China has seen the largest human migration in history, and the country's rapid urbanisation has important consequences for public health. A provincial analysis of its urbanisation trends shows shifting and accelerating rural-to-urban migration across the country and accompanying rapid increases in city size and population. The growing disease burden in urban areas attributable to nutrition and lifestyle choices is a major public health challenge, as are troubling disparities in health-care access, vaccination coverage, and accidents and injuries in China's rural-to-urban migrant population. Urban environmental quality, including air and water pollution, contributes to disease both in urban and in rural areas, and traffic-related accidents pose a major public health threat as the country becomes increasingly motorised. To address the health challenges and maximise the benefits that accompany this rapid urbanisation, innovative health policies focused on the needs of migrants and research that could close knowledge gaps on urban population exposures are needed.

No abstract

Although the number of human infections decreased, human prevalence increased from 4.9% in 1995 to 5.1% in 2004.

Our results suggest that the SARS outbreak was significantly associated with DAWV, and that DAAP, DARH and DHS may also have influenced the SARS outbreak to some extent. However, because of ecological fallacy and uncontrolled confounding effects that may have biased the results, the association between the SARS outbreak and these meteorological factors and air pollution deserve further investigation.

BackgroundTo assess the association between maternal human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection and low birth weight (LBW)/prematurity (PTD), we conducted a meta-analysis of cohort studies of HIV infected and uninfected women.MethodsSeveral English and Chinese databases were searched (updated to May 2015) to find the studies reporting infant outcomes associated with exposure to maternal HIV infection during pregnancy. Relevant articles were manually selected based on several inclusion and exclusion criteria.ResultsFifty-two cohort studies including 15,538 (for LBW) and 200,896 (for PTD) HIV infected women met the inclusion criteria. There was significant heterogeneity among studies for maternal HIV infection associated with LBW/PTD (I2 = 71.7 %, P < 0.05, and I2 = 51.8 %, P < 0.05 for LBW and PTD, respectively). The meta-analysis demonstrated that the maternal HIV infection was significantly associated with both LBW (pooled odds ratio (OR): 1.73, 95 % confidence interval (CI): 1.64, 1.82, P < 0.001) and PTD (pooled OR: 1.56, 95 % CI: 1.49, 1.63, P < 0.001). No significant difference in the relationship between maternal HIV infection and adverse pregnancy outcomes was detected among the groups of different study periods. HIV infected women were at slightly higher risk of LBW in developing countries compared with women in developed countries (OR: 2.12 (95 % CI: 1.81, 2.48) vs. 1.75 (95 % CI: 1.44, 2.12)). Antiretroviral drugs usage did not significantly change the associations of maternal HIV exposure with LBW and PTD.ConclusionsHIV infected women were at higher risk of having a low birth weight infant or a preterm delivery infant compared with uninfected women. Such associations did not change significantly over time or were not significantly affected by the usage of antiretroviral drugs.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12884-015-0684-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Metformin appears to be associated with a lower risk of liver cancer in patients with type 2 diabetes. Further investigation, including mechanistic studies, well-designed cohort studies, and possibly controlled trials, is needed.

No abstract

Genotype IV HEV is freely transmitted between humans and swine. Because the size of the swine population and its viral burden are much larger than those of humans, transmission of the virus most likely is directed from swine to humans. Infection can be acquired through contact with swine and their waste.