Together We Buy, Alone {I} Quit: {S}ome Experimental Studies of Online Persuaders

We present a simple web experiment in which participants are asked to listen to a small number of songs and download the two they liked the most. In the experiment, participants were subject to common types of online feedbacks such as star ratings, recommendations and expert advice. Somewhat surprisingly, such online cues had no impact on market shares, but a significant difference emerged as far as market volume was concerned. When operating under the influence of online cues conjuring the presence of others activities soared: participants downloaded, listened to and rated songs much more than in the other scenarios

TAVR and Dialysis Are a Challenging Combination. A Case Report and Systematic Review of Literature

Advanced chronic kidney disease (CKD) is associated with poor outcomes in patients undergoing surgical aortic valve replacement, while its prognostic role in transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) remains unclear. Advanced CKD was defined according to estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR): 15–29 mL/min/1.73 m2 (Stage 4—CKD G5), <15 mL/min/1.73 m2 (Stage 5—CKD G5), and CKD G5D if the patient is on hemodialysis. End-stage renal disease (ESRD) increases the risk of developing heart valve disease, mainly aortic stenosis. Nonetheless, ESRD is also known to carry a very high surgical risk, and all the main scoring systems (i.e., STS, Euroscore II) developed to assess prognosis in patients undergoing cardiac surgery take into account this risk factor. Transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) appears to be a feasible alternative to surgical valve replacement (SAVR), but the initial trials testing this approach systematically excluded patients on dialysis. Several observational studies have been recently conducted among patients with severely impaired renal function and all found a worse prognosis in both the short and long term. We present a case report in which a successful TAVR procedure was performed due to severe symptomatic aortic stenosis in a subject with severe nephropathy. The patient in chronic dialysis developed an early degeneration of aortic bioprosthesis Medtronic CoreValve, which required surgical replacement with a mechanical valve

Further data on beta-blockers and cancer. Observational study and meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials

Background: The aim of the present paper is to provide some further data on the relationship between β-blocker treatment and the incidence of cancer, using two different approaches (epidemiological study and meta-analysis of clinical trials). Methods: In a consecutive series of 1340 diabetic patients starting insulin therapy, 112 cases of cancer during a mean follow-up of 75.9 months were identified as first hospital admission or death. For each case, the controls were chosen randomly from those members of the cohort matched for age, sex and BMI. The main predefined analysis was the comparison of cases and controls for length of exposure to β-blockers and proportion of patients exposed using a conditional logistic regression which takes into account the matching structure. For the meta-analytic sub-study, an extensive search of Medline and the Cochrane Library (any date up to December 31st, 2011) was performed for all trials in which a β-blocker was used. Mantel-Haenszel Odds Ratios (MH-OR) with 95% confidence intervals for incident malignancies were calculated using a random effect model. Results: After adjusting for mean daily dose of glargine and metformin, and ischemic heart disease, exposure to β-blockers was associated with a reduced overall risk of cancer (HR 0.33 [0.13; 0.83], p = 0.019; HR for each month of exposure 0.87 [0.77; 0.98], p = 0.025). In the meta-analysis sub-study, performed on nine trials, β-blockers were associated with a non-significant trend toward lower risk of cancer (MH-OR 0.93 [0.86; 1.01], p = 0.070). Study limitation: Limitations of the observational study are the small sample size that limits the statistical power of analyses, that it was performed on diabetic patients only, and that diagnoses of malignancies were derived from administrative data. Conclusions: In conclusion, this research seem to confirm a possible beneficial effect of β-blockers against the risk of cancer development

The Use Of Twitter In 2013 Italian Political Election

The Italian political communication arena seems to have changed during 2013 Italian elections. On that occasion, many politicians have started to use social media, or to improve their uses, focusing their attention particularly on Twitter. In fact, Twitter was the main protagonist of the new communication environment (Bentivegna, 2014) and the most used by both, politicians and journalists. Nowadays, Twitter has become a fundamental part of institutional communication and it plays a central role within politicians’ image building. Nevertheless it is feasible to ponder on whether this change is a real innovative process inside Italian political communication. If it is true that Twitter represents a new possibility to build stronger relations with citizens and to find a neutral ground to express ideas and thoughts, it is also true, that it could be a new media used as an old one. The main goal of this paper is to investigate how Italian MPs, depending on their parties and political believes, have used Twitter during the last national elections. For this reason a research was developed by the department of Communication and New Technologies at IULM University in Milan. The study analysed a sample of 41 politicians from the principal electoral lists from January 2013 until the new government formation, in April 2013. The analysis was carried out using quantitative and qualitative methods, while data categorisation was done using Jakobson’s six functions of language (Jakobson, 1963). Moreover, by applying a narrative analysis it was possible to study in depth the kind of storytelling that Italian politicians developed on Twitter. This part of the research was useful to understand the actual usage that they performed and to comprehend which imagine of them they wanted to build through Twitter. According to our interpretation, the research has demonstrated a mainly unidirectional and top-down use of Twitter by the analysed sample, reproducing the mass-media logic of traditional political communication

Liraglutide and Renal Outcomes in Type 2 Diabetes.

BACKGROUND: In a randomized, controlled trial that compared liraglutide, a glucagon-like peptide 1 analogue, with placebo in patients with type 2 diabetes and high cardiovascular risk who were receiving usual care, we found that liraglutide resulted in lower risks of the primary end point (nonfatal myocardial infarction, nonfatal stroke, or death from cardiovascular causes) and death. However, the long-term effects of liraglutide on renal outcomes in patients with type 2 diabetes are unknown. METHODS: We report the prespecified secondary renal outcomes of that randomized, controlled trial in which patients were assigned to receive liraglutide or placebo. The secondary renal outcome was a composite of new-onset persistent macroalbuminuria, persistent doubling of the serum creatinine level, end-stage renal disease, or death due to renal disease. The risk of renal outcomes was determined with the use of time-to-event analyses with an intention-to-treat approach. Changes in the estimated glomerular filtration rate and albuminuria were also analyzed. RESULTS: A total of 9340 patients underwent randomization, and the median follow-up of the patients was 3.84 years. The renal outcome occurred in fewer participants in the liraglutide group than in the placebo group (268 of 4668 patients vs. 337 of 4672; hazard ratio, 0.78; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.67 to 0.92; P=0.003). This result was driven primarily by the new onset of persistent macroalbuminuria, which occurred in fewer participants in the liraglutide group than in the placebo group (161 vs. 215 patients; hazard ratio, 0.74; 95% CI, 0.60 to 0.91; P=0.004). The rates of renal adverse events were similar in the liraglutide group and the placebo group (15.1 events and 16.5 events per 1000 patient-years), including the rate of acute kidney injury (7.1 and 6.2 events per 1000 patient-years, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: This prespecified secondary analysis shows that, when added to usual care, liraglutide resulted in lower rates of the development and progression of diabetic kidney disease than placebo. (Funded by Novo Nordisk and the National Institutes of Health; LEADER ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT01179048 .)