Background The aim of this study was to analyze the seasonal birth month pattern in young patients with autoimmune thyroiditis and compare it with youth controls. Methods Medical records of a total of 298 children and adolescents of Greek origin, with a diagnosis of Hashimoto thyroiditis (HT) before the age of 21 years that were born from 1987 to 2010 were retrospectively reviewed. In addition, 298 consecutive subjects that were born from 1988 to 2012 and evaluated in a tertiary unit for any reason, served as controls, provided that they had no personal or family history of thyroid or any other autoimmune disease. Results Significant differences were found between children and adolescents with HT and healthy controls in the yearly pattern of month of birth distribution (p=0.029). During month-by-month analysis, it was shown that the highest and lowest predispositions to HT were among those born in spring (March) (odds ratio [OR] 2.34, p=0.005), and autumn (November) (OR 0.49, p=0.035), respectively. A binary logistic regression model also revealed that season of birth and sex were the only factors that remained related to HT disease, even after adjustment for confounding factors such as year of birth and age (p<0.001, Nagelkerke r-square 0.151). Conclusions This study suggests that the effect of certain seasonal factors during fetal development, reflected by the seasonal differences in birth pattern, in children and adolescents with autoimmune thyroiditis could contribute to long-term programming of an autoimmune response against the thyroid gland. Further studies are needed to demonstrate a clear cause and effect relationship between month of birth and HT.

In this study, the occurrence and removal of twenty-nine pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) in two water treatment plants (WTPs) in China were investigated. WTP1 employed ozonation and granular active carbon (GAC) filtration after coagulation and sedimentation, while WTP2 applied anthracite and GAC filtration instead. In the influent, six and four selected PPCPs with total concentrations of 554.97 and 12.94 ng/L were detected in WTP1 and WTP2, respectively (in October), among which, sulfamethoxazole and erythromycin were detected with highest concentrations due to their widely used as both human and veterinary medicines. PPCPs removal varied significantly among compounds and treatment units. In general, coagulation, filtration and single GAC units worked inefficiently and removed the detected PPCPs by less than 50%, as they were not hydrophobic. Ozonation was capable to eliminate a majority of PPCPs by more than 90%, which, however, presented limited mineralization and generated a certain amount of degradation by-products. To seek the improvement of PPCPs removal by coagulation and flocculation, the feasibility of adding hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) into the coagulation process (Fe2+ or Fe3+) to trigger the Fenton reaction was investigated. Results indicated that only under acidic condition, Fe2+ combined H2O2 efficiently removed PPCPs, while Fe3+/H2O2 also showed some removal capacity compared to coagulation process only. It will be impractical to employ this process under neutral pH. But when acidic wastewater is involved, this process may have its potential application.

Implant treatment is one of the most important surgical processes in teeth which reduces the difficulties in teeth by providing the interface between bone and jaw. The established implant treatment used to support the denture, bridge and teeth crown. Even though it supports many dental related activities, the successive measure of implant treatment is fail to manage because it fully depends on the patient's personal activities and health condition of mouth tissues. So, the successive rate of implant treatment process is identified by applying the memetic search optimization along with Genetic scale recurrent neural network method. The introduced method analyzes the patient characteristics which helps to recognize the successive and failure rate of implant treatment process. The quality of the implant treatment of using simulation results in terms of sensitivity, specificity and accuracy metrics.

Objective　The objective of this study was to examine the influence of environmental factors on eating behaviors of children.Method　The participants were the caregivers of 1,678 children attending nursery schools or kindergartens in two different cities of a prefecture. We distributed several self-administered questionnaires to the caregivers in conjunction with collaborating organizations. The participants returned the questionnaires either to collection boxes placed at the collaborating organizations facilities or by mailing them. The questionnaires included assessment of the child's basic attributes, caregiver assessments of eating behaviors, the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS) measure of autistic traits, the Japanese Sensory Inventory-Revised (JSI-R), and the Index of Child Care Environment (ICCE). We conducted a chi-square (χ2) test, Fisher's exact test, and a multiple regression analysis.Results　We received responses from 843 participants (response rate=50.4%), and of those, 583 were considered valid (34.7%). The mean number of problematic eating behaviors for each child as perceived by the caregivers was 2.43±2.26. In general, caregivers thought that about 40% of the children had an unbalanced diet and about 30% had a problem of "not being able to sit still." The multiple regression analysis showed that the number of problematic eating behaviors was significantly and positively affected by the SRS T-score total (β=0.188, P<0.001), sense of taste (β=0.319, P<0.001) and auditory sense (β=0.168, P<0.001) in JSI-R. A positive relationship was found between the environmental factors of human stimulation (β=0.096, P=0.010) and social support (β=0.085, P=0.022). A negative relationship was found between sense of smell (β=-0.108, P=0.013), number of siblings (β=-0.100, P=0.005), age (β=-0.077, P=0.029), and sex (β=-0.091, P=0.010).Conclusion　Our study results showed that having an unbalanced diet and "not being able to sit still" were typical features of eating behaviors. The number of problematic eating behaviors was associated with personal factors such as autistic tendency and sensory characteristics, and also with environmental factors, such as human stimulation and social support. Our findings show the importance of evaluating all relevant factors when dietary guidance is provided in the treatment of problematic eating behaviors.