1,066 research outputs found
Treat the patient by the recognized toxidrome when the ingested herbal juice is non-toxic
This is the case of 63-year-old mother and her 35-year-old daughter who drank herbal juice (Rhizoma Dioscoreae Nipponicae and Ficus formosana Maxim) and then developed diarrhea, cold sweating, and myoclonus. On physical examination, the mother had a normal consciousness level, a normal respiratory rate, and bilateral miosis. After the administration of 2 g of pralidoxime (PAM) and 0.5 mg of atropine, the mother felt better. The daughter only had mild symptoms of sweating and vomiting before arrival at the emergency department (ED)
Application of Frequent Itemsets Mining to Analyze Patterns of One-Stop Visits in Taiwan
BACKGROUND: The free choice of health care facilities without limitations on frequency of visits within the National Health Insurance in Taiwan gives rise to not only a high number of annual ambulatory visits per capita but also a unique "one-stop shopping"phenomenon, which refers to a patient' visits to several specialties of the same healthcare facility in one day. The visits to multiple physicians would increase the potential risk of polypharmacy. The aim of this study was to analyze the frequency and patterns of one-stop visits in Taiwan. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: The claims datasets of 1 million nationally representative people within Taiwan's National Health Insurance in 2005 were used to calculate the number of patients with one-stop visits. The frequent itemsets mining was applied to compute the combination patterns of specialties in the one-stop visits. Among the total 13,682,469 ambulatory care visits in 2005, one-stop visits occurred 144,132 times and involved 296,822 visits (2.2% of all visits) by 66,294 (6.6%) persons. People tended to have this behavior with age and the percentage reached 27.5% (5,662 in 20,579) in the age group ≥80 years. In general, women were more likely to have one-stop visits than men (7.2% vs. 6.0%). Internal medicine plus ophthalmology was the most frequent combination with a visited frequency of 3,552 times (2.5%), followed by cardiology plus neurology with 3,183 times (2.2%). The most frequent three-specialty combination, cardiology plus neurology and gastroenterology, occurred only 111 times. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Without the novel computational technique, it would be hardly possible to analyze the extremely diverse combination patterns of specialties in one-stop visits. The results of the study could provide useful information either for the hospital manager to set up integrated services or for the policymaker to rebuild the health care system
The burden of headache in China: validation of diagnostic questionnaire for a population-based survey
The objective of this study was to test the validity, in the Chinese population, of the Lifting The Burden diagnostic questionnaire for the purpose of a population-based survey of the burden of headache in China. From all regions of China, a population-based sample of 417 respondents had completed the structured questionnaire in a door-to-door survey conducted by neurologists from local hospitals calling unannounced. They were contacted for re-interview by telephone by headache specialists who were unaware of the questionnaire diagnoses. A screening question ascertained whether headache had occurred in the last year. If they had, the specialists applied their expertise and ICHD-II diagnostic criteria to make independent diagnoses which, as the gold standard, were later compared with the questionnaire diagnoses. There were 18 refusals; 399 interviews were conducted in 202 women and 197 men aged 18–65 years (mean age 44.4 ± 12.6 years). In comparison to the specialists’ diagnoses, the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and Cohen’s kappa (95% CI) of the questionnaire for the diagnosis of migraine were 0.83, 0.99, 0.83, 0.99 and 0.82 (0.71–0.93), respectively; for the diagnosis of tension-type headache (TTH), they were 0.51, 0.99, 0.86, 0.92 and 0.59 (0.46–0.72), respectively. In conclusion, the questionnaire was accurate and reliable in diagnosing migraine (agreement level excellent), less so, but adequate, for TTH (sensitivity relatively low, false negative rate relatively high and agreement level fair to good). The non-specific features of TTH do not lend themselves well to diagnosis by questionnaire
Associations of vitamin D pathway genes with circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin-D, 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin-D, and prostate cancer:a nested case-control study
Vitamin D pathway single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are potentially useful proxies for investigating whether circulating vitamin D metabolites [total 25-hydroxyvitamin-D, 25(OH)D; 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin, 1,25(OH)2D] are causally related to prostate cancer. We investigated associations of sixteen SNPs across seven genes with prostate-specific antigen-detected prostate cancer
Human amniotic fluid stem cell injection therapy for urethral sphincter regeneration in an animal model
Genome-wide analyses for personality traits identify six genomic loci and show correlations with psychiatric disorders
Personality is influenced by genetic and environmental factors1
and associated with mental health. However, the underlying
genetic determinants are largely unknown. We identified six
genetic loci, including five novel loci2,3, significantly associated
with personality traits in a meta-analysis of genome-wide
association studies (N = 123,132–260,861). Of these genomewide
significant loci, extraversion was associated with variants
in WSCD2 and near PCDH15, and neuroticism with variants
on chromosome 8p23.1 and in L3MBTL2. We performed a
principal component analysis to extract major dimensions
underlying genetic variations among five personality traits
and six psychiatric disorders (N = 5,422–18,759). The first
genetic dimension separated personality traits and psychiatric
disorders, except that neuroticism and openness to experience
were clustered with the disorders. High genetic correlations
were found between extraversion and attention-deficit–
hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and between openness and
schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The second genetic
dimension was closely aligned with extraversion–introversion
and grouped neuroticism with internalizing psychopathology
(e.g., depression or anxiety)
Comparison of Effects of Ivabradine versus Carvedilol in Murine Model with the Coxsackievirus B3-Induced Viral Myocarditis
BACKGROUND: Elevated heart rate is associated with increased cardiovascular morbidity. The selective I(f) current inhibitor ivabradine reduces heart rate without affecting cardiac contractility, and has been shown to be cardioprotective in the failing heart. Ivabradine also exerts some of its beneficial effects by decreasing cardiac proinflammatory cytokines and inhibiting peroxidants and collagen accumulation in atherosclerosis or congestive heart failure. However, the effects of ivabradine in the setting of acute viral myocarditis and on the cytokines, oxidative stress and cardiomyocyte apoptosis have not been investigated. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: The study was designed to compare the effects of ivabradine and carvedilol in acute viral myocarditis. In a coxsackievirus B3 murine myocarditis model (Balb/c), effects of ivabradine and carvedilol (a nonselective β-adrenoceptor antagonist) on myocardial histopathological changes, cardiac function, plasma noradrenaline, cytokine levels, cardiomyocyte apoptosis, malondialdehyde and superoxide dismutase contents were studied. Both ivabradine and carvedilol similarly and significantly reduced heart rate, attenuated myocardial lesions and improved the impairment of left ventricular function. In addition, ivabradine treatment as well as carvedilol treatment showed significant effects on altered myocardial cytokines with a decrease in the amount of plasma noradrenaline. The increased myocardial MCP-1, IL-6, and TNF-α. in the infected mice was significantly attenuated in the ivabradine treatment group. Only carvedilol had significant anti-oxidative and anti-apoptoic effects in coxsackievirus B3-infected mice. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: These results show that the protective effects of heart rate reduction with ivabradine and carvedilol observed in the acute phase of coxsackievirus B3 murine myocarditis may be due not only to the heart rate reduction itself but also to the downregulation of inflammatory cytokines
Diagnosis of prostate cancer by detection of minichromosome maintenance 5 protein in urine sediments
Background: The accuracy of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing in prostate cancer detection is constrained by low sensitivity and specificity. Dysregulated expression of minichromosome maintenance (Mcm) 2–7 proteins is an early event in epithelial multistep carcinogenesis and thus MCM proteins represent powerful cancer diagnostic markers. In this study we investigate Mcm5 as a urinary biomarker for prostate cancer detection. Methods: Urine was obtained from 88 men with prostate cancer and from two control groups negative for malignancy. A strictly normal cohort included 28 men with complete, normal investigations, no urinary calculi and serum PSA <2 ng ml–1. An expanded control cohort comprised 331 men with a benign final diagnosis, regardless of PSA level. Urine was collected before and after prostate massage in the cancer patient cohort. An immunofluorometric assay was used to measure Mcm5 levels in urine sediments. Results: The Mcm5 test detected prostate cancer with 82% sensitivity (confidence interval (CI)= 72–89%) and with a specificity ranging from 73 (CI=68–78%) to 93% (CI=76–99%). Prostate massage led to increased Mcm5 signals compared with pre-massage samples (median 3440 (interquartile range (IQR) 2280 to 5220) vs 2360 (IQR <1800 to 4360); P=0.009), and was associated with significantly increased diagnostic sensitivity (82 vs 60%; P=0.012). Conclusions: Urinary Mcm5 detection seems to be a simple, accurate and noninvasive method for identifying patients with prostate cancer. Large-scale prospective trials are now required to evaluate this test in diagnosis and screening
Spontaneous R-Parity Violation, Flavor Symmetry and Tribimaximal Mixing
We explore the possibility of spontaneous R parity violation in the context
of flavor symmetry. Our model contains singlet matter chiral superfields which are arranged as triplet of
and as well as few additional Higgs chiral superfields which are singlet
under MSSM gauge group and belong to triplet and singlet representation under
the flavor symmetry. R parity is broken spontaneously by the vacuum
expectation values of the different sneutrino fields and hence we have
neutrino-neutralino as well as neutrino-MSSM gauge singlet higgsino mixings in
our model, in addition to the standard model neutrino- gauge singlet neutrino,
gaugino-higgsino and higgsino-higgsino mixings. Because all of these mixings we
have an extended neutral fermion mass matrix. We explore the low energy
neutrino mass matrix for our model and point out that with some specific
constraints between the sneutrino vacuum expectation values as well as the MSSM
gauge singlet Higgs vacuum expectation values, the low energy neutrino mass
matrix will lead to a tribimaximal mixing matrix. We also analyze the potential
minimization for our model and show that one can realize a higher vacuum
expectation value of the singlet
sneutrino fields even when the other sneutrino vacuum expectation values are
extremely small or even zero.Comment: 18 page
CA125/MUC16 Is Dispensable for Mouse Development and Reproduction
Cancer antigen 125 (CA125) is a blood biomarker that is routinely used to monitor the progression of human epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) and is encoded by MUC16, a member of the mucin gene family. The biological function of CA125/MUC16 and its potential role in EOC are poorly understood. Here we report the targeted disruption of the of the Muc16 gene in the mouse. To generate Muc16 knockout mice, 6.0 kb was deleted that included the majority of exon 3 and a portion of intron 3 and replaced with a lacZ reporter cassette. Loss of Muc16 protein expression suggests that Muc16 homozygous mutant mice are null mutants. Muc16 homozygous mutant mice are viable, fertile, and develop normally. Histological analysis shows that Muc16 homozygous mutant tissues are normal. By the age of 1 year, Muc16 homozygous mutant mice appear normal. Downregulation of transcripts from another mucin gene (Muc1) was detected in the Muc16 homozygous mutant uterus. Lack of any prominent abnormal phenotype in these Muc16 knockout mice suggests that CA125/MUC16 is not required for normal development or reproduction. These knockout mice provide a unique platform for future studies to identify the role of CA125/MUC16 in organ homeostasis and ovarian cancer
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