Accounting for the mortality benefit of drug-eluting stents in percutaneous coronary intervention: a comparison of methods in a retrospective cohort study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Drug-eluting stents (DES) reduce rates of restenosis compared with bare metal stents (BMS). A number of observational studies have also found lower rates of mortality and non-fatal myocardial infarction with DES compared with BMS, findings not observed in randomized clinical trials. In order to explore reasons for this discrepancy, we compared outcomes after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) with DES or BMS by multiple statistical methods.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We compared short-term rates of all-cause mortality and myocardial infarction for patients undergoing PCI with DES or BMS using propensity-score adjustment, propensity-score matching, and a stent-era comparison in a large, integrated health system between 1998 and 2007. For the propensity-score adjustment and stent era comparisons, we used multivariable logistic regression to assess the association of stent type with outcomes. We used McNemar's Chi-square test to compare outcomes for propensity-score matching.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Between 1998 and 2007, 35,438 PCIs with stenting were performed among health plan members (53.9% DES and 46.1% BMS). After propensity-score adjustment, DES was associated with significantly lower rates of death at 30 days (OR 0.49, 95% CI 0.39 - 0.63, <it>P </it>< 0.001) and one year (OR 0.58, 95% CI 0.49 - 0.68, <it>P </it>< 0.001), and a lower rate of myocardial infarction at one year (OR 0.72, 95% CI 0.59 - 0.87, <it>P </it>< 0.001). Thirty day and one year mortality were also lower with DES after propensity-score matching. However, a stent era comparison, which eliminates potential confounding by indication, showed no difference in death or myocardial infarction for DES and BMS, similar to results from randomized trials.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Although propensity-score methods suggested a mortality benefit with DES, consistent with prior observational studies, a stent era comparison failed to support this conclusion. Unobserved factors influencing stent selection in observational studies likely account for the observed mortality benefit of DES not seen in randomized clinical trials.</p

In vitro propagation of bamboo species through axillary shoot proliferation: a review

Bamboos, very relevant plants in many countries around the world, are propagated at large scale with extreme difficulties. Use of seeds is challenging because of plant’s sporadic flowering and long flowering cycles, together with seed recalcitrance and consumption by wild animals. Vegetative propagation of bamboo is mainly conducted by cuttings and by air layering. However, these methods are only useful at small-scale because they damage the mother plants, propagation material is bulky and difficult to be transported and is only available during few months of the year. Therefore, in vitro propagation offers the opportunity to obtain large progenies from elite genotypes. In most cases, when developing protocols for in vitro propagation of plants, specific conditions for individual species, genotypes and even development stages of the donor plants must be identified by trial-and-error experiments. Because of the size of and the large diversity observed in this plant family, it usually takes several months to define most adequate culture medium, combination of plant growth regulators and of other compounds for fostering the desired development in the explants. Therefore, in this detailed review, that also puts together results from hard-to-find literature, we list all identified cases, in which development of axillary shoots was used to propagate bamboo plants, by presenting successful ways for disinfection, in vitro bud sprouting, multiplication, rooting and acclimatization.UCR::Vicerrectoría de Investigación::Unidades de Investigación::Ciencias Agroalimentarias::Centro para Investigaciones en Granos y Semillas (CIGRAS)UCR::Vicerrectoría de Investigación::Unidades de Investigación::Ciencias Agroalimentarias::Instituto de Investigaciones Agrícolas (IIA