Outcome of patients with autoimmune diseases in the intensive care unit. A mixed cluster analysis.

Antecedentes: El interés en las enfermedades autoinmunes (EA) y su desenlace en la unidad de cuidado intensivo (UCI) han incrementado debido al reto clínico que suponen para el diagnóstico y manejo, debido a que la mortalidad en UCI fluctúa entre el 17 – 55 %. El siguiente trabajo representa la experiencia de un año de nuestro grupo en un hospital de tercer nivel. Objetivo: Identificar factores asociados a mortalidad particulares de los pacientes con enfermedades autoinmunes que ingresan a una UCI, de un hospital de tercer nivel en Bogotá, Colombia. Métodos: El uso de análisis de componentes principales basado en el método descriptivo multivariado y análisis de múltiple correspondencia fue realizado para agrupar varias variables relacionadas con asociación significativa y contexto clínico común. Resultados: Cincuenta pacientes adultos con EA con una edad promedio de 46,7 ± 17,55 años fueron evaluados. Los dos diagnósticos más comunes fueron lupus eritematoso sistémico y esclerosis sistémica, con una frecuencia de 45% y 20% de los pacientes respectivamente. La principal causa de admisión en la UCI fue la infección seguido de actividad aguda de la EA, 36% y 24% respectivamente. La mortalidad durante la estancia en UCI fue del 24%. El tiempo de hospitalización antes de la admisión a la UCI, el choque, soporte vasopresor, ventilación mecánica, sepsis abdominal, Glasgow bajo y plasmaféresis fueron factores asociados con mortalidad. Dos fenotipos de variables fueron definidos relacionadas con tiempo en la UCI y medidas de soporte en UCI, las cuales fueron asociadas supervivencia y mortalidad. Conclusiones: La identificación de factores individuales y grupos de factores por medio del análisis de componentes principales permitirá la implementación de medidas terapéutica de manera temprana y agresiva en pacientes con EA en la UCI para evitar desenlaces fatales.Objective: The interest on autoimmune diseases (ADs) and their outcome at the intensive care unit (ICU) has increased due to the clinical challenge for diagnosis and management, due to mortality that range between 17- 55%. The current work presents a-year experience on factors related with mortality of patients with Ads in a tertiary hospital. Methods: The mixed-cluster methodology based on multivariate descriptive methods such as principal component analysis and multiple correspondence analyses was performed to summarize sets of related variables with strong associations and common clinical context. Results: Fifty adult patients with ADs with a mean age of 46.7 ± 17.55 years were assessed. The two most common diagnoses were systemic lupus erythematosus and systemic sclerosis, registered in 45% and 20% of patients, respectively. The main causes of admission to ICU were infection and AD flare up, observed in 36% and 24%, respectively. Mortality during ICU stay was 24%. The length of hospital stay before ICU admission, shock, vasopressors, mechanical ventilation, abdominal sepsis, Glasgow score and plasmapheresis were all factors associated with mortality. Two new clinical clusters variables (NCVs) were defined: Time ICU and ICU Support Profile, which were associated with survivor and no survivor variables. Conclusion: There is still a high morbidity and mortality in patients with ADs seen at the ICU. Identification of single factors and groups of factors from NCVs will allow implementation of early and aggressive therapies in patients with ADs at the ICU in order to avoid fatal outcomes

Radiologic findings of pulmonary involvement in Colombian patients with systemic sclerosis

La esclerosis sistémica (ES) es una enfermedad autoinmune multisistémica que afecta principalmente la piel, los pulmones, el tracto gastrointestinal, el corazón y los riñones. La enfermedad pulmonar, presente en casi el 100% de los casos, es el factor con mayor influencia en la mortalidad. El propósito de este estudio es realizar un análisis detallado de la enfermedad pulmonar por tomografía computarizada de alta resolución(TCAR) en pacientes Colombianos con ES, para lo cual se realizó un estudio de prevalencia analítica en 44 pacientes con ES valorados en el Hospital Universitario Mayor Méderi en los últimos 7 años. Los resultados mostraron características demográficas y clínicas similares a las previamente descritas. La prevalencia de enfermedad pulmonar intersticial fue alta, y los hallazgos de fibrosis pulmonar como vidrio esmerilado y panal de abejas se asociaron con la presencia del autoanticuerpo antiSCL70. La medida del diámetro esofágico por TCAR fue mayor en los pacientes con disfagia, antiSCL 70 y linfopenia, los cuales son marcadores de mal pronóstico.Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is a multisystem autoimmune disease that primarily affects the skin, lungs, gastrointestinal tract, heart and kidneys. Lung disease, present in almost 100% of cases, is the most influential factor in mortality. The purpose of this study is to perform a detailed analysis of lung disease CT high resolution in Colombian patients with SSc, for which a study of analytical prevalence was performed in 44 patients with ES valued at University Hospital Mayor mederi in the last 7 years. The results showed demographic characteristics similar to those previously described clinics. The prevalence of interstitial lung disease was high, and the findings of pulmonary fibrosis as "ground glass" and "honeycomb" were associated with the presence of autoantibody antiSCL70. The measure HRCT esophageal diameter was greater in patients with dysphagia, antiSCL 70 and lymphopenia, which are markers of poor prognosis

Cardiovascular disease in latin american patients with systemic lupus erythematosus: a cross-sectional study and a systematic review

Objective. This study was performed to determine the prevalence of and associated risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD) in Latin American (LA) patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Methods. First, a cross-sectional analytical study was conducted in 310 Colombian patients with SLE in whom CVD was assessed. Associated factors were examined by multivariate regression analyses. Second, a systematic review of the literature on CVD in SLE in LA was performed. Results. There were 133 (36.5%) Colombian SLE patients with CVD. Dyslipidemia, smoking, coffee consumption, and pleural effusion were positively associated with CVD. An independent effect of coffee consumption and cigarette on CVD was found regardless of gender and duration of disease. In the systematic review, 60 articles fulfilling the eligibility criteria were included. A wide range of CVD prevalence was found (4%–79.5%). Several studies reported ancestry, genetic factors, and polyautoimmunity as novel risk factors for such a condition.Conclusions. A high rate of CVD is observed in LA patients with SLE. Awareness of the observed risk factors should encourage preventive population strategies for CVD in patients with SLE aimed at facilitating the suppression of cigarette smoking and coffee consumption as well as at the tight control of dyslipidemia and other modifiable risk factors

BLOOM: A 176B-Parameter Open-Access Multilingual Language Model

Large language models (LLMs) have been shown to be able to perform new tasks based on a few demonstrations or natural language instructions. While these capabilities have led to widespread adoption, most LLMs are developed by resource-rich organizations and are frequently kept from the public. As a step towards democratizing this powerful technology, we present BLOOM, a 176B-parameter open-access language model designed and built thanks to a collaboration of hundreds of researchers. BLOOM is a decoder-only Transformer language model that was trained on the ROOTS corpus, a dataset comprising hundreds of sources in 46 natural and 13 programming languages (59 in total). We find that BLOOM achieves competitive performance on a wide variety of benchmarks, with stronger results after undergoing multitask prompted finetuning. To facilitate future research and applications using LLMs, we publicly release our models and code under the Responsible AI License

XVI International Congress of Control Electronics and Telecommunications: "Techno-scientific considerations for a post-pandemic world intensive in knowledge, innovation and sustainable local development"

Este título, sugestivo por los impactos durante la situación de la Covid 19 en el mundo, y que en Colombia lastimosamente han sido muy críticos, permiten asumir la obligada superación de tensiones sociales, políticas, y económicas; pero sobre todo científicas y tecnológicas. Inicialmente, esto supone la existencia de una capacidad de la sociedad colombiana por recuperar su estado inicial después de que haya cesado la perturbación a la que fue sometida por la catastrófica pandemia, y superar ese anterior estado de cosas ya que se encontraban -y aún se encuentran- muchos problemas locales mal resueltos, medianamente resueltos, y muchos sin resolver: es decir, habrá que rediseñar y fortalecer una probada resiliencia social existente - producto del prolongado conflicto social colombiano superado parcialmente por un proceso de paz exitoso - desde la tecnociencia local; como lo indicaba Markus Brunnermeier - economista alemán y catedrático de economía de la Universidad de Princeton- en su libro The Resilient Society…La cuestión no es preveerlo todo sino poder reaccionar…aprender a recuperarse rápido.This title, suggestive of the impacts during the Covid 19 situation in the world, and which have unfortunately been very critical in Colombia, allows us to assume the obligatory overcoming of social, political, and economic tensions; but above all scientific and technological. Initially, this supposes the existence of a capacity of Colombian society to recover its initial state after the disturbance to which it was subjected by the catastrophic pandemic has ceased, and to overcome that previous state of affairs since it was found -and still is find - many local problems poorly resolved, moderately resolved, and many unresolved: that is, an existing social resilience test will have to be redesigned and strengthened - product of the prolonged Colombian social conflict partially overcome by a successful peace process - from local technoscience; As Markus Brunnermeier - German economist and professor of economics at Princeton University - indicates in his book The Resilient Society...The question is not to foresee everything but to be able to react...learn to recover quickly.Bogot

Precipitation, Temperature and Dryness Ratio (1973–2011) in the island of Vieja Providencia, Colombia in a Global Warming Scenario: What is Changing?

Resumen Se hizo un análisis estadístico de la tendencia de la precipitación, temperatura media mensual y la razón de aridez anual para el periodo 1973–2011, en Providencia Isla, Colombia. Los dieciséis datos mensuales faltantes se imputaron con un modelo SARIMA. Los resultados sugieren que la precipitación no presenta tendencia, mientras que su varianza inequívocamente está en aumento. La temperatura muestra una pendiente pronunciada hasta 1981 y la prueba de Mann–Kendall exhibe una tendencia positiva y altamente significativa para toda la serie, aunque no según la prueba de Dickey–Fuller. La evidencia de la varianza de temperatura va en aumento. En el caso de la razón de aridez anual, la demostración de tendencia es contradictoria y no se observó efecto alguno de El Niño Southern Oscilation (ENSO).Abstract The article examines the statistical analysis of mean monthly precipitation and temperature and the annual dryness ratio for the period 1973-2011 in Providencia Isla, Colombia, in order to look for significant trends. 16 missing monthly values were imputed using a sarima model. Results suggest that there was no significant trend in precipitation, although its variance has undoubtedly increased. Temperature showed a pronounced increase from 1973 to 1981 and the Mann-Kendall test exhibited a positive and highly significant trend for the entire study period although the Dickey-Fuller test was non-significant. Temperature values also displayed increasing variability. Analysis of the Annual Dryness Ratio trend produced contradictory results, and no ENSO effect was observed

Geoepidemiology of Sjögren's syndrome in Latin America

Objective: To evaluate the geoepidemiology of Sjögren's syndrome (SS) in Latin America. Methods: This was a three phase study in which original data from a Colombian cohort of patients with SS is presented, followed by a systematic review of Colombian and Latin American studies. Lastly, the geoepidemiology of SS in Latin America was assessed by comparing the clinical characteristics of the region with those of the rest of the world by means of a meta-analysis approach. Results: Data from 2970 patients from Latin America and 18019 patients from Europe, North America and Asia were analyzed. Colombian patients have a lower age at disease onset than those from other Latin American countries and a higher rate of positivity of antinuclear antibodies and rheumatoid factor. A significant difference in the proportion of female patients in Latin America compared with Europe and North America was observed. The spectrum of disease in Latin American was similar to North American patients, while strong differences were noticed between Latin American and European and Asian patients. Noteworthy, a paucity of reports including African and African-descendent patients was observed. Conclusions: The clinical spectrum of SS differs between countries and continents. Genetic differences relying upon ancestry could explain these findings. However, environmental factors have proven to be important determinants in the development of autoimmune diseases (i.e., autoimmune ecology). Thus, ancestry and the autoimmune ecology should be considered in studies aimed to evaluate the geoepidemiology of SS and other autoimmune diseases. © 2019 Société française de rhumatologi

Supervivencia del fármaco a largo plazo y causas de interrupción del abatacept subcutáneo en la artritis reumatoide: resultados a 32 meses de un estudio de cohorte prospectivo

Background Survival time or time to discontinuation of medication is a surrogate of the long-term impact on the course of disease in real life. It reflects clinical effectiveness in the absence of significant adverse events [1]. Treatment discontinuation can result from loss of efficacy or safety concerns, but prognostic factors for patient retention have not been explored thoroughly despite data for abatacept and other biologics being available from national registries [2]. Objectives To assess drug survival of subcutaneous (SC) abatacept among patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) according to treatment background. Methods This was a prospective study in which well-characterized patients with RA (by 1987 ACR criteria) were assessed from April 2014 to December 2016. Each patient was evaluated by a rheumatologist in a single rheumatology outpatient private center in Bogotá, Colombia. Patients were stratified by treatment background: (n=54) biologic-naïve, (n=24) switched from IV to SC abatacept administration, and (n=51) inadequate response to at least 1 biologic disease-modifying antirheumatic drug. The Mantel-Haenszel test was used to test if there were any differences in the survival curves among groups. The test was performed by the survdiff function of the “survival” R package [3]. Results A total of 129 patients were included. Baseline characteristics of patients were as follows: female gender 86%, mean age 52±13 years, median disease duration 10 (IQR 11) years, Rheumatoid Factor positive 94%, Anti-Cyclic Citrullinated Peptide Antibodies 89%, and erosive phenotype 35%. At baseline, mean DAS28 and RAPID3 were 5.4±1.3 and 16.6±6.8, respectively. SC abatacept monotherapy was reported in 27%. Demographics and disease characteristics were similar in all groups, except for baseline DAS28 and RAPID3 in switch group (p<0.0001). According to the Mantel-Haenszel test (Fig.1), there were not significant differences between survival curves (p=0.158). Forty-three patients (33%) discontinued treatment. The most frequent reasons for drug suspension were loss of efficacy in 25%, insurance-related problems (i.e., access to medication/specialist) and adverse drug reactions in 16%. Other causes include lack of efficacy, surgeries (i.e., articular replacement), patient preference, and pregnancy

Phospholipid supplementation can attenuate vaccine-induced depressive-like behavior in mice

Human papillomavirus vaccine (HPVv) is used worldwide for prevention of infection. However several reports link this vaccine, with immune-mediated reactions, especially with neurological manifestations. Our previous results showed that HPVv-Gardasil and aluminum-immunized mice developed behavioral impairments. Studies have shown a positive effect of phospholipid supplementation on depression and cognitive functions in mice. Therefore, our goal was to evaluate the effect of a dietary supplement on vaccine-induced depression. Sixty C57BL/6 female mice were immunized with HPVv-Gardasil, aluminum or the vehicle (n = 20 each group), and half of each group were fed 5 times per week with 0.2 ml of a dietary supplement enriched with phosphatidylcholine. The mice were evaluated for depression at 3 months of age, by the forced swimming test. Both the Gardasil and the aluminum-treated mice developed depressive-like behavior when compared to the control group. The HPVv-Gardasil-immunized mice supplemented with phosphatidylcholine significantly reduced their depressive symptoms. This study confirms our previous studies demonstrating depressive-like behavior in mice vaccinated with HPVv-Gardasil. In addition, it demonstrates the ability of phosphatidylcholine-enriched diet to attenuate depressive-like behavior in the HPVv-Gardasil-vaccinated mice. We suggest that phosphatidylcholine supplementation may serve as a treatment for patients suffering vaccine-related neurological manifestations. © 2016, Springer Science+Business Media New York

Anti-citrullinated protein antibodies and arthritis in Sjögren’s syndrome: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Objective: The presence of anti-citrullinated protein antibodies (ACPAs) in primary Sjögren’s syndrome (pSS) ranges from 3% to 9.9%; however, there is no agreement about their clinical significance. Our aim was to systematically review the literature regarding the association of arthritis and ACPAs in pSS and their role in the development of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Method: A comprehensive search of MEDLINE, ISI Web of Knowledge, and Cochrane Library from inception until June 2016 was undertaken using the combination of two or three of the keywords: primary Sjögren’s syndrome, Sjögren’s syndrome, arthritis, synovitis, arthropathy, anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide antibodies, and anti-citrullinated protein antibody–ACPA. No language restriction was used. Studies were included if they: assessed the association of arthritis and ACPAs, had sufficient data to construct a two-by-two table, tested immunoglobulin G ACPA by any method, and included patients with pSS according to a validated set of classification criteria. We used a random effects model and evaluated the heterogeneity and publication bias. Results: Ten studies were included (involving 1322 patients). We found a pooled odds ratio of 4.42 (95% confidence interval 1.15–16.94, p = 0.03). The test for heterogeneity was I 2  = 0.87. Publication bias was not observed. Based on data from three studies, 33 of 58 pSS patients with ACPAs (57%) developed RA compared with none of 598 pSS patients with negative ACPA (p  and lt; 0.000001). Conclusion: Patients with pSS disclosing ACPAs are prone to arthritis as part of the clinical spectrum of the disease, but are also at risk of developing RA. © 2019, © 2019 Informa Healthcare on license from Scandinavian Rheumatology Research Foundation