Biomedicine International Journals
Volume:4 Issue: 1, 2013

Patterns of long-term health risk reduction after levels of environmental hazards decline have been documented, but are still not precisely understood. Nuclear plant shutdowns which eliminate radioactive emissions and reduce toxins in the environment and food chain have been previously linked with significant short-term declines in local infant deaths and child cancer cases. The Rancho Seco nuclear power plant in Sacramento County, California USA ceased operating in June 1989; no other operating reactor exists within 200 miles of the site. We examine official California Cancer Registry data on cancer incidence for Sacramento County vs. the entire state, using the last two years of reactor operation (1988-1989) as a baseline; the Registry began in 1988. Temporal trends are given for Standard Incidence Ratios of all cancers combined, and by gender, race/ethnicity, common types of cancer, and child cancer. Since the late 1980s, cancer incidence in Sacramento County has declined for 28 of 31 categories (genders, races, types of cancer); of these, 14 declines are statistically significant and 2 others borderline significant. The estimated reduction in cancer cases in the county over a 20-year period is 4,319. Many factors can result in lower cancer incidence over two decades, but elimination of radioactive isotopes should be addressed as one of these potential factors in future reports.

Unexpected step-like increases in emergency medical hospital admissions, general practitioner (GP) referrals, and wider health care costs that appear to repeat at an interval between three to eight years in length have been observed in the United Kingdom (UK) and other countries. Based on the observation that the step changes appear to be restricted to a group of diagnoses associated with infection or inflammation, it has been proposed that outbreaks of an unknown type of infectious immune impairment are responsible for the cycle. Both infection and inflammation have been implicated in changes in the gender ratio (male-to-female births) observed in humans and animals, and this development presents an opportunity to test the infectious outbreak hypothesis. Monthly live births in England and Wales between 1980 and 2008 were studied. After adjusting for the effects of the solar sunspot cycle and season on the gender ratio, the pattern in the residual ratio (actual minus predicted) appears to align with the cycle of step changes in medical admissions and costs. It appears that each outbreak initiates a cascade of condition-specific effects, which include conception and/or fetal loss along with other effects on adults, and more specifically on the elderly. An additional peak in the gender ratio for conceptions in September, October, and November 1986 appears to correspond to the impact of fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear accident in April 1986 and seems to confirm the results of other studies on the impact of low levels of nuclear radiation on the gender ratio. Biomed. Int. 2013; 4: 26-39. ©2013 Biomedicine International, Inc.

Lenz-Majewski syndrome is a congenital progressive skeletal disorder hallmarked by craniotubular hyperostosis, ectodermal dysplasia (cutis laxa and enamel hypoplasia) and hand/foot osseous dysgenesis or hypoplasia (brachysyndactyly, absent metacarpals, etc). So far, only ten cases of this syndrome have been described in literature. We present the eleventh case of Lenz-Majewski syndrome with craniotubular hyperostosis cutis laxa, brachysyndactyly, hypoplastic fingers and toes and an absent metatarsal in a Hispanic boy. Notable secondary phenotypic presentations were megalocornea and glaucoma, obstructive sleep apnea, laryngotracheobronchomalacia and severe hydrocephalus with intracranial hypertension requiring shunt placement. As far as we are aware, the latter features have not been previously reported with Lenz-Majewski syndrome. The present report demonstrated the variance associated with the secondary phenotypic burden of this syndrome.