237,567 research outputs found
B-type natriuretic peptide-guided treatment for heart failure
Background
Heart failure is a condition in which the heart does not pump enough blood to meet all the needs of the body. Symptoms of heart failure include breathlessness, fatigue and fluid retention. Outcomes for patients with heart failure are highly variable; however on average, these patients have a poor prognosis. Prognosis can be improved with early diagnosis and appropriate use of medical treatment, use of devices and transplantation. Patients with heart failure are high users of healthcare resources, not only due to drug and device treatments, but due to high costs of hospitalisation care. Bâtype natriuretic peptide levels are already used as biomarkers for diagnosis and prognosis of heart failure, but could offer to clinicians a possible tool to guide drug treatment. This could optimise drug management in heart failure patients whilst allaying concerns over potential side effects due to drug intolerance.
Objectives
To assess whether treatment guided by serial BNP or NTâproBNP (collectively referred to as NP) monitoring improves outcomes compared with treatment guided by clinical assessment alone.
Search methods
Searches were conducted up to 15 March 2016 in the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) in the Cochrane Library; MEDLINE (OVID), Embase (OVID), the Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects (DARE) and the NHS Economic Evaluation Database in the Cochrane Library. Searches were also conducted in the Science Citation Index Expanded, the Conference Proceedings Citation Index on Web of Science (Thomson Reuters), World Health Organization International Clinical Trials Registry and ClinicalTrials.gov. We applied no date or language restrictions.
Selection criteria
We included randomised controlled trials of NPâguided treatment of heart failure versus treatment guided by clinical assessment alone with no restriction on followâup. Adults treated for heart failure, in both inâhospital and outâofâhospital settings, and trials reporting a clinical outcome were included.
Data collection and analysis
Two review authors independently selected studies for inclusion, extracted data and evaluated risk of bias. Risk ratios (RR) were calculated for dichotomous data, and pooled mean differences (MD) (with 95% confidence intervals (CI)) were calculated for continuous data. We contacted trial authors to obtain missing data. Using the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) approach, we assessed the quality of the evidence and GRADE profiler (GRADEPRO) was used to import data from Review Manager to create a 'Summary of findings' table.
Main results
We included 18 randomised controlled trials with 3660 participants (range of mean age: 57 to 80 years) comparing NPâguided treatment with clinical assessment alone. The evidence for allâcause mortality using NPâguided treatment showed uncertainty (RR 0.87, 95% CI 0.76 to 1.01; patients = 3169; studies = 15; low quality of the evidence), and for heart failure mortality (RR 0.84, 95% CI 0.54 to 1.30; patients = 853; studies = 6; low quality of evidence).
The evidence suggested heart failure admission was reduced by NPâguided treatment (38% versus 26%, RR 0.70, 95% CI 0.61 to 0.80; patients = 1928; studies = 10; low quality of evidence), but the evidence showed uncertainty for allâcause admission (57% versus 53%, RR 0.93, 95% CI 0.84 to 1.03; patients = 1142; studies = 6; low quality of evidence).
Six studies reported on adverse events, however the results could not be pooled (patients = 1144; low quality of evidence). Only four studies provided cost of treatment results, three of these studies reported a lower cost for NPâguided treatment, whilst one reported a higher cost (results were not pooled; patients = 931, low quality of evidence). The evidence showed uncertainty for quality of life data (MD â0.03, 95% CI â1.18 to 1.13; patients = 1812; studies = 8; very low quality of evidence).
We completed a 'Risk of bias' assessment for all studies. The impact of risk of bias from lack of blinding of outcome assessment and high attrition levels was examined by restricting analyses to only low 'Risk of bias' studies.
Authors' conclusions
In patients with heart failure lowâquality evidence showed a reduction in heart failure admission with NPâguided treatment while lowâquality evidence showed uncertainty in the effect of NPâguided treatment for allâcause mortality, heart failure mortality, and allâcause admission. Uncertainty in the effect was further shown by very lowâquality evidence for patient's quality of life. The evidence for adverse events and cost of treatment was low quality and we were unable to pool results.</p
CRISPR/Cas9âmediated genome editing: from basic research to translational medicine
The recent development of the CRISPR/Cas9 system as an efficient and accessible programmable genome-editing tool has revolutionized basic science research. CRISPR/Cas9 system-based technologies have armed researchers with new powerful tools to unveil the impact of genetics on disease development by enabling the creation of precise cellular and animal models of human diseases. The therapeutic potential of these technologies is tremendous, particularly in gene therapy, in which a patient-specific mutation is genetically corrected in order to treat human diseases that are untreatable with conventional therapies. However, the translation of CRISPR/Cas9 into the clinics will be challenging, since we still need to improve the efficiency, specificity and delivery of this technology. In this review, we focus on several in vitro, in vivo and ex vivo applications of the CRISPR/Cas9 system in human disease-focused research, explore the potential of this technology in translational medicine and discuss some of the major challenges for its future use in patients.Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology:
UID/BIM/04773/2013
1334
Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities
RTI2018-094629-B-I00
Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology
SFRH/BPD/100434/2014
European Union (EU)
748585
LPCC-NRS/Terry Fox grantsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Target-Tailored Source-Transformation for Scene Graph Generation
Scene graph generation aims to provide a semantic and structural description
of an image, denoting the objects (with nodes) and their relationships (with
edges). The best performing works to date are based on exploiting the context
surrounding objects or relations,e.g., by passing information among objects. In
these approaches, to transform the representation of source objects is a
critical process for extracting information for the use by target objects. In
this work, we argue that a source object should give what tar-get object needs
and give different objects different information rather than contributing
common information to all targets. To achieve this goal, we propose a
Target-TailoredSource-Transformation (TTST) method to efficiently propagate
information among object proposals and relations. Particularly, for a source
object proposal which will contribute information to other target objects, we
transform the source object feature to the target object feature domain by
simultaneously taking both the source and target into account. We further
explore more powerful representations by integrating language prior with the
visual context in the transformation for the scene graph generation. By doing
so the target object is able to extract target-specific information from the
source object and source relation accordingly to refine its representation. Our
framework is validated on the Visual Genome bench-mark and demonstrated its
state-of-the-art performance for the scene graph generation. The experimental
results show that the performance of object detection and visual relation-ship
detection are promoted mutually by our method
Cascading nonlinearities in an organic single crystal core fiber: The Cerenkov regime
The large nonlinear phase shifts imparted to the fundamental beam during Cerenkov second harmonic generation (SHG) in a DAN, 4-(N,N-dimethylamino)-3-acetamidonitrobenzene, single crystal core fiber are explained and modelled numerically. Cascading upconversion and downconversion processes leads to nonlinear phase shifts produced by the second order nonlinear coupling of the guided fundamental mode and the component of the Cerenkov second harmonic field trapped in the fiber cladding
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