Macroevolutionary pattern of sexual size dimorphism in geckos corresponds to intraspecific temperature-induced variation.

Many animal lineages exhibit allometry in sexual size dimorphism (SSD), known as 'Rensch's rule'. When applied to the interspecific level, this rule states that males are more evolutionary plastic in body size than females and that male-biased SSD increases with body size. One of the explanations for the occurrence of Rensch's rule is the differential-plasticity hypothesis assuming that higher evolutionary plasticity in males is a consequence of larger sensitivity of male growth to environmental cues. We have confirmed the pattern consistent with Rensch's rule among species of the gecko genus Paroedura and followed the ontogeny of SSD at three constant temperatures in a male-larger species (Paroedura picta). In this species, males exhibited larger temperature-induced phenotypic plasticity in final body size than females, and body size and SSD correlated across temperatures. This result supports the differential-plasticity hypothesis and points to the role phenotypic plasticity plays in generating of evolutionary novelties.

[An analysis of the sociodemographic context of alcohol use in the Czech adult population from the health perspective]. / Analýza sociodemografického kontextu pozívání alkoholických nápoju v dospelé populaci Ceské republiky z hlediska zdravotního.

BACKGROUND: WHO 2002 Report finds alcohol use to have mostly detrimental effects on the human health, only some patterns of use being beneficial. This study analyzes patterns of alcohol use in the Czech adult population according to region, urbanization, gender, age, and education. METHODS AND RESULTS: A sample of 1224 men and 1282 women (aged 18-64), representative for the Czech population of this age, was interviewed. Frequencies of beer, wine and spirit use, usual quantities per occasion, and the frequency of consuming >/= 75 g alcohol at a single occasion were ascertained. Results showed that 33% men and 14% women consume alcohol in a way hazardous for health, i.e. with a daily average > 40 g (men), > 20 g (women), or with periodic use of >/= 75 g at a single occasion. Only 6% men and 2% women adhere to a consumption pattern with supposed cardio-protective effects, i.e. at least each other day, in low/moderate quantity and without periodic binges. The health risk form of use in men is age related with the climax at 35-44 (p<0.001) and with a linear decreases with educational level (p<0.001). No statistically significant relation between the unhealthy alcohol use and age or the education level was found in women. CONCLUSIONS: In the Czech adult male and female population patterns of the health-risky or problematic alcohol use heavily overweight patterns with hypothetical beneficial effects, with no exception across sociodemographic strata.

IQ and personality traits assessed in childhood as predictors of drinking and smoking behaviour in middle-aged adults: a 24-year follow-up study.

AIMS: The identification of childhood personality predictors of drinking and smoking behaviour in adults. DESIGN: A 24-year follow-up study. SETTING: Prague, the Czech Republic. PARTICIPANTS: Combined cohorts of 220 males and females born of unwanted pregnancies, and 220 control subjects, examined with low attrition rates at ages 9-10, 21-23, 28-31 and 32-35. MEASUREMENTS: In childhood IQ was assessed by the Wechsler Intelligence Scale, Children (WISC), and personality characteristics were rated by teachers, mothers and classmates. In adulthood questionnaires and face-to-face interviews were used to assess drinking and smoking. FINDINGS: Unwanted pregnancy was not related to adult drinking and smoking. The ratings of childhood personality characteristics were condensed into three personality dimensions, i.e. conscientiousness, extroversion and neuroticism, interpreted as three of the Big Five personality dimensions, and found to show some stability into adulthood. Gender, IQ and the three childhood personality traits were used as predictors of adult drinking and smoking behaviour. Adult drinking behaviour was significantly predicted by the block of the three childhood personality traits, low conscientiousness predicting high drinking quantity per occasion (and heavy episodic drinking) whereas extroversion predicted subjects' average daily consumption. Smoking in adulthood was predicted by low IQ and low conscientiousness. CONCLUSIONS: IQ and personality traits in children explain to some degree the drinking and smoking behaviour of adult men and women, but the roles of the different components vary according to the form of substance use.

Gender differences in alcohol consumption and adverse drinking consequences: cross-cultural patterns.

AIMS: To examine the consistency and/or variability of gender differences in drinking behavior cross-culturally. DESIGN, SETTING, PARTICIPANTS: Women's and men's responses in 16 general population surveys from 10 countries, analyzed by members of the International Research Group on Gender and Alcohol. MEASUREMENTS: Comparable measures of drinking, versus abstention, typical drinking frequencies and quantities, heavy episodic drinking, intoxication, morning drinking, and alcohol-related family and occupational problems. FINDINGS: Women and men differed little in the probability of currently drinking versus abstaining, but men consistently exceeded women in typical drinking frequencies and quantities and in rates of heavy drinking episodes and adverse drinking consequences, while women were consistently more likely than men to be life-time abstainers. In older age groups, both men and women drank smaller quantities of alcohol and were more likely to stop drinking altogether, but drinking frequencies did not change consistently with age. CONCLUSIONS: A theoretical synthesis proposes that gender roles may amplify biological differences in reactions to alcohol, and that gender differences in drinking behavior may be modified by macrosocial factors that modify gender role contrasts.

Czech men's drinking in changing political climates 1983-93: a three-wave longitudinal study.

AIMS: To analyse the relationships between political developments in the Czech Republic and the drinking behaviour of Czech men. DESIGN: A longitudinal (panel) design provided data collected on a cohort of 586 Czech men in three different political climates in 1983, 1988 and 1993. SETTING: In 1986-88 the ruling Communist party tried to reduce alcohol consumption in the country by a Gorbachev-inspired anti-alcohol campaign; after 1989 the re-establishment of democracy and a market economy abolished all political control over drinking and deregulated prices of beverage alcohol. PARTICIPANTS: A representative cohort of Prague men born 1950-61. MEASUREMENTS: Beverage-specific interview reports on drinking behaviour and questionnaire data on attitudes to drinking. FINDINGS: In those followed-up, mean alcohol consumption decreased between 1983 and 1988 by 26% and increased again by 16% between 1988 and 1993, mirroring per capita consumption in the Czech Republic. The same time trend was observed across all educational levels and also among men who were registered for alcohol abuse. Attitudes of the men to drinking changed minimally over the 10 years of follow-up. Individual attitudes to drinking interacted with the period effects: men with strong positive attitudes to drinking decreased their consumption less than others during the anti-alcohol campaign and such men increased their consumption more than the average during the liberalisation period. CONCLUSIONS: The downward and then upward in average alcohol consumption of the men during the 10 years of follow-up can be interpreted as affected partly by price changes and partly by changes in political control over drinking.

Prague women's drinking before and after the 'velvet revolution' of 1989: a longitudinal study.

Results are presented of a follow-up study in which a representative sample of 608 Prague women aged 20-49 years in 1987 at first interview was re-interviewed in 1992 3 years after the resolution that ended the 41 years of the Communist era in Czechoslovakia. The average yearly consumption of alcohol in the followed-up female sample increased between 1987-92 from a reported 3.6 litres to 4.8 litres. The percentage of heavier drinkers (with average daily consumption of over 20 g alcohol) increased from 7.2% to 14.0%. The women expressed increased tolerance of drunkenness in their attitudes to drinking. The consumption increase was mainly due to increased drinking frequency of spirits and to increased quantity of beer consumed per occasion. The consumption increase was largest in women working as free-lance and the newly emerging self-employed women; economically inactive women did not increase their consumption. Women who reported a positive impact of the socio-political changes on their personal lives and an expansion of social contacts also reported larger than average consumption increases. A coincidence of stressful, possibly self-inflicted, life events and increased alcohol use was observed and interpreted as probably a two-way influence.

Children from unwanted pregnancies in Prague, Czech Republic revisited at age thirty.

The results of the fourth wave of the Prague Study of subjects born of unwanted pregnancies (UP) are reported. Of these young adults, 190 were examined at age 30 together with pair-matched control subjects born of accepted pregnancies (AP). Siblings of both UP and AP subjects were also examined. As in the previous data waves the UP subjects manifest less favorable psychosocial development on average than their AP controls, although the differences have narrowed. In some respects the siblings of the UP subjects share the latter's less favorable characteristics. However, there is a gender specific nonshared late effect of unwanted pregnancy: the UP females are more frequently emotionally disturbed than their AP female controls, whereas no such difference occurs between the female siblings of the UP and AP subjects.

The substance specificity of psychosocial correlates of alcohol, tobacco, coffee and drug use by Czech women.

The paper reports results of an analysis based on face-to-face interviews with two samples of Prague women aged 20-49: (1) a probabilistic sample (n = 718) of the Prague female population; and (2) a sample of 152 inpatients treated for substance dependence/abuse. Of the inpatients, 79% were diagnosed as alcohol dependent only, 15% as both alcohol dependent and drug dependent/abusers, 6% as drug dependent only. With very few exceptions, those with drug problems among the inpatients abused analgesics, hypnotics, or anxiolytics. With data obtained from the general population sample, two-stage hierarchical logistic regression was run with each of the eleven differently defined substance uses as dependent variables. Four demographic variables were entered as predictors into the regression equations in the first stage. From the seven potential risk factors of substance use statistically significant predictors were entered stepwise in stage two. The major result of the study is the specificity of the pattern of predictors related to each of the eleven considered substance uses. It is also found that in the general population the use of a particular substance is generally uncorrelated with the use of other substances. Alcohol use (even heavy alcohol use) has no relation to smoking, to the use of analgesics, hypnotics, anxiolytics--and is connected with a specific pattern of predictors.

A case-control study of risk factors of alcohol misuse in Czech women: are there four types of female alcoholism?

Three samples of Prague women aged 20-49 were interviewed with regard to hypothetical risk factors of alcoholism: 139 inpatients diagnosed as alcohol dependent, 39 inebriated females admitted for 1-day detoxification, and 718 randomly selected women (the controls). Irrespective of case definition, father's alcoholism, incomplete family of origin, conduct disorders in childhood and adolescence, and social surroundings marked by heavy drinking were supported as risk factors of alcoholism. A factor analysis of alcohol-related problems led to two dimensions (dependence, disruptiveness) and consequently to four types of female alcoholism with different patterns of risk factors.

Alcohol abuse and its psychosocial correlates in sons of alcoholics as young men and in the general population of young men in Prague.

A sample of 107 sons of alcoholics aged 22-33 is compared to a representative sample of 1,274 Prague men of the same age range with respect to alcohol abuse and its psychosocial antecedents and correlates. Data sources were cumulative records of alcohol abuse in health care files and interviews. The estimated relative risk of alcohol abuse for sons of alcoholics versus other men is about 3.5 with both registration and self-report criteria if a broad definition of abuse is adopted. If, however, serious registered abuse and/or medical treatment of alcoholism at or before age 22 is the criterion of abuse, the estimated relative risk is about 10. In both compared samples, father's low education, discontinued family socialization and undisciplined behavior in childhood were antecedents of abuse registered at or before age 22. Self-reported abuse in the 6 months before interview had similar psychosocial correlates in both samples (heavily drinking friends, a positive attitude to heavy drinking, etc.). In both samples about 40% began to drink regularly at 17 or earlier. However, early start of drinking led very frequently to early registered abuse in sons of alcoholics whereas no such contingency was observed in the general male population.

[Nervous system changes in patients treated with penicillin during the period of symptomatic and early asymptomatic syphilis]. / Zmiany w ukladzie nerwowym u chorych leczonych penicylina w okresie kily objawowej i bezobjawowej wczesnej

The results of cerebrospinal fluid examination of 451 patients treated for syphilis were analysed. In 34 patients abnormalities were found in the protein level, cell number and serological investigations. Thus, there is an absolute indication to cerebrospinal fluid examination in each case in which serological tests remain positive despite adequate specific therapy.