HEALTH

A number of new vaccines are being developed against Poverty-Related infectious diseases of major public health importance at a global level.

In the medium-scale collaborative project with partners inside and outside the EU, scientific institutes with the capacities to duct sound investigations will cooperate with worldwide active international health service organisations which have information and global links for research on international mobility. General objective is to research on current trends of mobility of health professionals to, from and within the EU.

The symptoms of complex disease like allergy, obesity and cancer depend on the products of multiple interacting genes. High-throughput techniques have implicated hundreds of genes. There are also considerable individual variations. A clinical implication of this may be inadequate treatment response, which is increasingly recognized as a cause of increased suffering and costs. Ideally, physicians should be able to routinely personalize medication based on a few diagnostic markers. Finding such markers is a formidable challenge.

The NEuroStemCell consortium will foster collaboration between leading European experimental and clinical researchers in order to maximise the prospects for successful clinical trials of stem cell therapy for Parkinson's (PD) and Huntington's (HD) Disease. The activities will be driven by a Clinical WorkPackage (WP), which will set the requirements, and monitor and guide advances in development of the most promising cells.

A broad-range of candidate malaria vaccines derived from diverse novel technologies have resulted from the multiple approaches being taken by different groups in developing malaria vaccines. The majority of the candidates are recombinant proteins based on complex native antigens found on the surface of the parasite. Vaccine potential of these parasite surface antigens is often supported by epidemiological data, and by the ability to induce specific antibodies or potential protective responses in animals and later, in humans.

Price is the single most important intervention in tobacco control (TC). To protect the health of its citizens the EU now has a major role in regulating tobacco fiscal policy (FP) through a number of EU directives. The aims of these directives initially were to ensure the proper functioning of the internal market. The directives aided harmonization in EU Member States (MS) but now with EU enlargement price differentials have increased problems for the market and health protection.

The aim of the PSIMEx proposal is to systematically make published molecular interaction data computationally accessible. We plan to further develop the existing standard for molecular interactions developed by the HUPO Proteomics Standards Initiative, and to promote its implementation in the entire chain from experiment planning via data formatting and analysis to data representation in journal publications and public databases.

Current human resources planning models in nursing are unreliable and ineffective as they consider volumes, but ignore effects on quality in patient care. The project RN4CAST aims innovative forecasting methods by addressing not only volumes, but quality of nursing staff as well as quality of patient care.

Schizophrenia and bipolar affective disorder are a major burden to affected individuals and their families and to society at large. These two severe mental illnesses affect at least 2% of the population worldwide, and whilst 50% of sufferers do not receive adequate treatment, they cost hundreds of billions in healthcare provision, treatments and lost earnings.

The Safety Of non-Steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (SOS) proposal aims to assess the relative cardiovascular (CVD) and gastrointestinal (GI) safety of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). The NSAIDs are divided in traditional NSAIDs (tNSAIDs) and the newer COX-II inhibitors(coxibs).