Suchergebnisse

Drug‐induced hyposalivation has only been anecdotally related to various subjective and objective oral problems. The study described here of 157 residents of a long‐term care facility reports data on whole masticatory‐stimulated salivary flow rates, use of medications, and perceptions of symptoms associated with hyposalivation, including mouth and eye dryness, tooth sensitivity, chewing satisfaction, and taste and smell acuity.One hundred and twelve residents (71%) were taking one or more drugs that induced hyposalivation. Salivary flow rates were lower in persons who were taking such drugs, and lowest in persons who were taking such drugs for a protracted period. Flow was also lower in females than males, and lower in persons institutionalized for long periods than in persons institutionalized for short periods. Persons who were taking drugs that induce hyposalivation were institutionalized longer, used more medications, had more health problems, were dissatisfied with chewing, and had fewer teeth than persons who were not taking such drugs. Persons who reported having mouth dryness also reported eye dryness and were dissatisfied with their chewing ability. Perceived mouth dryness was not related to salivary flow.SummaryPrevalence of hyposalivatory drug use in a long‐term care facility is described. Several important independent variables, including gender, length of residency, number of nonhyposalivatory drugs used, and number of major health problems have been linked to reduced salivary flow, use of hyposalivatory drugs, and perception of mouth dry ness. Reduced salivary flow, use of hyposalivatory drugs, and perceived mouth dry‐ness have, in turn, been linked to symptoms that are commonly associated with hyposalivation, including perceived loss of smell, few teeth, dissatisfaction with chewing, and perceived eye dryness. Data indicate that reports of mouth dryness become more frequent and more severe with the number of hyposalivatory drugs used. Mean salivary flow rates declined as numbers of hyposalivatory drugs taken and period of use increased. Salivary flow rates were not found to be related to perceived mouth dryness.

"Over the years, numerous instructors have requested a short, one-semester version of Economics that would cover both microeconomics and macroeconomics. While some other two-semester books simply eliminate chapters, renumber those that remain, and offer the "cut and splice" version as a customized book, this methodology does not fit with our vision of a tightly focused, highly integrated book. We built this text from scratch, incorporating the core content from Economics in a format designed specifically for the one-semester course. This book has the clear and careful language and the balanced approach that has made its two-semester counterpart a best-seller, but the pedagogy and topic discussion are much better suited to the needs of the one-semester course. We think Essentials of Economics will fit nicely in various one-term courses. It is sufficiently lively and focused for use in principles courses populated primarily by non-business majors. Also, it is suitably analytical and comprehensive for use in combined micro and macro principles courses for business and potential economics majors. Finally, we think this book-if supplemented with appropriate lecture and reading assignments-will work well in refresher courses for students returning to MBA programs."

We investigate the measurement of three distinct, but related dimensions of electoral competition in a majoritarian electoral system: contestability in the struggle for governing power; competition among candidates at the constituency level; and competition among existing parties at the level of the legislature. At each step, the analysis is made concrete by calculating our preferred indexes of these dimensions of competitiveness for 14 major Indian states from 1972 to 2009 (and from 1952 in some cases), while comparing them to others that have been widely used, though not always calculated for Indian states. We also use our preferred indexes to study the importance of the level of development for an understanding of how competition has evolved across the states. The paper concludes by posing questions about the measurement of competitiveness, in general and in the Indian case, that arise in the course of our investigation.

The effective number of political parties (ENP) in a first-past-the-post single member (SMP) electoral system is analyzed as a dynamic process whereby the tournament nature of the election contest induces excessive entry and sunk entry costs promote persistence even as Duverger-Demsetz type political competition works to winnow unsuccessful minor candidates and parties. The result is a fringe of ever changing marginal parties circulating in long run equilibrium. The factors hypothesized to affect the entry and exit of candidates and parties are analyzed first using an auto-regressive distributed lag (ARDL) model whose advantage is that it allows the separation of an evolving long run equilibrium from short run variations in response to transitory changes in conditioning variables and the process of converging back to the long run equilibrium. The possibility that the short run adjustment process is asymmetric either for parties or candidates is tested using panel estimation techniques. The results are consistent with an observed time path that incorporates slower adjustment to positive as opposed to negative shocks. Variations in the size and trend of both the long and short run are then examined for ENP's ability to predict changes in the competitiveness of the Canadian federal electoral system.

Governments provide private goods as well as public services. We present a model of the private good - public good mix in public expenditure, and then apply it to explain the composition of spending by Indian state governments. The model explains why the publically provided private good to public good ratio is a decreasing function of the real income of voters, and is also decreasing in the degree of political competition. These hypotheses are tested on a panel of 14 Indian states for fiscal years 1987/88 to 2011/12. The long run results of three alternative ARDL models are broadly consistent with the proposed hypotheses, particularly the relationship between the private good share of state expenditures and real per capita incomes. They suggest that rising incomes and more effective political competit

The method of dietary exposure assessment currently used by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Dietary Residue Evaluation System (DRES), combines a consumption distribution derived from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) 1977‐1978 Nationwide Food Consumption Survey (NFCS) with a single estimate of residue level. The National Academy of Sciences'1' recommended that EPA incorporate both the distribution of residues and the distribution of consumption into their exposure assessment methodology and proposed using a Monte Carlo approach. This paper presents an alternative method, the Joint Distributional Analysis (JDA), that combines the consumption and residue distributions, without relying on random sampling or fitting theoretical distributions like the Monte Carlo method. This method permits simultaneous analysis of the entire diet, including assessing exposure from residues in different foods.

The post‐operative symptoms of patients who had undergone third molar extractions by Oral/Maxillofacial Surgery (OMS) residents were compared with those of patients whose extractions were performed by General Dentistry (GD) residents. The OMS group had more extractions per visit and were more likely to use intravenous sedation than the GD‐treated group. No significant differences were found when the provider groups were compared by postoperative symptoms such as osteitis, infection, trismus, or paresthesia/dysthesia. The pain relief due to postoperative analgesics during the immediate 12‐hour period was higher for patients treated by GD residents. Multiple regression analysis revealed that this difference was due to the number of teeth extracted and the complexity of the surgical procedure, independent of type of provider.

Drug use among the elderly may be a factor in oral mucosal pathology and the prevalence of oral yeasts. This study was designed to evaluate the relationship between oral yeast, denture‐bearing mucosal health and drug use, especially drugs with known hyposalivatory side effects. There was an inverse relationship between denture‐bearing mucosal health, and hyposalivatory drug use r = ‐0.41P < 0.04. Use of drugs with a hyposalivatory side effect was related to increased numbers of Candida glabrata but not Candida albicans in saliva and at denture stomatitis and denture sore sites.