Health Effects Reported by Adolescent Water Pipe and/or Cigarette Smokers Compared to Nonsmokers

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of respiratory and/or physical fitness health problems in adolescent (ages 18–21) water pipe (WP) smokers (with or without cigarette smoking), cigarette-only smokers, and nonsmokers.

The influence of polymorphisms in the drug transporter,ABCB1 on the toxicity of glucocorticoids in Saudi children with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia

Background

Glucocorticoids play essential roles in the treatment of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL); however, treatment with these agents can result in severe side-effects. This study, the first of its kind in a Saudi population, investigates associations of ABCB1 gene polymorphisms (pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetic) with the development of toxicity and side effects (glucose abnormality, liver toxicity and infection) in a small population of Saudi children with ALL.

Approaches to understanding and interpreting the risks of red blood cell transfusion in neonates

In this review, we explore how to assess potential harm related to neonatal transfusion practice. We consider different sources of information, including passive or active surveillance systems such as registries, observational studies, randomised trials and systematic reviews. Future research directions are discussed.     

Penalized variable selection for accelerated failure time models with random effects

Accelerated failure time (AFT) models allowing for random effects are linear mixed models under the log-transformation of survival time with censoring and describe dependence in correlated survival data. It is well known that the AFT models are useful alternatives to frailty models. To the best of our knowledge, however, there is no literature on variable selection methods for such AFT models. In this paper, we propose a simple but unified variable-selection procedure of fixed effects in the AFT random-effect models using penalized h-likelihood (HL). We consider four penalty functions (ie, least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO), adaptive LASSO, smoothly clipped absolute deviation (SCAD), and HL). We show that the proposed method can be easily implemented via a slight modification to existing h-likelihood estimation procedures. We thus demonstrate that the proposed method can also be easily extended to AFT models with multilevel (or nested) structures. Simulation studies also show that the procedure using the adaptive LASSO, SCAD, or HL penalty performs well. In particular, we find via the simulation results that the variable selection method with HL penalty provides a higher probability of choosing the true model than other three methods. The usefulness of the new method is illustrated using two actual datasets from multicenter clinical trials.     

Implications and measurement of herd protection (indirect effects) for enteric vaccine development

Diarrhea remains one of the top five causes of disease and death among young children in developing nations. Fortunately, scientists are making progress developing vaccines against enterotoxigenic E. coli (ETEC) and Shigella, two of the leading diarrhea pathogens. As vaccine developers start to consider field efficacy trials of these vaccines, they should be aware of the importance of evaluating not only vaccine direct effects on the immunized, but also the herd effects that vaccination can afford to the unimmunized in a community. In a workshop held at the conference titled “Vaccines against Shigella and ETEC (VASE)”, we described to participants what herd effects are and we presented on methods used in cholera and rotavirus studies that could be useful for future ETEC and Shigella vaccine trials conducted in low and middle-income nations. We also presented evidence on the effects of vaccine herd effects for estimates of vaccine cost-effectiveness.     

神经内镜与显微镜下经鼻蝶入路手术切除无功能性垂体腺瘤疗效和安全性的Meta分析

目的 系统评价神经内镜与显微镜下经鼻蝶入路手术切除无功能性垂体腺瘤的疗效和安全性。方法 计算机检索PubMed 、Embase、Cochrane Center、中国生物医学文献数据库、维普中文科技期刊全文数据库、万方数据库、中国知网等中英文数据库有关神经内镜、显微镜下经鼻蝶入路无功能性垂体腺瘤切除术的文献，时限为2018年7月之前。指标包括肿瘤切除率、脑脊液渗漏发生率和视力恢复率。结果 共纳入19篇文献，2 383例。Meta分析结果:神经内镜手术全切除率比显微镜手术要高（75% vs 62%，P<0.001），神经内镜组视力恢复率也高于显微镜组（82% vs 59%，P<0.001）。两组脑脊液漏发生率无统计学差异（4%vs 6%，P=0.078）。结论 与显微镜下手术相比，神经内镜手术切除无功能性垂体腺瘤的疗效更好。     

评价消风散合黄连解毒汤治疗湿疹效果及价值

目的:探讨评价消风散合黄连解毒汤治疗湿疹效果及价值。方法:选择2017年5—12月治疗湿疹的患者54例作为对象,随机数字表分为对照组(27例)和观察组(27例)。对照组给予常规盐酸西替利嗪片治疗的方法,观察组采用消风散合黄连解毒汤治疗,15 d后对两组治疗方法的患者血清白细胞介素(Interleukin,IL)-4、γ-干扰素(γ-Interferon,IFN-γ)水平和临床治疗效果进行评估,比较两组湿疹患者体内的血清IL-4、IFN-γ含量以及患者治愈、显效、好转、无效以及总有效率的情况。结果:治疗前后两组患者IL-4、IFN-γ差异无统计学意义(P>0.05)。经15 d治疗后,观察组血清IL-4、IFN-γ水平相较于对照组有明显改善,差异有统计学意义(P<0.05),观察组患者总有效率高于对照组,临床治疗效果显著优于对照组(P<0.05)。结论:将消风散合黄连解毒汤治疗用于湿疹,相较于盐酸西替利嗪片治疗,患者血清水平更佳,临床疗效更好,值得推广应用。