Table_1_Relationship Between Exercise and Alzheimer’s Disease: A Narrative Literature Review.DOCX

This narrative review aimed to summarize evidence regarding the responses to exercise among patients with preclinical Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and the effectiveness of long-term exercise interventions in improving cognitive function and neuropsychiatric symptoms. We performed a narrative review of existing literature on the effectiveness of long-term exercise interventions in improving cognitive function and neuropsychiatric symptoms in patients with AD. Patients with AD who presented with long-term exercise interventions appeared to have improved blood flow, increased hippocampal volume, and improved neurogenesis. Most prospective studies have proven that physical inactivity is one of the most common preventable risk factors for developing AD and that higher physical activity levels are associated with a reduced risk of AD development. Physical exercise seems to be effective in improving several neuropsychiatric symptoms of AD, notably cognitive function. Compared with medications, exercise has been shown to have fewer side effects and better adherence.</p

Detecting differentially expressed genes of heterogeneous and positively skewed data using half Johnson’s modified <i>t</i>-test

<p><i>Background</i>: Microarray technology allows simultaneously detecting thousands of genes within one single experiment. The Student’s <i>t</i>-test (for a two-sample situation) can be used to compare the mean expression of a gene, taken from replicate arrays, to detect differential expression under the conditions being studied, such as a disease. However, a general statistical test may have insufficient power to correctly detect differentially expressed genes of heterogeneous and positively skewed data. <i>Methods</i>: Here we define a differentially expressed gene as with significantly different expression in means, variances, or both between the two groups of microarray. Monte Carlo simulation shows that the “half Johnson’s modified <i>t</i>-test” maintains quite accurate type I error rates in normal and non-normal distributions. And the half Johnson’s modified <i>t</i>-test was more powerful than the half Student’s <i>t</i>-test overall when the ratio of standard deviations between case and control groups is greater than 1. <i>Results</i>: Analysis of a colon cancer data shows that when the false discovery rate (FDR) is controlled at 0.05, the half Johnson’s modified <i>t</i>-test can detect 429 differentially expressed genes, which is larger than the number of differentially expressed genes (i.e. 344) detected by the half Student’s <i>t</i>. To target 100 priority genes, the half Johnson’s modified <i>t</i> only set FDR to 4.28 × 10⁻⁸, but for the half Student’s <i>t</i>, it is set to 5.39 × 10⁻⁴. <i>Conclusions</i>: The half Johnson’s modified <i>t</i>-test is recommended for the detection of differentially expressed genes in heterogeneous and ONLY positively skewed data.</p

Cox proportional hazard model for survival prediction of non-cancer end-stage liver disease.

Cox proportional hazard model for survival prediction of non-cancer end-stage liver disease.</p

Baseline demographic and laboratory characteristics of non-cancer cirrhotic patients in derivation and validation data sets.

Baseline demographic and laboratory characteristics of non-cancer cirrhotic patients in derivation and validation data sets.</p

Comparisons of ROC curves of the 3-month, 6-month and at the end of follow-up mortality prediction among the novel score, MELD score, and MELD-Na score in non-cancer related cirrhotic patients.

A. ROC curves of the 3-month mortality prediction among the three scores (n = 811). The AUC were 0.7873 (95% CI; 0.769–0.803), 0.7053 (95% CI; 0.684–0.727; P 0.001), 0.8038 (95% CI; 0.786–0.821; PB. ROC curves of the 6-month mortality prediction among the three scores (n = 887). The AUC were 0.7807 (95% CI; 0.763–0.799), 0.7023 (95% CI; 0.682–0.723; PPC. ROC curves of at the end of follow-up mortality prediction among the three scores (n = 1188). The AUC were 0.7713 (95% CI; 0.754–0.789), 0.6937 (95% CI; 0.674–0.714; P 0.001), 0.7852 (95% CI; 0.769–0.802; P = 0.0021) in MELD, MELD-Na, and the novel model, respectively.</p

Comparison of demographic and laboratory characteristics of all non-cancer cirrhotic patients with and without mortality during the follow-up period between 2010–2014.

(N = 4080).</p

Survival prediction among patients with non-cancer-related end-stage liver disease

BackgroundPredicting the survival of non-cancer related end-stage-liver-disease patients in general practice has been difficult for physicians because of the extremely variable trajectories due to multiple complex clinical factors, hence it remains a challenging issue to date. This study aimed to develop and validate a specific prognostic scoring system to early recognize the prognosis and improve the quality of end-of life care for non-cancer end-stage-liver-disease population.Materials and methodsA multicentre, retrospective cohort study was conducted during January 2010 ~ December 2012 and continued follow-up until December 2014. A cox proportional hazard regression analysis was used to derive and validate an optimized model. The main outcome measures were the 28-day, 3-month, 6-month, and 12-month mortality prediction. The performance of the novel model was evaluated, including discrimination and calibration.ResultsA total of 4,080 consecutive subjects were enrolled. The AUROCs for the 3-month survival discrimination in the MELD, MELD-Na and novel model were 0.787, 0.705 and 0.804 (PConclusionThis is a clinically relevant, validated scoring system that can be used sequentially to stratify the prognosis in non-cancer cirrhotic populations, which may help the patients along with medical team in decision making to improve the quality of end-of-life care.</div

Comparisons of discrimination ability among the novel score, the MELD and MELD-Na scores for non-cancer cirrhotic patients in the derivation data set.

Comparisons of discrimination ability among the novel score, the MELD and MELD-Na scores for non-cancer cirrhotic patients in the derivation data set.</p

Approximate quintile of modified-MELD score distribution of the predicted vs. observed survival cases in the derivation and validation sets.

Approximate quintile of modified-MELD score distribution of the predicted vs. observed survival cases in the derivation and validation sets.</p

Flow chart of patients included in the study (n = 4080).

Flow chart of patients included in the study (n = 4080).</p