Dermatology life quality index (DLQI) as a psoriasis referral triage tool

Most primary care psoriasis referrals in the UK are triaged as ‘routine’, in part because of the prioritisation of skin cancer. As a result, patients with severe psoriasis may wait several months to be seen, enduring quality of life (QoL) impairment that could have been reduced. Furthermore some patients may spontaneously improve by the time they are seen by a specialist, making the appointment unnecessary at that time. Therefore, following approval from the local ethics committee, we conducted a prospective study to evaluate the usefulness of Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI) scores in triaging patients with psoriasis referred to our dermatology secondary health care services

Oral fumaric acid esters for psoriasis: abridged Cochrane systematic review including GRADE assessments

Fumaric acid esters (FAE) are licensed for the treatment of moderate to severe psoriasis in Germany but are also used off-label in many other countries. We conducted this systematic review to synthesize the highest quality evidence for the benefits and risks of FAE for psoriasis. Our primary outcomes were change in PASI score and drop-out rates due to adverse effects. Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of FAE or dimethyl fumarate were included, with no restriction on age or psoriasis subtype. We searched The Cochrane Skin Group Specialised Register, CENTRAL in the Cochrane Library, MEDLINE, EMBASE, LILACS, five trials registers and handsearched six conference proceedings. Six RCTs with 544 participants were included, four of which were published only as abstracts or brief reports, limiting study reporting. Five RCTs compared FAE with placebo and all demonstrated benefit in favour of FAE but meta-analysis was only possible for PASI 50 after 12-16 weeks, which was achieved by 64% of participants on FAE compared to 14% on placebo (risk ratio (RR) 4.55; 95% CI 2.80 to 7.40; 2 studies; 247 participants; low quality evidence). There was no difference in drop-out rates due to adverse effects (RR 5.36, 95% CI 0.28 to 102.12; 1 study; 27 participants; very low-quality evidence and wide confidence interval). More participants experienced nuisance adverse effects with FAE (76%) compared to placebo (16%) (RR 4.72, 95% CI 2.45 to 9.08; 1 study; 99 participants; moderate-quality evidence), mainly abdominal pain, diarrhoea and flushing. One head-to-head study of very low quality evidence comparing FAE with methotrexate reported comparable efficacy and drop-out rates, although FAE caused more flushing. The evidence in this review was limited and must be interpreted with caution; better designed and reported studies are needed

A multilabel classification approach for complex human activities using a combination of emerging patterns and fuzzy sets

In our daily lives, humans perform different Activities of Daily Living (ADL), such as cooking, and studying. According to the nature of humans, they perform these activities in a sequential/simple or an overlapping/complex scenario. Many research attempts addressed simple activity recognition, but complex activity recognition is still a challenging issue. Recognition of complex activities is a multilabel classification problem, such that a test instance is assigned to a multiple overlapping activities. Existing data-driven techniques for complex activity recognition can recognize a maximum number of two overlapping activities and require a training dataset of complex (i.e. multilabel) activities. In this paper, we propose a multilabel classification approach for complex activity recognition using a combination of Emerging Patterns and Fuzzy Sets. In our approach, we require a training dataset of only simple (i.e. single-label) activities. First, we use a pattern mining technique to extract discriminative features called Strong Jumping Emerging Patterns (SJEPs) that exclusively represent each activity. Then, our scoring function takes SJEPs and fuzzy membership values of incoming sensor data and outputs the activity label(s). We validate our approach using two different dataset. Experimental results demonstrate the efficiency and superiority of our approach against other approaches

An enhanced framework for solving cold start problem in movie recommendation systems

Recommendation systems (RSs) are used to obtain advice regarding decision-making. RSs have the shortcoming that a system cannot draw inferences for users or items regarding which it has not yet gathered sufficient information. This issue is known as the cold start issue. Aiming to alleviate the user’s cold start issue, the proposed recommendation algorithm combined tag data and logistic regression classification to predict the probability of the movies for a new user. First using alternating least square to extract product feature, and then diminish the feature vector by combining principal component analysis with logistic regression to predict the probability of genres of the movies. Finally, combining the most relevant tags based on similarity score with probability and find top N movies with high scores to the user. The proposed model is assessed using the root mean square error (RMSE), the mean absolute error (MAE), recall@N and precision@N and it is applied to 1M, 10M and 20M MovieLens datasets, resulting in an accuracy of 0.8806, 0.8791 and 0.8739

Anatomic or reverse shoulder arthroplasty for cuff intact glenohumeral osteoarthritis

Glenohumeral osteoarthritis in the presence of an intact rotator cuff is a debilitating condition that often leads to surgical intervention in the form of joint arthroplasty. Historically, anatomic total shoulder replacement (ATSR) had been considered the treatment of choice. Over the past decade, however, there has been a shift in treatment patterns to the use of reverse shoulder replacement to treat this condition due to concerns of subsequent rotator cuff failure and glenoid component loosening with ATSR. With continued innovation of implants and surgical techniques, it is unclear which procedure provides the best outcomes for patients. The Reverse or Anatomical replacement for Painful Shoulder Osteoarthritis, Differences between Interventions trial aims to definitively answer this question and evaluate the cost effectiveness of both procedures.</p

Alarming update on incidence of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever in Iraq in 2023

Objectives: In 2021, large outbreak of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) was reported in Iraq and cases have increased without any significant control measures. To raise awareness about the increasing cases in different regions of Iraq, hence remind the necessity to tackle contributing factors and potential outbreak interventions. Methods: The study included 511 polymerase chain reaction-confirmed CCHF infection cases out of 1827 suspected cases from 18 Provinces from January to August 2023. Approval from the Ministry of Health for data analyzed. Results: Out of 1827 suspected cases, 511 were confirmed positive by polymerase chain reaction. The total case fatality rate (CFR) was 12.7 with varying severity levels among provinces. Erbil had the highest CFR, 38.5, while Sulaimaniya and Anbar report no deaths. Independent t-test showed a significant difference in CFR between provinces west and south of Baghdad compared to north (P <0.05). Trend showed significant surges after Iftar and Adha holidays. Conclusion: Differences in CFR among provinces around the religious ceremonies, highlight the need for one public health intervention strategy. Increased temperatures affected vector behavior. Uncontrolled animal movement with neighboring countries is an important factor. Virus or host determinants can shape the clinical case outcomes, which need clinical and extensive laboratory studies to unravel the reasons leading to death

The Use of Stemming in the Arabic Text and Its Impact on the Accuracy of Classification

The ongoing growth in the vast amount of digital documents and other data in the Arabic language available online has increased the need for classification methods that can deal with the complex nature of such data. The classification of Arabic plays a large and important role in many modern applications and interferes with other sciences, which start from search engines and do not end with the Internet of Things. However, addressing the Arab classification errors with high performance is largely insufficient to deal with the huge quantities to reveal the classification of Arab documents; while some work was tackled out on the classification of the Arabic text, most of the research has focused on English text. The methods proposed for English are not suitable for Arabic as the morphology of the two languages differs substantially. Moreover, morphologically, the preprocessing of Arabic text is a particularly challenging task. In this study, three commonly used classification algorithms, namely, the K-nearest neighbor, Naïve Bayes, and decision tree, were implemented for Arabic text in order to assess their effectiveness with and without the use of a light stemmer in the preprocessing phase. In the experiment, a dataset from Agency France Persse (AFP) Arabic Newswire 2001 consisting of four categories and 800 files was classified using the three classifiers. The result showed that the decision tree with light stemmer had the best accuracy rate for classification algorithm with 93%

IIST technical report

This research project examined the state of social sciences in Iraqi universities in four regions, involving four major universities (Baghdad, Erbil Sulaymaniya, and Basra), and a number of new, smaller provincial ones in Anbar, Salahudin, Najaf, Karbala and other provinces. The research team examined three clusters of variables, socio-political, institutional and cultural factors that promote or inhibit the development of social sciences and research capacity. A basic fact in the realm of higher education in Iraq is the central role of the state. Changes in the structure of academia, in curricula, or in the scope of academic freedom all require central sanction

Efficacy and safety of 308-nm Excimer lamp combined with Tacrolimus 0.1% ointment vs Tacrolimus 0.1% ointment as monotherapy in treating children with limited vitiligo: a randomized controlled trial

Objective: This study aims to assess the efficacy and safety of combining the 308-nm Excimer lamp with Tacrolimus 0.1% ointment, compared to Tacrolimus 0.1% ointment monotherapy, for treating pediatric vitiligo involving less than 10% of the body surface area. Methods: Fifty pediatric patients with vitiligo were randomly assigned to two groups. Group A received Tacrolimus 0.1% ointment twice daily and Excimer light at 308-nm twice weekly, while Group B received Tacrolimus 0.1% ointment alone, administered twice daily. Repigmentation percentages were evaluated after 30, 90, and 180 days using the rule of nine. Results: Group A exhibited a significant improvement in repigmentation, increasing from 10% after one month to 65% after six months. In contrast, Group B observed an increase from 10% to 30% over the same timeframe. The efficacy of the treatment was significantly higher in Group A at both the 3-month and 6-month follow-up points (p-value <.001). Moreover, Group A achieved notably higher repigmentation rates in the face, trunk, and lower limbs. Conclusion: The combination of Tacrolimus and the 308-nm excimer lamp yielded superior repigmentation results compared to Tacrolimus monotherapy in pediatric vitiligo patients. This combined approach may offer an effective new treatment protocol for pediatric vitiligo

Novel De Novo Mutation in Sulfonylurea Receptor 1 Presenting as Hyperinsulinism in Infancy Followed by Overt Diabetes in Early Adolescence

OBJECTIVE—Congenital hyperinsulinism, usually associated with severe neonatal hypoglycemia, may progress to diabetes, typically during the 4th decade of life in nonpancreatectomized patients. We aimed to genotype the ATP-sensitive K+ channel in a 10.5-year-old girl presenting with overt diabetes following hyperinsulinism in infancy