677 research outputs found
Prevention of infections in hyposplenic and asplenic patients: an update
Patients with functional or anatomic asplenia are at a significantly
increased risk of overwhelming infection, particularly involving the
encapsulated bacteria Streptococcus pneumoniae and Haemophilus influenzae.
The risk is highest in infants and young children, but adults also have an
increased risk of infection. Preventive strategies are very important and
fall into three major categories: immunoprophylaxis, antibiotic
prophylaxis and education. Studies have shown that many asplenic patients
are unaware of their increased risk for serious infection and the
appropriate health precautions that should be undertaken. In this article
we emphasise the need for preventive measures in hyposplenic and asplenic
patients. We discuss the value of newly developed conjugate vaccines and
the need for revaccination. Finally we draw up a recommendation for the
preventive management in functional and anatomical asplenic patients
Long Memory Modelling of Inflation with Stochastic Variance and Structural Breaks
We investigate changes in the time series characteristics of postwar U.S. inflation. In a model-based analysis the conditional mean of inflation is specified by a long memory autoregressive fractionally integrated moving average process and the conditional variance is modelled by a stochastic volatility process. We develop a Monte Carlo maximum likelihood method to obtain efficient estimates of the parameters using a monthly data-set of core inflation for which we consider different subsamples of varying size. Based on the new modelling framework and the associated estimation technique, we find remarkable changes in the variance, in the order of integration, in the short memory characteristics and in the volatility of volatility
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