Were the changes to Sweden's maintenance treatment policy 2000-06 related to changes in opiate-related mortality and morbidity?
The liberalization of Sweden's drug policy correlated with an increase in maintenance treatment, a decrease in opiate-related mortality and inpatient care and an increase in deaths with methadone and buprenorphine in the tissues.
We propose a mechanism of noise propagation through extracellular communication and establish conditions under which the mechanism is operative. The cellular stochasticity of gene induction, which we investigate, is not limited to the specific interferon-induced gene we have studied; a broad distribution of copy numbers across cells is to be expected for other interferon-stimulated genes. This can lead to functional consequences for the system-level response to a viral challenge.