Background: Low back pain is a real public health problem. Lots of studies have been done about it, but not in midwives group. The latter seem to be exposed to low back pain due to morphological, physical and psycho-s...Background: Low back pain is a real public health problem. Lots of studies have been done about it, but not in midwives group. The latter seem to be exposed to low back pain due to morphological, physical and psycho-social factors. We therefore study the place of these factors in the occurrence of low back pain in midwives. Method: Prospective, cross-sectional and analytical study, it is done with 102 midwives of university hospitals in Benin. They were interviewed and examined. An eventual link with their history of low back pain, for at least 3 months during the last 12 months before the study, was checked to their morphological aspects (spinal curvatures, BMI), physical examinations data (strength and muscular flexibility) and psycho-social factors (relationship with colleagues and either, stress, ...). The effect of these factors was assessed using relative risk (RR) with a 95% confidence interval. Results: Different morpho-physical and psychosocial disturbances were observed in midwives. 81% had a history of low back pain. The latter have a statistically significant relationship with the different factors studied. These were mostly exposure factors, but poor midwife relationship with their hierarchical superiors was a protective factor (RR = 0.69 and p = 0.0106). Discussion-Conclusion: In Benin, health workers and especially midwives are very exposed to low back pain. The latter are often associated with different morphological, physical and psycho-social disturbances. The knowledge of those parameters is interesting to reduce this high prevalence of low back pain in midwives.展开更多
Aims Plants play an important role in ecosystem processes.Functional meaning of trait variation in wide environmental gradients is well known but is scarcely known across narrow gradients.We analyze the variation of m...Aims Plants play an important role in ecosystem processes.Functional meaning of trait variation in wide environmental gradients is well known but is scarcely known across narrow gradients.We analyze the variation of morphological,physical and chemical traits of dom-inant plant species and the potential rates of dry mass loss and N release/immobilization during senesced leaf decomposition of these species across a narrow aridity gradient,and to identify indicative traits useful to set species functional groups sharing decomposition patterns.Methods We analyzed the variation of morphological,physical and chemical traits(specific leaf area,seed mass,N and soluble phenols in green and senesced leaves,plant height)in dominant plant species at 12 sites across an aridity gradient in northern Patagonia,Argentina.We collected senesced leaves of each plant species at each site and used them to estimate the poten-tial rates of dry mass loss and N release/immobilization from decomposing senesced leaves in a microcosm experiment.We analyzed the variation of plant traits and decomposition rates across the aridity gradient.We grouped plants species accord-ing to growth forms(perennial grasses,deciduous shrubs,ever-green shrubs)and different combinations of morpho-physical and chemical traits of green and senesced leaves and compared the potential rates of dry mass loss and N release/immobiliza-tion during leaf decomposition among these groups delimited by each grouping criteria.Important Findings Plant traits did not vary across the aridity gradient.The potential rate of dry mass loss was positively related to aridity,while the potential rate of N release/immobilization did not vary across the gradient.Grouping species by separately morpho-physical and chemical traits resulted in a large overlapping in mean values of decomposition rates among groups.In contrast,plant groupings based on growth forms and those including all morpho-physical and chemical traits of green or senesced leaves yielded groups with differentiated rates of decomposition processes.The two latter groupings clustered spe-cies from more than one growth form indicating some overlapping in the rates of decomposition processes among species of different growth forms.Among traits,N concentration in senesced leaves and plant height explained the highest variation in decomposition rates being positively related to potential rates of dry mass loss and N release/immobilization.We concluded that plant groupings based on morpho-physical and chemical traits of either green or senesced leaves may be more powerful to differentiate functional species groups sharing decomposition patterns than the growth form group-ing.Moreover,plant height and N concentration in senesced leaves may be considered relevant synthetic functional traits in relation to decomposition processes in narrow aridity gradients.展开更多
文摘Background: Low back pain is a real public health problem. Lots of studies have been done about it, but not in midwives group. The latter seem to be exposed to low back pain due to morphological, physical and psycho-social factors. We therefore study the place of these factors in the occurrence of low back pain in midwives. Method: Prospective, cross-sectional and analytical study, it is done with 102 midwives of university hospitals in Benin. They were interviewed and examined. An eventual link with their history of low back pain, for at least 3 months during the last 12 months before the study, was checked to their morphological aspects (spinal curvatures, BMI), physical examinations data (strength and muscular flexibility) and psycho-social factors (relationship with colleagues and either, stress, ...). The effect of these factors was assessed using relative risk (RR) with a 95% confidence interval. Results: Different morpho-physical and psychosocial disturbances were observed in midwives. 81% had a history of low back pain. The latter have a statistically significant relationship with the different factors studied. These were mostly exposure factors, but poor midwife relationship with their hierarchical superiors was a protective factor (RR = 0.69 and p = 0.0106). Discussion-Conclusion: In Benin, health workers and especially midwives are very exposed to low back pain. The latter are often associated with different morphological, physical and psycho-social disturbances. The knowledge of those parameters is interesting to reduce this high prevalence of low back pain in midwives.
基金This work was supported by the National Agency for Scientific,Technological Promotion(PICTs 1349,1368)the National Research Council of Argentina(PIP-112-200801-01664-CONICET,PIP-112-201301-00449-CONICET)in the framework of the Grant(PUE-IPEEC-CONICET 229201601000044).
文摘Aims Plants play an important role in ecosystem processes.Functional meaning of trait variation in wide environmental gradients is well known but is scarcely known across narrow gradients.We analyze the variation of morphological,physical and chemical traits of dom-inant plant species and the potential rates of dry mass loss and N release/immobilization during senesced leaf decomposition of these species across a narrow aridity gradient,and to identify indicative traits useful to set species functional groups sharing decomposition patterns.Methods We analyzed the variation of morphological,physical and chemical traits(specific leaf area,seed mass,N and soluble phenols in green and senesced leaves,plant height)in dominant plant species at 12 sites across an aridity gradient in northern Patagonia,Argentina.We collected senesced leaves of each plant species at each site and used them to estimate the poten-tial rates of dry mass loss and N release/immobilization from decomposing senesced leaves in a microcosm experiment.We analyzed the variation of plant traits and decomposition rates across the aridity gradient.We grouped plants species accord-ing to growth forms(perennial grasses,deciduous shrubs,ever-green shrubs)and different combinations of morpho-physical and chemical traits of green and senesced leaves and compared the potential rates of dry mass loss and N release/immobiliza-tion during leaf decomposition among these groups delimited by each grouping criteria.Important Findings Plant traits did not vary across the aridity gradient.The potential rate of dry mass loss was positively related to aridity,while the potential rate of N release/immobilization did not vary across the gradient.Grouping species by separately morpho-physical and chemical traits resulted in a large overlapping in mean values of decomposition rates among groups.In contrast,plant groupings based on growth forms and those including all morpho-physical and chemical traits of green or senesced leaves yielded groups with differentiated rates of decomposition processes.The two latter groupings clustered spe-cies from more than one growth form indicating some overlapping in the rates of decomposition processes among species of different growth forms.Among traits,N concentration in senesced leaves and plant height explained the highest variation in decomposition rates being positively related to potential rates of dry mass loss and N release/immobilization.We concluded that plant groupings based on morpho-physical and chemical traits of either green or senesced leaves may be more powerful to differentiate functional species groups sharing decomposition patterns than the growth form group-ing.Moreover,plant height and N concentration in senesced leaves may be considered relevant synthetic functional traits in relation to decomposition processes in narrow aridity gradients.