Philippe Lazar

• Unité Inserm U1077

The respiratory effects of environmental pollution by asbestos inside university buildings were studied by comparing radiographic, clinical, and functional parameters among three groups of workers with different levels of exposure. Eight hundred and twenty-eight (828) people who worked for at least 15 yr in asbestos-insulated buildings and who were...

Analysing Paul Bert's contributions to the creation of a public, secular and compulsory school and also the meaning of the French 1905 law which separates Churches from the State, this contribution suggests to enlarge the concept of secularity from a religious to a non-religious acception, which opens on a new conception of the European Union.

Analysing Paul Bert's contributions to the creation of a public, secular and compulsory school and also the meaning of the French 1905 law which separates Churches from the State, this contribution suggests to enlarge the concept of secularity from a religious to a non-religious acception, which opens on a new conception of the European Union. Part...

A total of 506 women at moderate risk of preterm delivery were randomly allocated to either cervical cerclage or a control group. Significantly more women in the group allocated to cerclage were admitted to hospital for reasons other than the operation and more received oral toco-lytic drugs. There were also more caesarean sections and more preterm...

The research territories boundary between CNRS and InsermThree fundamental questions have been tackled during this seminar: the creation of Inserm and its relationships with CNRS ; the missions of this institute ; the advisability of changing the institutional structure of the French public research organization. In 1939, the CNRS’s creation aimed...

Chapter 3 . The Contribution of International Scientific CooperationTo wonder about “the contribution of international scientific co-operation to environmental health policies” first implies to define the specific meaning of each word of this title. The first two parts of the paper specify that i) relevant scientific disciplines must include soft s...

This note aims to given an interpretation of the "paradoxical" increase of dizygotic twin pregnancies (and more generally of multiple pregnancies) according to maternal age, when in parallel the number of growing follicles decreases strongly. From the analysis, through an allometric model, of the relative variations with age of the size of the vari...

A preterm birth prevention program was instituted in France in the early 1970s. Its effectiveness has been assessed through a perinatal study in Haguenau. A relationship between prenatal care improvement and preterm birth rate decrease was noted, but a causal interpretation cannot be derived from such an observational study. However, some arguments...

In geographical epidemiology, the correlation between two variables is often studied, using as basic units those zones for which these variables are available. However, because of their geographical contiguity, it could be misleading to consider each of these zones as independent statistical units. Moreover, spatial distributions (either of the fac...

The aim of the council directive of 29 March 1977 of the European Community (1) is the screening for non-work-related lead exposure levels in the general populations of European (member) countries. In France, such testing was carried out in eight metropolitan areas (having more than 500,000 inhabitants), another eight "critical" areas surrounding i...

A reduction in preterm births has been observed in Haguenau (Eastern France) during a 12-year intervention study with a program for prevention of preterm deliveries. The Perinatal Study of Haguenau was an observation tool used in a stable population, and it allowed measurement of the way women have progressively responded to the new proposals in pr...

All children born between 1971 and 1974 at the Haguenau maternity center (Lower-Rhine department, N.E. France) and attending school in Haguenau were examined by school doctors. The paper shows that there were differences in development of the 3 groups studied: 54 children born before term, 62 born small-for-dates and 1,188 controls. The rapid growt...

The aim of this study was to determine the elements of fatigue in occupations which constitute possible risk factors for the course of a pregnancy, and, in particular, that could cause premature birth. In 1977-1978, a total of 3437 women in France were surveyed after giving birth in two maternity hospitals. One hospital was located in Lyon (a large...

Mameile, N. (INSERM U.170, 69622 Villeurbanne Cedex, France), B. Laumon and P. Lazar. Prematurity and occupational activity during pregnancy. Am J Epidemiol 1984; 119: 309–22. The aim of this study was to determine the elements of fatigue in occupations which constitute possible risk factors for the course of a pregnancy, and, in particular, that c...

The maternal risk factors that correlate with small-for-dateness among twins have been analyzed using a sample of 659 twins pairs and a matched sample of singletons. Non-marital status, job involvement, and the previous delivery of a low-birth weight (less than 2,500g) infant present a negative interaction with twinning, as low gestational age-adju...

Hemon D [U170 Statistique, INSERM, 16 bis. Avenue Paul Vaillant Couturier, 94800 Villejuif, France], Berger C and Lazar P. Twinning following oral contraceptive discontinuation. International Journal of Epidemiology 1981, 10: 319–328. The characteristics of 673 mothers of twins were compared to those of a matched sample of mothers of singletons. Bo...

The blood lead levels of 1.877 persons living in 8 large French cities or in their suburbs were measured. Blood lead level varies with sex, age, tobacco, wine consumption and date of construction of the house. The specific effect of each of these variables can be quantified. The slope of the regression of blood lead level on age is approximatively...

Three groups of people working in buildings with insufficient protection against sources of asbestos (ceilings, lagging, cupboards, etc.) have been compared by clinical and radiological examinations. The first group, G1 (n = 160), comprised people working in direct contact with sources of asbestos; the second one, G2 (n = 277), comprised people who...

The percentage of women receiving cervical cerclage increased from 5% to 18% between two periods at Haguenau maternity hospital, according to a new policy for the prevention of pre-term birth. A parallel reduction of premature deliveries by about a half was observed in the relevant group of women. This suggests that cerclage might be employed on an...

The hypothesis of the existence of spatial variations of spontaneous abortion rates has two logical consequences on dizygotic twinning rates: they must be heterogeneously distributed and show a positive correlation with natality. French data available on dizygotic twinning rates from 1950 to 1974 are in agreement with both implications. Although al...

The hypothesis of the existence of spatial variations of spontaneous abortion rates has two logical consequences on dizygotic twinning rates: they must be heterogeneously distributed and show a positive correlation with natality. French data available on dizygotic twinning rates from 1950 to 1974 are in agreement with both implications. Although al...

This work is about organic micropollution of waters sampled at the flowing in and out of three treatment stations. Micropollutants are obtained by chloroformic extraction. It is shown that the extracts have biological effects which can be measured by in vitro and in vivo assays. The treatments reduce the total amount of extractible substances but t...

Parents of 751 children affected by cancer/leukemia, congenital heart disease, strawberry nevus or mental retardation have been investigated with respect to their reproductive history and their exposure to risk factors for spontaneous abortion. Differences between the four groups were established for the number of children in the sibship, the propo...

The comparison of 622 twin and 622 singleton births allowed us to confirm the association of dizygotic twinning with maternal age, parity, and maternal weight and height, as well as the occurrence of unlike-sex twins in the mother's family. It was also shown that none of these associations, except for maternal height, can be explained by the others...

An allometric study of the relative growth of the head and the body of the fetus and of the newborn shows that there is a more rapid growth of the head in relationship to the length of the fetus before the 30th week of pregnancy and then there is a slowing down between the 30th and the 40th weeks, followed by a re-acceleration after birth for full...

The existence of a significant negative correlation between hardness of drinking water and mortality rates from cardiovascular disease has been established by numerous authors. The intensity of this relationship varies according to the country concerned, the size of the areas studied, and the confounding factors taken into consideration. Neverthele...

In Alsace (France) drinking water is supplied from two different sources. This situation is favourable to study the effects on human health of various water characteristics, among which hardness. However it would be misleading to consider the 947 towns or villages as independent units of observation because of their geographical adjacencies. An agg...

Spontaneous abortion of one of the zygotes is shown to explain some of the main epidemiologic features of dizygotic twinning: its decrease at higher maternal ages and its spatial and secular variations. Conversely, the dizygotic twinning rate offers a precious tool for the study of the etiology of reproduction failures.

The possible consequences of influenza during pregnancy on the weight of the new born were studied. It was shown that the major 1969-70 winter influenza epidemic in Alsace was followed by a decrease in the mean birth weight registered in Haguenau's maternity hospital. This study confirms previous work on the subject and shows that birth weight can...

Applied to cytomegalovirus, the technique of indirect hemagglutination offers a good sensitivity and reliable specificity for serological testings. Improvements in the standardization are however still required. Sero-epidemiological studies performed in different groups of children and carried out with this method led to the following results: moth...

The frequency of spontaneous abortion of one zygote after double ovulation-fertilization makes it possible to explain some of the main features of the dizygotic twinning rate, namely the sharp decrease of this rate at higher maternal ages after its regular increase up to 35 years, and also the secular tendancy of this rate to decrease, observed in...

Applied to cytomegalovirus, the technique of indirect hemagglutination offers a good sensitivity and reliable specificity for serological testings. Improvements in standardization are, however, still required. Sero epidemiological studies performed in different groups of children and carried out with this method led to the following results: mother...

Epidemiologic studies, retrospective and prospective, were done on 1500 abortions collected from 1966-1972. No secular or seasonal variations were observed. From the analysis of the relative frequencies of the different types of chromsome anomalies it is estimated that 1 out of every 2 conceptions has a chromosome anomaly. Maternal-age influence wa...

The aim of the present paper is to determine how parental stature measurements should be used to "correct" birth weight in order to improve the diagnosis of small or big-for dateness. A first approach, based on the pattern of coefficients of correlation between maternal and paternal weight and height, and birth weight (Tab. I), may be criticized fo...

A method of numerical classification has been applied to the study of the concentrations of 22 serum antigens in 29 patients with Hodgkin's disease. This group of patients can be split into at least two subgroups. The two subgroups greatly differ by the severity of the clinical symptoms of the disease. One of them is very similar, for the antigen d...

Nuclear pore distribution at the nuclear membrane surface was studied in normal and pathological blood and lymph node lymphocytes and compared with that of PHA stimulated lymphocytes. The mean distance between pores, in normal and leukemic (chronic lymphocyte leukemia (CLL), and lymphosarcoma (LS) and lymphoblastic acute leukemia (LAL)) was constan...

This study deals with the space and time distribution of human leukaemia. It took place in seven rural French regions and concerns the six main types of leukaemias and haematosarcomas. The investigation on clustering tendency was carried out using several different methods—principally the simulation method and Knox's and Mantel's approaches. The ov...

SUMMARY Newcastle disease virus (NDV) production by individual chick embryo cells was determined after infection of monolayer cultures, trypsinization and distribution of the ceils into a large number of test tubes so that each tube would contain an average of one cell (or in some experiments IO cells). The content of each tube was assayed for p.f....

Fractionation of a cigarette smoke condensate (CSC) gives four fractions denoted I, II, III and IV. Fractions I and II, are both active in the short term hyperplasia test, contain only promoting substances but probably include the major proportion of them. Fraction III contains an important proportion of the initiating substances present in the CSC...

A method of fractionating cigarette smoke condensate is described. The constituents of the condensate were first separated into 4 fractions by the Craig countercurrent distribution technique. The solvents were 2,2,4 trimethyl pentane (TMP) and a methanol acetonitrile mixture (1:1 v/v). Two of these fractions were subfractionated further. From one,...

SV40 recovered from actinomycin D-resistant TSV-5 Cl.2/R cells is a small plaque variant (SVSP) as compared to SV40 rescued from parental TSV-5 C1.2 cells (SVLP). The difference in plaque formation is related to the growth rate of the two virus strains. The SVSP genome is affected at least in a function concerned with viral DNA replication.

The SV 40 plaque size variants SVLP and SVSP are characterized with respect to in vitro transformation, oncogenicity and TSTA induction. Compared to SVLP, SVSP virus transforms more efficiently hamster, mouse and monkey cells in vitro, and is more oncogenic for hamsters. By the graft rejection test, the small plaque variant appears to be less immun...

Four hundred and seventy-three women who had a karyotyped spontaneous abortion were followed for a period of 6 months to 3 years after the abortion. Statistical analysis of the obstetric events during the period of observation shows that the subsequent fertility of these women is very good and is influenced only by age factors. No increased inciden...

Four clones of a somatic monkey-mouse hybrid cell line were studied. One of these clones produced both mouse and monkey interferon, while the three others produced only mouse interferon. All four were, however, sensitive to both mouse and monkey (or human) interferon. The karyotype analysis of these four hybrid clones and the parental cell lines en...

There was close correlation between the activity in short-term tests of four cigarette smoke condensates applied to mouse skin and their carcinogenicity, or perhaps cocarcinogenicity. Cigarettes were made either from ribs (R = the midribs and the main veins of the tobacco leaves) or from parenchyma (P = portion of tobacco leaves free of midribs and...

Nuclear bodies were counted on electron micrographs of two dog epididymides and two biopsies of human sarcoidosis. Their distribution was compared to a theoretical one based on the Poisson distribution. This method was shown to be relevant when applied to the nucleoli as a control. (1) It demonstrated some likelihood that there is at least one nucl...

THE cocarcinogenic properties of croton oil have been known for a long time1, and there have been many attempts to identify its active components2,3.

France does not seem to have been spared by the bovine leukosis epizooties observed during the last few years in some countries of Western Europe. Two areas have been particularly involved, the North-East and more still the South-West regions, especially that of Mont-de-Marsan (Landes) where leukosis occurs in more than 1 in 1000 cattle.Zusammenfas...

We report the results of 2 investigations which may contradict the idea that benzo[a]pyrene (BP) plays a leading part in carcinogenesis of mouse skin by cigarette smoke condensate. A study of several natural condensates showed no correlation between their BP content and activity in short-term tests, i.e., activity in sebaceous-gland and hyperplasia...