression of morbidity between an increasing age of onset of disability and the age of death, increasing perhaps more slowly. For this scenario to be able to be widely achieved, largely through prevention of disease and disability, we need to identify variables which predict future ill health, modify these variables, and document the improvements in health that result. Physical activity is perhaps the most obvious of the variables which might reduce overall lifetime morbidity.
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Cancer registration is an essential element of any cancer control strategy. Data quality is, however, of paramount importance. This paper sets out some of the ways in which the quality of cancer registration data might be improved. In particular, the potential contribution of clinicians and pathologists is highlighted.
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Patients with cystic fibrosis present a challenge to management post-transplantation but the results are comparable with those obtained in patients with other conditions. The increasing population of cystic fibrosis patients who have undergone transplantation will require joint management of such patients by cystic fibrosis specialists and pulmonary transplant specialists. The follow-up of patients with cystic fibrosis following pulmonary transplantation potentially affords us an exciting opportunity to study the natural history of this disease as it affects the extra pulmonary organs.
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The induction of oral tolerance by oral immunization has been well recognized. Accumulated evidence shows that oral tolerance can be mediated by orally activated humoral and cellular factors. ⋯ Oral tolerance to alloantigen also reduces graft rejection. In spite of these encouraging results, the usefulness of this approach for an alternative immunotherapy in humans needs to be investigated further.