Systematic literature review: quality of life associated with insulin pump use in type 1 diabetes

WSTĘP. W niniejszej pracy przedstawiono systematyczny przegląd opublikowanej literatury w celu odpowiedzi na pytanie, czy ciągły podskórny wlew insuliny (CSII) poprawia jakość życia chorych na cukrzycę typu 1. MATERIAŁ I METODY. Przeszukano elektroniczne bazy danych oraz opublikowane wyniki badań, a po konsultacji z dwiema grupami ekspertów wybrano istotne prace, które opublikowano do lipca 2005 roku. Aby zidentyfikować doniesienia spełniające wybrane kryteria selekcji, zastosowano wieloetapowy proces wyboru, a następnie poddawano prace krytycznej ocenie. WYNIKI. Po analizie tytułów i streszczeń do dalszego etapu wybrano 84 potencjalnie odpowiednie prace opublikowane w wymienionym przedziale czasowym. Z tych doniesień wyodrębniono 28 pełnych artykułów, z których 17 spełniało kryteria włączenia do analizy. Z istniejących danych piśmiennictwa wynikają rozbieżne wnioski. Spośród 5 randomizowanych, kontrolowanych badań poddanych analizie z 3 wynikały niejednoznaczne wnioski, w 1 wskazywano na poprawę jakości życia, a w 1 nie dowiedziono korzyści dotyczących jakości życia. WNIOSKI. Wyniki badań przedstawiają sprzeczne wnioski dotyczące poprawy jakości życia chorych na cukrzycę typu 1 stosujących terapię CSII. Istniejące prace mają wady powodujące, że wnioskowanie co do jakości życia pacjentów stosujących terapię pompą insulinową jest trudne. Brakuje przekonujących dowodów, że korzyści ze stosowania CSII nie istnieją lub inaczej - niewłaściwa metodologia i niespójna analiza dotycząca jakości życia utrudniają ocenę tego zagadnienia. Brak udowodnionego korzystnego wpływu na jakość życia prawdopodobnie wiąże się z przedstawionymi uchybieniami w badaniach, a nie z faktem, że terapia polegająca na zastosowaniu pomp insulinowych nie koreluje z poprawą jakości życia chorych.AIM. To review systematically the published literature addressing whether continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion (CSII) provides any quality of life benefits to people with type 1 diabetes. METHODS. Electronic databases and published references were searched and a consultation with two professional groups was undertaken to identify re levant studies published up to July 2005. A multistep selection process was then undertaken to identify those articles which met the specific selection criteria, which were then critically reviewed. RESULTS. Eighty-four potential relevant articles were identified from examination of titles and abstracts published during the specified time frame. Of these, 28 articles were retrieved in full text, of which 17 fulfilled the specific criteria for inclusion. Mixed results emerged from existing literature. Of the five randomized controlled trials, three reported mixed results, with one study reporting quality of life benefits and one reporting no evidence of quality of life benefits. CONCLUSIONS. There is conflicting evidence reported in the various studies on the quality of life benefits of CSII in type 1 diabetes. Existing research is flawed, making a judgement about the quality of life benefits of insulin pump use difficult. There is no strong evidence against quality of life benefits associated with CSII or otherwise, with poor methodology and inconsistent assessment of quality of life clouding the issue. The lack of reported benefit is probably a function of this rather than pump therapy not offering any quality of life benefits

Non-invasive measurement of a metabolic marker of infant brain function

While near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) haemodynamic measures have proven to be vastly useful in investigating human brain development, the haemodynamic response function (HRF) in infants is not yet fully understood. NIRS measurements of the oxidation state of mitochondrial enzyme cytochrome-c-oxidase (oxCCO) have the potential to yield key information about cellular oxygen utilisation and therefore energy metabolism. We used a broadband NIRS system to measure changes in oxCCO, in addition to haemodynamic changes, during functional activation in a group of 33 typically developing infants aged between 4 and 6 months. The responses were recorded over the right temporal lobe while the infants were presented with engaging videos containing social content. A significant increase in oxCCO was found in response to the social stimuli, with maximum increase of 0.238 ± 0.13 μM. These results are the first reported significant change in oxCCO in response to stimulus-evoked activation in human infants and open new vistas for investigating human infant brain function and its energy metabolism

Continuous variable quantum cryptography

We propose a quantum cryptographic scheme in which small phase and amplitude modulations of CW light beams carry the key information. The presence of EPR type correlations provides the quantum protection.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure

Universal quantum computation and simulation using any entangling Hamiltonian and local unitaries

What interactions are sufficient to simulate arbitrary quantum dynamics in a composite quantum system? We provide an efficient algorithm to simulate any desired two-body Hamiltonian evolution using any fixed two-body entangling n-qubit Hamiltonian and local unitaries. It follows that universal quantum computation can be performed using any entangling interaction and local unitary operations.Comment: Added references to NMR refocusing and to earlier work by Leung et al and Jones and Knil

Universal Continuous Variable Quantum Computation in the Micromaser

We present universal continuous variable quantum computation (CVQC) in the micromaser. With a brief history as motivation we present the background theory and define universal CVQC. We then show how to generate a set of operations in the micromaser which can be used to achieve universal CVQC. It then follows that the micromaser is a potential architecture for CVQC but our proof is easily adaptable to other potential physical systems.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, accepted for a presentation at the 9th International Conference on Unconventional Computation (UC10) and LNCS proceedings

Ontology-based data access with databases: a short course

Ontology-based data access (OBDA) is regarded as a key ingredient of the new generation of information systems. In the OBDA paradigm, an ontology defines a high-level global schema of (already existing) data sources and provides a vocabulary for user queries. An OBDA system rewrites such queries and ontologies into the vocabulary of the data sources and then delegates the actual query evaluation to a suitable query answering system such as a relational database management system or a datalog engine. In this chapter, we mainly focus on OBDA with the ontology language OWL 2QL, one of the three profiles of the W3C standard Web Ontology Language OWL 2, and relational databases, although other possible languages will also be discussed. We consider different types of conjunctive query rewriting and their succinctness, different architectures of OBDA systems, and give an overview of the OBDA system Ontop

A high-flux source of polarization-entangled photons from a periodically-poled KTP parametric downconverter

We have demonstrated a high-flux source of polarization-entangled photons using a type-II phase-matched periodically-poled KTP parametric downconverter in a collinearly propagating configuration. We have observed quantum interference between the single-beam downconverted photons with a visibility of 99% and a measured coincidence flux of 300/s/mW of pump. The Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt version of Bell's inequality was violated with a value of 2.711 +/- 0.017.Comment: 7 pages submitted to Physical Review

Quantum state merging and negative information

We consider a quantum state shared between many distant locations, and define a quantum information processing primitive, state merging, that optimally merges the state into one location. As announced in [Horodecki, Oppenheim, Winter, Nature 436, 673 (2005)], the optimal entanglement cost of this task is the conditional entropy if classical communication is free. Since this quantity can be negative, and the state merging rate measures partial quantum information, we find that quantum information can be negative. The classical communication rate also has a minimum rate: a certain quantum mutual information. State merging enabled one to solve a number of open problems: distributed quantum data compression, quantum coding with side information at the decoder and sender, multi-party entanglement of assistance, and the capacity of the quantum multiple access channel. It also provides an operational proof of strong subadditivity. Here, we give precise definitions and prove these results rigorously.Comment: 23 pages, 3 figure

Peripheral NF-κB dysregulation in people with schizophrenia drives inflammation: putative anti-inflammatory functions of NF-κB kinases

Elevations in plasma levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines and C-reactive protein (CRP) in patient blood have been associated with impairments in cognitive abilities and more severe psychiatric symptoms in people with schizophrenia. The transcription factor nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB) regulates the gene expression of pro-inflammatory factors whose protein products trigger CRP release. NF-κB activation pathway mRNAs are increased in the brain in schizophrenia and are strongly related to neuroinflammation. Thus, it is likely that this central immune regulator is also dysregulated in the blood and associated with cytokine and CRP levels. We measured levels of six pro-inflammatory cytokine mRNAs and 18 mRNAs encoding NF-κB pathway members in peripheral blood leukocytes from 87 people with schizophrenia and 83 healthy control subjects. We then assessed the relationships between the alterations in NF-κB pathway genes, pro-inflammatory cytokine and CRP levels, psychiatric symptoms and cognition in people with schizophrenia. IL-1β and IFN-γ mRNAs were increased in patients compared to controls (both p < 0.001), while IL-6, IL-8, IL-18, and TNF-α mRNAs did not differ. Recursive two-step cluster analysis revealed that high levels of IL-1β mRNA and high levels of plasma CRP defined 'high inflammation' individuals in our cohort, and a higher proportion of people with schizophrenia were identified as displaying 'high inflammation' compared to controls using this method (p = 0.03). Overall, leukocyte expression of the NF-κB-activating receptors, TLR4 and TNFR2, and the NF-κB subunit, RelB, was increased in people with schizophrenia compared to healthy control subjects (all p < 0.01), while NF-κB-inducing kinase mRNAs IKKβ and NIK were downregulated in patients (all p < 0.05). We found that elevations in TLR4 and RelB appear more related to inflammatory status than to a diagnosis of schizophrenia, but changes in TNFR2 occur in both the high and low inflammation patients (but were exaggerated in high inflammation patients). Further, decreased leukocyte expression of IKKβ and NIK mRNAs was unique to high inflammation patients, which may represent schizophrenia-specific dysregulation of NF-κB that gives rise to peripheral inflammation in a subset of patients.Caitlin E. Murphy, Adam K. Walker, Maryanne O, Donnell, Cherrie Galletly, Andrew R. Lloyd, Dennis Liu, Cynthia Shannon Weickert, and Thomas W. Weicker