A 1998 agreement between several states in the USA and the tobacco industry made millions of pages of internal documents available to the public. Many of these documents contain information that the industry would have preferred to keep confidential. Systematic review of these internal documents constitutes a valuable resource for international tobacco control, since they are available on the Internet and can be accessed from anywhere in the world. These documents provide relevant and useful information to antismoking activists and researchers. To facilitate their use, the present article presents the electronic archives of the tobacco industry's documents, describes methods for conducting searches, and identifies the documents with information on the industry's tactics for manipulating Spanish politics and society for its own commercial interests during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.

El acuerdo alcanzado en 1998 entre las tabaqueras y la mayoría de los estados de Estados Unidos puso a disposición pública millones de páginas de documentos internos, muchos de ellos con información que la industria hubiera preferido mantener en secreto. La revisión de dichos documentos supone un recurso importante para la lucha internacional contra el tabaquismo, ya que se han archivado electrónicamente, y su acceso se ha facilitado a todo el mundo a través de Internet. Estos documentos proporcionan a los impulsores de las políticas de prevención información relevante y de utilidad. Para favorecer su uso, este estudio describe y enumera los archivos electrónicos con documentos internos de la industria tabaquera, presenta el proceso para su investigación y describe documentos que desvelan las tácticas que en los años setenta, ochenta y noventa emplearon las tabaqueras para manipular la política y a la sociedad en beneficio de sus intereses comerciales en España.

A 1998 agreement between several states in the USA and the tobacco industry made millions of pages of internal documents available to the public. Many of these documents contain information that the industry would have preferred to keep confidential. Systematic review of these internal documents constitutes a valuable resource for international tobacco control, since they are available on the Internet and can be accessed from anywhere in the world. These documents provide relevant and useful information to antismoking activists and researchers. To facilitate their use, the present article presents the electronic archives of the tobacco industry's documents, describes methods for conducting searches, and identifies the documents with information on the industry's tactics for manipulating Spanish politics and society for its own commercial interests during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.

El acuerdo alcanzado en 1998 entre las tabaqueras y la mayoría de los estados de Estados Unidos puso a disposición pública millones de páginas de documentos internos, muchos de ellos con información que la industria hubiera preferido mantener en secreto. La revisión de dichos documentos supone un recurso importante para la lucha internacional contra el tabaquismo, ya que se han archivado electrónicamente, y su acceso se ha facilitado a todo el mundo a través de Internet. Estos documentos proporcionan a los impulsores de las políticas de prevención información relevante y de utilidad. Para favorecer su uso, este estudio describe y enumera los archivos electrónicos con documentos internos de la industria tabaquera, presenta el proceso para su investigación y describe documentos que desvelan las tácticas que en los años setenta, ochenta y noventa emplearon las tabaqueras para manipular la política y a la sociedad en beneficio de sus intereses comerciales en España.

This study was undertaken to evaluate an enzyme immunoassay (EIA) for hepatitis C virus antibody detection (anti-HCV), using just one antigen. Anti-HCV EIA was designed to detect anti-HCV IgG using on the solid-phase a recombinant C22 antigen localized at the N-terminal end of the core region of HCV genome, produced by BioMérieux. The serum samples diluted in phosphate buffer saline were added to wells coated with the C22, and incubated. After washings, the wells were loaded with conjugated anti-IgG, and read in a microtiter plate reader (492 nm). Serum samples of 145 patients were divided in two groups: a control group of 39 patients with non-C hepatitis (10 acute hepatitis A, 10 acute hepatitis B, 9 chronic hepatitis B, and 10 autoimmune hepatitis) and a study group consisting of 106 patients with chronic HCV hepatitis. In the study group all patients had anti-HCV detected by a commercially available EIA (Abbott®), specific for HCV structural and nonstructural polypeptides, alanine aminotransferase elevation or positive serum HCV-RNA detected by nested-PCR. They also had a liver biopsy compatible with chronic hepatitis. The test was positive in 101 of the 106 (95%) sera from patients in the study group and negative in 38 of the 39 (97%) sera from those in the control group, showing an accuracy of 96%. According to these results, our EIA could be used to detect anti-HCV in the serum of patients infected with hepatitis C virus.