Evaluation of outcomes reported in randomized controlled trials for herbal remedies for adults with chronic hepatitis C

Background: Herbal remedies have been widely utilized in treating chronic hepatitis C (CHC) worldwide. Selecting appropriate outcomes to reflect both beneficial and harmful effects is a crucial step in designing randomized controlled trials (RCTs). This study evaluated the outcomes reported in RCTs on herbal remedies for CHC with comparison to the core outcomes recommended by the Cochrane Hepato-Biliary Group (CHBG), to check the consistency of the outcomes and to provide recommendation for future researches. Methods: A systematic literature search was conducted in Western and Chinese databases to identify RCTs on herbal remedies for adults with CHC. For each trial, all the outcomes reported in the results section were collected. Comparison between trial outcomes and CHBG core outcomes were evaluated and summarized with descriptive statistics. Results: A total of 116 RCTs involving 9154 participants were included; 27 outcomes were identified. Commonly reported outcomes included alanine aminotransferase (64 trials, 55.2%), adverse events (58 trials, 50.0%), and end-of-treatment virological response (50 trials, 43.1%). All trials indicated that the herbal remedies under investigation had a positive effect and was markedly more effective than the control. Nearly half of the trials reported that the combination of herbal medicine and antiviral drugs could ameliorate adverse events. Very few trials reported primary core outcomes relating survival and quality of life. The most frequently reported core outcomes are non-serious adverse events (54 trials, 46.6%), viral response (27 trials, 23.3%), and biochemical response (24 trials, 20.7%). Conclusion: The variation and inconsistency in trial outcomes impedes research synthesis efforts, and indicate the need for comparable outcomes through the development of core outcome sets in CHC. The low concordance of outcome reporting could be improved by following CHBG core outcomes recommendation

Personalised information modelling technologies for personalised medicine

Personalised modelling offers a new and effective approach for the study in pattern recognition and knowledge discovery, especially for biomedical applications. The created models are more useful and informative for analysing and evaluating an individual data object for a given problem. Such models are also expected to achieve a higher degree of accuracy of prediction of outcome or classification than conventional systems and methodologies. Motivated by the concept of personalised medicine and utilising transductive reasoning, personalised modelling was recently proposed as a new method for knowledge discovery in biomedical applications. Personalised modelling aims to create a unique computational diagnostic or prognostic model for an individual. Here we introduce an integrated method for personalised modelling that applies global optimisation of variables (features) and an appropriate size of neighbourhood to create an accurate personalised model for an individual. This method creates an integrated computational system that combines different information processing techniques, applied at different stages of data analysis, e.g. feature selection, classification, discovering the interaction of genes, outcome prediction, personalised profiling and visualisation, etc. It allows for adaptation, monitoring and improvement of an individual’s model and leads to improved accuracy and unique personalised profiling that could be used for personalised treatment and personalised drug design

Stealthy Deception Attacks Against SCADA Systems

SCADA protocols for Industrial Control Systems (ICS) are vulnerable to network attacks such as session hijacking. Hence, research focuses on network anomaly detection based on meta--data (message sizes, timing, command sequence), or on the state values of the physical process. In this work we present a class of semantic network-based attacks against SCADA systems that are undetectable by the above mentioned anomaly detection. After hijacking the communication channels between the Human Machine Interface (HMI) and Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), our attacks cause the HMI to present a fake view of the industrial process, deceiving the human operator into taking manual actions. Our most advanced attack also manipulates the messages generated by the operator's actions, reversing their semantic meaning while causing the HMI to present a view that is consistent with the attempted human actions. The attacks are totaly stealthy because the message sizes and timing, the command sequences, and the data values of the ICS's state all remain legitimate. We implemented and tested several attack scenarios in the test lab of our local electric company, against a real HMI and real PLCs, separated by a commercial-grade firewall. We developed a real-time security assessment tool, that can simultaneously manipulate the communication to multiple PLCs and cause the HMI to display a coherent system--wide fake view. Our tool is configured with message-manipulating rules written in an ICS Attack Markup Language (IAML) we designed, which may be of independent interest. Our semantic attacks all successfully fooled the operator and brought the system to states of blackout and possible equipment damage

Quantum Phase Interference for Quantum Tunneling in Spin Systems

The point-particle-like Hamiltonian of a biaxial spin particle with external magnetic field along the hard axis is obtained in terms of the potential field description of spin systems with exact spin-coordinate correspondence. The Zeeman energy term turns out to be an effective gauge potential which leads to a nonintegrable pha se of the Euclidean Feynman propagator. The phase interference between clockwise and anticlockwise under barrier propagations is recognized explicitly as the Aharonov-Bohm effect. An additional phase which is significant for quantum phase interference is discovered with the quantum theory of spin systems besides the known phase obtained with the semiclassical treatment of spin. We also show the energ y dependence of the effect and obtain the tunneling splitting at excited states with the help of periodic instantons.Comment: 19 pages, no figure, to appear in PR