Features predicting the success of computerized decision support for prescribing: a systematic review of randomized controlled trials

Background  

Computerized decision support systems (CDSS) are believed to have the potential to improve the quality of health care delivery, although results from high quality studies have been mixed. We conducted a systematic review to evaluate whether certain features of prescribing decision support systems (RxCDSS) predict successful implementation, change in provider behaviour, and change in patient outcomes.     

Structural issues affecting mixed methods studies in health research: a qualitative study

Background  

Health researchers undertake studies which combine qualitative and quantitative methods. Little attention has been paid to the structural issues affecting this mixed methods approach. We explored the facilitators and barriers to undertaking mixed methods studies in health research.     

Employment Insecurity,Workplace Justice and Employees’ Burnout in Taiwanese Employees: A Validation Study

Background  

Employment insecurity and workplace injustice are important psychosocial hazards. However, few studies of these associations have been conducted in Chinese-speaking populations.     

Screening for Parkinson's disease with response time batteries: A pilot study

Background  

Although significant response time deficits (both reaction time and movement time) have been identified in numerous studies of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), few attempts have been made to evaluate the use of these measures in screening for PD.     

Quantitative regression analysis of the cutaneous vascular territories in a rat model

Background  

The rat skin flap model has been widely used in experimental flap survival studies; however, most of these have been qualitative studies. The purpose of this study was to investigate the quantitative relationship between the diameter of a cutaneous artery and the area of skin that it supplies, and also to explore the factors that influence this relationship.     

Industry-supported meta-analyses compared with meta-analyses with non-profit or no support: Differences in methodological quality and conclusions

Background  

Studies have shown that industry-sponsored meta-analyses of drugs lack scientific rigour and have biased conclusions. However, these studies have been restricted to certain medical specialities. We compared all industry-supported meta-analyses of drug-drug comparisons with those without industry support.     

Variation in Uteroglobin-Related Protein 1 (<Emphasis Type="Italic">UGRP1</Emphasis>) gene is associated with Allergic Rhinitis in Singapore Chinese

Background  

Uteroglobin-Related Protein 1 (UGRP1) is a secretoglobulin protein which has been suggested to play a role in lung inflammation and allergic diseases. UGRP1 has also been shown to be an important pneumoprotein, with diagnostic potential as a biomarker of lung damage. Previous genetic studies evaluating the association between variations on UGRP1 and allergic phenotypes have yielded mixed results. The aim of this present study was to identify genetic polymorphisms in UGRP1 and investigate if they were associated with asthma and allergic rhinitis in the Singapore Chinese population.     

Synopsis and meta-analysis of genetic association studies in osteoporosis for the focal adhesion family genes: the CUMAGAS-OSTEOporosis information system

Background  

Focal adhesion (FA) family genes have been studied as candidate genes for osteoporosis, but the results of genetic association studies (GASs) are controversial. To clarify these data, a systematic assessment of GASs for FA genes in osteoporosis was conducted.     

Double–blind control of the data manager doesn't have any impact on data entry reliability and should be considered as an avoidable cost

Background  

Database systems have been developed to store data from large medical trials and survey studies. However, a reliable data storage system does not guarantee data entering reliability.     

Checklist for the qualitative evaluation of clinical studies with particular focus on external validity and model validity

Background  

It is often stated that external validity is not sufficiently considered in the assessment of clinical studies. Although tools for its evaluation have been established, there is a lack of awareness of their significance and application. In this article, a comprehensive checklist is presented addressing these relevant criteria.     

Dose escalation of a curcuminoid formulation

Background  

Curcumin is the major yellow pigment extracted from turmeric, a commonly-used spice in India and Southeast Asia that has broad anticarcinogenic and cancer chemopreventive potential. However, few systematic studies of curcumin's pharmacology and toxicology in humans have been performed.     

Association of breast milk fatty acids with allergic disease outcomes—A systematic review

Introduction

Dietary polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) have immunoregulatory properties. Breast milk is rich in PUFA, and it has been hypothesized that these PUFAs may be important in the aetiology of allergic diseases. Despite a growing body of evidence, the associations between breast milk PUFA and allergic disease have not previously been systematically reviewed.

Methods

The search was performed in PubMed and EMBASE databases using breastfeeding, fatty acid and allergic disease terms. Two authors were involved in selecting papers for review according to the inclusion criteria and extracting information on study characteristics and measures of association. Only studies that reported numeric associations between concentration of breast milk fatty acids and allergic disease outcomes were included.

Results

A total of 18 papers met the inclusion criteria, reporting results from 15 study populations. The majority were cohort studies (n=11), with data from only two case‐control and two cross‐sectional studies. Sample size varied between 30 and 352 participants, and follow‐up time of the cohorts varied between 3 months and 14 years. Nine studies reported on eczema, seven reported on sensitization, and only five reported on asthma/wheeze. There was heterogeneity among studies in terms of presenting the association between PUFA and allergy; therefore, estimates could not be pooled. Only a few studies observed associations between n‐3 and n‐6 PUFAs and allergic disease, and the magnitude of this effect varied greatly.

Conclusions

There is insufficient evidence to suggest that colostrum or breast milk polyunsaturated fatty acids influence the risk of childhood allergic diseases.     

A comparison of multiple imputation methods for missing data in longitudinal studies

Background

Multiple imputation (MI) is now widely used to handle missing data in longitudinal studies. Several MI techniques have been proposed to impute incomplete longitudinal covariates, including standard fully conditional specification (FCS-Standard) and joint multivariate normal imputation (JM-MVN), which treat repeated measurements as distinct variables, and various extensions based on generalized linear mixed models. Although these MI approaches have been implemented in various software packages, there has not been a comprehensive evaluation of the relative performance of these methods in the context of longitudinal data.

Method

Using both empirical data and a simulation study based on data from the six waves of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (N?=?4661), we investigated the performance of a wide range of MI methods available in standard software packages for investigating the association between child body mass index (BMI) and quality of life using both a linear regression and a linear mixed-effects model.

Results

In this paper, we have identified and compared 12 different MI methods for imputing missing data in longitudinal studies. Analysis of simulated data under missing at random (MAR) mechanisms showed that the generally available MI methods provided less biased estimates with better coverage for the linear regression model and around half of these methods performed well for the estimation of regression parameters for a linear mixed model with random intercept. With the observed data, we observed an inverse association between child BMI and quality of life, with available data as well as multiple imputation.

Conclusion

Both FCS-Standard and JM-MVN performed well for the estimation of regression parameters in both analysis models. More complex methods that explicitly reflect the longitudinal structure for these analysis models may only be needed in specific circumstances such as irregularly spaced data.

     

Extent of publication bias in different categories of research cohorts: a meta-analysis of empirical studies

Background  

The validity of research synthesis is threatened if published studies comprise a biased selection of all studies that have been conducted. We conducted a meta-analysis to ascertain the strength and consistency of the association between study results and formal publication.     

In the shadow of bad news – views of patients with acute leukaemia,myeloma or lung cancer about information,from diagnosis to cure or death

Background  

Many studies have been published about giving and receiving bad messages. However, only a few of them have followed the patients all the way through a disease as is done in this study. Many studies have been written about patients' coping strategies. In this study we will keep within the bounds of coping through information only. The aim of the study is to investigate patients' views of information during the trajectory of their disease, whether their reactions differ from each other and whether they differ in different phases of the disease.     

The importance of adjusting for potential confounders in Bayesian hierarchical models synthesising evidence from randomised and non-randomised studies: an application comparing treatments for abdominal aortic aneurysms

Background  

Informing health care decision making may necessitate the synthesis of evidence from different study designs (e.g., randomised controlled trials, non-randomised/observational studies). Methods for synthesising different types of studies have been proposed, but their routine use requires development of approaches to adjust for potential biases, especially among non-randomised studies. The objective of this study was to extend a published Bayesian hierarchical model to adjust for bias due to confounding in synthesising evidence from studies with different designs.     

Evidence for a gene influencing heart rate on chromosome 5p13-14 in a meta-analysis of genome-wide scans from the NHLBI Family Blood Pressure Program

Background  

Elevated resting heart rate has been shown in multiple studies to be a strong predictor of cardiovascular disease. Previous family studies have shown a significant heritable component to heart rate with several groups conducting genomic linkage scans to identify quantitative trait loci.     

Identifying alemtuzumab as an anti-myeloid cell antiangiogenic therapy for the treatment of ovarian cancer

Background  

Murine studies suggest that myeloid cells such as vascular leukocytes (VLC) and Tie2⁺ monocytes play a critical role in tumor angiogenesis and vasculogenesis. Myeloid cells are a primary cause of resistance to anti-VEGF therapy. The elimination of these cells from the tumor microenvironment significantly restricts tumor growth in both spontaneous and xenograft murine tumor models. Thus animal studies indicate that myeloid cells are potential therapeutic targets for solid tumor therapy. Abundant VLC and Tie2⁺ monocytes have been reported in human cancer. Unfortunately, the importance of VLC in human cancer growth remains untested as there are no confirmed therapeutics to target human VLC.     

Socioeconomic Disparities in Optimism and Pessimism

Background  

Socioeconomic status (SES) exhibits a graded relationship with health. Dispositional optimism represents a potential mediator and has been strongly linked to health, but few studies have assessed its association with SES.     

Variants in <Emphasis Type="Italic">KCNQ1</Emphasis> increase type II diabetes susceptibility in South Asians: A study of 3,310 subjects from India and the US

Background  

Polymorphisms in intron 15 of potassium voltage-gated channel, KQT-like subfamily member 1 (KCNQ1) gene have been associated with type II diabetes (T2D) in Japanese genome-wide association studies (GWAS). More recently a meta-analysis of European GWAS has detected a new independent signal associated with T2D in intron 11 of the KCNQ1 gene. The purpose of this investigation is to examine the role of these variants with T2D in populations of Asian Indian descent from India and the US.