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Background and Purpose-Strokes have especially devastating implications if they occur early in life; however, only limited information exists on the characteristics of acute cerebrovascular disease in young adults. Although risk factors and manifestation of atherosclerosis are commonly associated with stroke in the elderly, recent data suggests different causes for stroke in the young. We initiated the prospective, multinational European study Stroke in Young Fabry Patients (sifap) to characterize a cohort of young stroke patients. Methods-Overall, 5023 patients aged 18 to 55 years with the diagnosis of ischemic stroke (3396) *Drs Rolfs, Fazekas and Grittner contributed equally to this work. Authors contributions: Dr Rolfs has conceptualized, initiated, and designed and organized the study, has been involved in the recruitment of the patients, and wrote significant parts of the manuscript. Dr Fazekas was involved in the study planning and has done together with Drs Enzinger and Schmidt the analysis of all MRI scans; this group was mainly involved in the statistical analysis of the MRI data. Drs Martus, Grittner, Holzhausen have taken responsibility for all statistical analysis and for the data structure of the total data bank. Drs Dichgans, Böttcher, Tatlisumak, Tanislav, Jungehulsing, Putaala, Huber, Bodechtel, Lichy, Hennerici, Kaps, Meyer, Kessler have been most active in the recruitment of the patients, drafting the manuscript and significantly influencing the scientific discussion. Dr Heuschmann was involved in drafting the manuscript and influencing the scientific discussion. Dr Norrving chaired the steering and publication committees of sifap, has written parts of the manuscript, and has significantly influenced the scientific discussions. Drs Lackner and Paschke, H. Mascher, Dr Riess have been involved in the laboratory analyses. Dr Kolodny has mostly contributed to the discussion of the Fabry cases. Dr Giese assisted in writing and editing the manuscript. All authors have reviewed, critically revised and approved the final version of the manuscript.The sponsors of the study had no role in the study design, data collection, data analysis, interpretation, writing of the manuscript, or the decision to submit the manuscript for publication. The academic authors had unrestricted access to the derived dataset, and assume full responsibility for the completeness, integrity, and interpretation of the data, as well as writing the study report and the decision to submit for publication.†Listed in Appendix I in the online-only Data Supplement. Jeffrey L. Saver, MD, was guest editor for this article.

In the recent decade demographers turned their attention to investigating the effects of children on self-rated happiness or life satisfaction. The underlying idea of this strand of research is to find out whether it pays off for individuals to become parents in terms of their subjective well-being, given the costs of having children. Following this line of research, this article studies the impacts of childbearing on individual-level happiness in Poland; a country which experienced a rapid decline in fertility despite the particularly strong attachment of young Poles to family values. To this end, we applied methods for panel data analysis which allowed us to control for endogeneity of subjective well-being and parenthood. Our results reveal a significantly positive effect of the first child on the subjective well-being of mothers. For men, this impact is weaker and most likely temporary since it weakens with the child's increasing age. An important finding is that neither for men nor for women does the positive impact of parenthood rise with an increase in parity. This may explain the persistence of low fertility in this country.

This article uses comparative micro data from the 2004 European Union Labour Force Survey (EULFS) for 23 European countries to study the impact of labour market institutions on the youth relative temporary employment probability. We find relatively high temporary employment rates for young workers in all countries but also a large crosscountry variation in this respect. The results of multi-level regression analyses confirm that neither employment protection of regular contracts nor its interaction with the level of employment protection of temporary contracts affects the young people's relative risk. Instead, we find a positive association between collective bargaining coverage as a measure of insiderÁoutsider cleavages and the relative temporary employment risk of young persons. These results remain robust even after controlling for macrostructural conditions, such as unemployment rate and business uncertainty.

Poland has become an interesting outlier in Europe in terms of employment flexibility, with an extremely high incidence of fixed-term contracts, particularly at labour market entry. In this article, detailed retrospective data from the Polish School Leavers Survey are used to analyse the dynamics of entry and exit from fixed-term contracts. The results show that neither firm-based vocational training nor diplomas from more selective tertiary education institutions provide graduates better access to secure entry positions. Regarding exit dynamics, transition patterns from fixed-term contracts into unemployment suggest that the timing of exits often coincides with the date of becoming eligible to collect unemployment benefits. The results also imply that, in Poland, fixed-term contracts might serve employers by helping them to identify the best workers.

Aims/hypothesisWe evaluated seasonal HbA1c changes in children with type 1 diabetes and its relation with measures of weather conditions.MethodsHbA1c changes over more than 3 years were evaluated in type 1 diabetic patients who were younger than 18 years and had diabetes duration of more than 12 months, and correlated with measures of weather conditions (ambient temperature, hours of sunshine and solar irradiance). After comparison of autocorrelation patterns, patterns of metabolic control and meteorological data were evaluated using Spearman rank correlation.ResultsA total of 3,935 HbA1c measurements in 589 school (≥7 years) and 88 preschool (<7 years) children were analysed. Mean (±SD) HbA1c level for the whole study period was 7.65 ± 1.12%. The lowest HbA1c levels were observed in late summer and the highest in winter months, with differences consistently exceeding 0.44%. Autocorrelation analysis of HbA1c levels in schoolchildren showed a sine-wave pattern with a cycle length of roughly 12 months, which mirrored changes in ambient temperature. Strong negative correlations of HbA1c with ambient temperature (R = −0.56; p = 0.0002), hours of sunshine (R = −0.52; p = 0.0007) and solar irradiance (R = −0.52; p = 0.0006) were present in schoolchildren, but not in preschoolers (p ≥ 0.29 for each correlation).Conclusions/interpretationSeasonal changes of HbA1c levels in schoolchildren with type 1 diabetes are a significant phenomenon and should be considered in patient education and diabetes management. They may potentially affect the results of clinical trials using HbA1c levels as their primary outcome, as well as HbA1c-based diagnosis of diabetes.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00125-010-2013-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorised users.

According to our findings, elevated routine serum CRP measured within 24 h after admission does not seem to independently affect the outcome in patients receiving intravenous thrombolysis for stroke. However, further studies of blood samples taken directly before the treatment are needed.

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