28,224 research outputs found
Evaluation of subcutaneous proleukin (Interleukin-2) in a randomized international trial (ESPRIT): Geographical and gender differences in the baseline characteristics of participants
Background: ESPRIT, is a phase III, open-label, randomized, international clinical trial evaluating the effects of subcutaneous recombinant interleukin-2 (rIL-2) plus antiretroviral therapy (ART) versus ART alone on HIV-disease progression and death in HIV-1-infected individuals with CD4+ T-cells ≥300 cells/μL. Objectives: To describe the baseline characteristics of participants randomized to ESPRIT overall and by geographic location. Method: Baseline characteristics of randomized participants were summarized by region. Results: 4,150 patients were enrolled in ESPRIT from 254 sites in 25 countries. 41%, 27%, 16%, 11%, and 5% were enrolled in Europe, North America, South America, Asia, and Australia, respectively. The median age was 40 years, 81% were men, and 76%, 11%, and 9% were Caucasian, Asian, and African American or African, respectively. 44% of women enrolled (n = 769) were enrolled in Thailand and Argentina. Overall, 55% and 38% of the cohort acquired HIV through male homosexual and heterosexual contact, respectively. 25% had a prior history of AIDS-defining illness; Pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia, M. tuberculosis, and esophageal candida were most commonly reported. Median nadir and baseline CD4+ T-cell counts were 199 and 458 cells/μL, respectively. 6% and 13% were hepatitis B or C virus coinfected, respectively. Median duration of antiretroviral therapy (ART) was 4.2 years; the longest median duration was in Australia (5.2 years) and the shortest was in Asia (2.3 years). 17%, 13%, and 69% of participants began ART before 1995, between 1996 and 1997, and from 1998 onward, respectively. 86% used ART from two or more ART classes, with 49% using a protease inhibitor-based regimen and 46% using a nonnucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor-based regimen. 78% had plasma HIV RNA below detection (<500 cp/mL). Conclusion: ESPRIT has enrolled a diverse population of HIV-infected individuals including large populations of women and patients of African-American/African and Asian ethnicity often underrepresented in HIV research. As a consequence, the results of the study may have wide global applicability
Copper cable theft: revisiting the price–theft hypothesis
Objectives: To test the commonly espoused but little examined hypothesis that fluctuations in the price of metal are associated with changes in the volume of metal theft. Specifically, we analyze the relationship between the price of copper and the number of police recorded 'live’ copper cable thefts from the British railway network (2006 to 2012)
Gell-Mann--Okubo Mass Formula for an SU(4) Meson Hexadecuplet
Using a linear mass spectrum of an meson hexadecuplet, we derive the
Gell-Mann--Okubo mass formula for the charmed mesons, in good agreement with
experiment. Possible generalization of this method to a higher symmetry group
is briefly discussed.Comment: 11 pages, LaTe
Depressive symptoms are associated with analgesic use in people with Alzheimer's disease: Kuopio ALSOVA study.
Neuropsychiatric symptoms of Alzheimer's disease (AD) such as depression may be associated with pain, which according to the literature may be inadequately recognized and managed in this population. This study aimed to identify the factors associated with analgesic use in persons with AD; in particular, how AD severity, functional status, neuropsychiatric symptoms of AD, co-morbidities and somatic symptoms are associated with analgesic use. 236 community-dwelling persons with very mild or mild AD at baseline, and their caregivers, were interviewed over five years as part of the prospective ALSOVA study. Generalized Estimating Equations (GEEs) were used to estimate unadjusted and adjusted odds ratios (ORs) for the factors associated with analgesic use over a five year follow-up. The proportion of persons with AD using any analgesic was low (13.6%) at baseline and remained relatively constant during the follow-up (15.3% at Year 5). Over time, the most prevalent analgesic changed from non-steroidal anti-inflammatories (8.1% of persons with AD at Year 1) to acetaminophen (11.1% at Year 5). Depressive symptoms (measured by the Beck Depression Inventory, BDI) were independently associated with analgesic use, after effects of age, gender, education, AD severity, comorbidities and somatic symptoms were taken into account. For every one unit increase in BDI, the odds of analgesic use increased by 4% (OR = 1.04, 95% confidence interval CI = 1.02-1.07). Caregiver depressive symptoms were not statistically significantly associated with analgesic use of the person with AD. Depressive symptoms were significantly associated with analgesic use during the five year follow-up period. Possible explanations warranting investigation are that persons with AD may express depressive symptoms as painful somatic complaints, or untreated pain may cause depressive symptoms. Greater awareness of the association between depressive symptoms and analgesic use may lead to safer and more effective prescribing for these conditions
New calibrations and time stability of the response of the INTERCAST CR-39
We present new calibrations of different production batches (from 1989 to
1999) of the INTERCAST CR-39, using the BNL-AGS 1 A GeV iron beam. The
comparison with previous results, obtained with the 158 A GeV lead beam from
the CERN-SPS shows that, while each production batch has a different
calibration curve (mainly due to minor differences in the production
conditions), the aging effect is negligible. We also tested the dependence of
the CR-39 response from the time elapsed between exposure and analysis (fading
effect). The fading effect, if present, is less than 10%. It may be compatible
with the experimental uncertainties on the bulk etching rate vB.Comment: 9 pages, 4 EPS figures, .pdf file. Talk presented by M. Giorgini at
the 20 Int. Conf. on Nuclear Tracks in Solids, Portoroz (Slovenia), Aug
28-Sep 1, 200
Open charm scenarios
We discuss possibilities of identifying open charm effects in direct
production processes, and propose that direct evidence for the open charm
effects can be found in . A unique feature with this
process is that the open channel is located in a relatively
isolated energy, i.e. GeV, which is sufficiently far away from the
known charmonia and . Due to the dominance of the
isospin-0 component at the charmonium energy region, an enhanced
model-independent cusp effect between the thresholds of
and can be highlighted. An energy scan over this energy
region in the annihilation reaction can help us to understand the
nature of X(3900) recently observed by Belle Collaboration in , and establish the open charm effects as an important
non-perturbative mechanism in the charmonium energy region.Comment: 6 pages, Proceeding contribution to the Rutherford Centennial
Conference, Aug. 8-12, 2011, Manchester, U.
Radiative corrections to the semileptonic and hadronic Higgs-boson decays H -> W W/Z Z -> 4 fermions
The radiative corrections of the strong and electroweak interactions are
calculated for the Higgs-boson decays H -> WW/ZZ -> 4f with semileptonic or
hadronic four-fermion final states in next-to-leading order. This calculation
is improved by higher-order corrections originating from heavy-Higgs-boson
effects and photonic final-state radiation off charged leptons. The W- and
Z-boson resonances are treated within the complex-mass scheme, i.e. without any
resonance expansion or on-shell approximation. The calculation essentially
follows our previous study of purely leptonic final states. The electroweak
corrections are similar for all four-fermion final states; for integrated
quantities they amount to some per cent and increase with growing Higgs-boson
mass M_H, reaching 7-8% at M_H \sim 500 GeV. For distributions, the corrections
are somewhat larger and, in general, distort the shapes. Among the QCD
corrections, which include corrections to interference contributions of the
Born diagrams, only the corrections to the squared Born diagrams turn out to be
relevant. These contributions can be attributed to the gauge-boson decays, i.e.
they approximately amount to \alpha_s/\pi for semileptonic final states and
2\alpha_s/\pi for hadronic final states. The discussed corrections have been
implemented in the Monte Carlo event generator PROPHECY4F.Comment: 29 pages, LaTeX, 30 postscript figure
Leptogenesis in models with multi-Higgs bosons
We study the leptogenesis scenario in models with multi-Higgs doublets. It is
pointed out that the washing-out process through the effective dimension five
interactions, which has not been taken into account seriously in the
conventional scenario, can be effective, and the resultant baryon asymmetry can
be exponentially suppressed. This fact implies new possible scenario where the
observed baryon asymmetry is the remnant of the washed out lepton asymmetry
which was originally much larger than the one in the conventional scenario. Our
new scenario is applicable to some neutrino mass matrix models which predict
too large CP-violating parameter and makes them viable through the washing-out
process.Comment: Latex 2e, 11 pages, 2 figures. Many parts in the original manuscript
have been revised, but conclusions are unchange
Study protocol for the Anesthesiology Control Tower—Feedback Alerts to Supplement Treatments (ACTFAST-3) trial: A pilot randomized controlled trial in intraoperative telemedicine [version 1; referees: 2 approved]
Background: Each year, over 300 million people undergo surgical procedures worldwide. Despite efforts to improve outcomes, postoperative morbidity and mortality are common. Many patients experience complications as a result of either medical error or failure to adhere to established clinical practice guidelines. This protocol describes a clinical trial comparing a telemedicine-based decision support system, the Anesthesiology Control Tower (ACT), with enhanced standard intraoperative care. Methods: This study is a pragmatic, comparative effectiveness trial that will randomize approximately 12,000 adult surgical patients on an operating room (OR) level to a control or to an intervention group. All OR clinicians will have access to decision support software within the OR as a part of enhanced standard intraoperative care. The ACT will monitor patients in both groups and will provide additional support to the clinicians assigned to intervention ORs. Primary outcomes include blood glucose management and temperature management. Secondary outcomes will include surrogate, clinical, and economic outcomes, such as incidence of intraoperative hypotension, postoperative respiratory compromise, acute kidney injury, delirium, and volatile anesthetic utilization. Ethics and dissemination: The ACTFAST-3 study has been approved by the Human Resource Protection Office (HRPO) at Washington University in St. Louis and is registered at clinicaltrials.gov (NCT02830126). Recruitment for this protocol began in April 2017 and will end in December 2018. Dissemination of the findings of this study will occur via presentations at academic conferences, journal publications, and educational materials
Constraints on Supersymmetric Flavour Models from b->s gamma
We consider the effects of departures from minimal flavour violations (MFV)
in the context of CMSSM-like theories. Second and third generation off-diagonal
elements in the Yukawa, sfermion, and trilinear mass matrices are taken to be
non-zero at the GUT scale. These are run down together with MSSM parameters to
the electroweak scale. We apply constraints from fermion masses and CKM matrix
elements to limit the range of the new free parameters of the model. We
determine the effect of the departure from MFV on the branching ratio of b->s
gamma. We find that only when the expansion parameter in the down-squark sector
is relatively large there is a noticeable effect, which tends to relax the
lower limit from b->s gamma on the universal gaugino mass. We also find that
the expansion parameter associated with the slepton sector needs to be smaller
than the corresponding parameter in the down-squark sector in order to be
compliant with the bound imposed by the branching ratio of tau-> mu gamma.Comment: Comments: 43 pages, 14 figures. Version accepted for publication:
typos corrected, rewritten for better understanding and references adde
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