Calidad de Servicio y Satisfacción del Cliente en la Agencia Real – CMAC Huancayo - 2019

El presente trabajo de investigación tuvo como punto de partida la interrogante ¿En qué medida la calidad de servicio se relaciona con la satisfacción de los clientes de la Caja Huancayo - Agencia Real, en el periodo 2019?, como consecuencia el objetivo fue determinar en qué medida la calidad de servicio se relaciona con la satisfacción de los clientes de la Caja Huancayo - Agencia Real, en el periodo 2019; en consideración al propósito del trabajo, se desarrolló una investigación de tipo básica, de nivel descriptivo-correlacional y de diseño no experimental - correlacional; donde el método descriptivo y el método estadístico, complementado con los instrumentos de recolección de datos como el cuestionario de encuesta y la ficha observación, aplicados en una muestra de 382 clientes, nos dieron como resultado la existencia de una relación significativa entre la calidad deservicio y la satisfacción del cliente en la Agencia Real de la Caja Municipal de Ahorro y Crédito Huancayo, en el periodo 2019, respaldado por el coeficiente Rho de Spearman que indica una correlación de 0.791**, el cual determina que existe una correlación positiva media; de igual manera se puede ver que el p valor es menor que el nivel de significancia (0.000 < 0.05). Al respecto, recomendamos brindar un servicio de calidad, lo que nos quiere decir, es necesario hacer un uso adecuado y agregarle valor a cada uno de las dimensiones que influyen en la calidad del servicio

The health and economic burden of smoking in 12 Latin American countries and the potential effect of increasing tobacco taxes: an economic modelling study

Background: Worldwide, smoking tobacco causes 7 million deaths annually, and this toll is expected to increase, especially in low-income and middle-income countries. In Latin America, smoking is a leading risk factor for death and disability, contributes to poverty, and imposes an economic burden on health systems. Despite being one of the most effective measures to reduce smoking, tobacco taxation is underused and cigarettes are more affordable in Latin America than in other regions. Our aim was to estimate the tobacco-attributable burden on mortality, disease incidence, quality of life lost, and medical costs in 12 Latin American countries, and the expected health and economic effects of increasing tobacco taxes. Methods: In this modelling study, we developed a Markov probabilistic microsimulation economic model of the natural history, medical costs, and quality-of-life losses associated with the most common tobacco-related diseases in 12 countries in Latin America. Data inputs were obtained through a literature review, vital statistics, and hospital databases from each country: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Honduras, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay. The main outcomes of the model are life-years, quality-adjusted life-years, disease events, hospitalisations, disease incidence, disease cost, and healthy years of life lost. We estimated direct medical costs for each tobacco-related disease included in the model using a common costing methodology for each country. The disease burden was estimated as the difference in disease events, deaths, and associated costs between the results predicted by the model for current smoking prevalence and a hypothetical cohort of people in each country who had never smoked. The model estimates the health and financial effects of a price increase of cigarettes through taxes, in terms of disease and health-care costs averted, and increased tax revenues. Findings: In the 12 Latin American countries analysed, we estimated that smoking is responsible for approximately 345 000 (12%) of the total 2 860 921 adult deaths, 2·21 million disease events, 8·77 million healthy years of life lost, and $26·9 billion in direct medical costs annually. Health-care costs attributable to smoking were estimated to represent 6·9$26·7 billion in health-care costs in the next 10 years, with a total economic benefit of $43·7 billion. Interpretation: Smoking represents a substantial health and economic burden in these 12 countries of Latin America. Tobacco tax increases could successfully avert deaths and disability, reduce health-care spending, and increase tax revenues, resulting in large net economic benefits.Fil: Pichón-riviere, Andres. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Centro de Investigaciones en Epidemiología y Salud Pública. Instituto de Efectividad Clínica y Sanitaria. Centro de Investigaciones en Epidemiología y Salud Pública; ArgentinaFil: Alcaraz, Andrea. Instituto de Efectividad Clínica y Sanitaria; ArgentinaFil: Palacios, Alfredo. Instituto de Efectividad Clínica y Sanitaria; ArgentinaFil: Rodríguez, Belén. Instituto de Efectividad Clínica y Sanitaria; ArgentinaFil: Reynales Shigematsu, Luz Myriam. Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública; MéxicoFil: Pinto, Márcia. Fundación Oswaldo Cruz; BrasilFil: Castillo Riquelme, Marianela. Ministerio de Salud; ChileFil: Peña Torres, Esperanza. Instituto de Evaluación Tecnológica En Salud; ColombiaFil: Osorio, Diana Isabel. Instituto de Evaluación Tecnológica en Salud; ColombiaFil: Huayanay, Leandro. Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia; PerúFil: Loza Munarriz, Cesar. Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia; PerúFil: Sáenz de Miera-Juárez, Belén. Universidad Autónoma de Baja California Sur; MéxicoFil: Gallegos Rivero, Verónica. Centro Nacional de Excelencia Tecnológica en Salud; MéxicoFil: De La Puente, Catherine. Universidad de La Frontera; ChileFil: Navia Bueno, María del Pilar. Universidad Mayor de San Andrés; BoliviaFil: Caporale, Joaquín. Instituto de Efectividad Clínica y Sanitaria; ArgentinaFil: Roberti, Javier Eugenio. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Centro de Investigaciones en Epidemiología y Salud Pública. Instituto de Efectividad Clínica y Sanitaria. Centro de Investigaciones en Epidemiología y Salud Pública; ArgentinaFil: Virgilio, Sacha Alexis. Instituto de Efectividad Clínica y Sanitaria; ArgentinaFil: Augustovski, Federico Ariel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Centro de Investigaciones en Epidemiología y Salud Pública. Instituto de Efectividad Clínica y Sanitaria. Centro de Investigaciones en Epidemiología y Salud Pública; ArgentinaFil: Bardach, Ariel Esteban. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Centro de Investigaciones en Epidemiología y Salud Pública. Instituto de Efectividad Clínica y Sanitaria. Centro de Investigaciones en Epidemiología y Salud Pública; Argentin

Incorporating progesterone receptor expression into the PREDICT breast prognostic model

Background: Predict Breast (www.predict.nhs.uk) is an online prognostication and treatment benefit tool for early invasive breast cancer. The aim of this study was to incorporate the prognostic effect of progesterone receptor (PR) status into a new version of PREDICT and to compare its performance to the current version (2.2).Method: The prognostic effect of PR status was based on the analysis of data from 45,088 European patients with breast cancer from 49 studies in the Breast Cancer Association Consortium. Cox proportional hazard models were used to estimate the hazard ratio for PR status. Data from a New Zealand study of 11,365 patients with early invasive breast cancer were used for external validation. Model calibration and discrimination were used to test the model performance.Results: Having a PR-positive tumour was associated with a 23% and 28% lower risk of dying from breast cancer for women with oestrogen receptor (ER)-negative and ER-positive breast cancer, respectively. The area under the ROC curve increased with the addition of PR status from 0.807 to 0.809 for patients with ER-negative tumours (p = 0.023) and from 0.898 to 0. 902 for patients with ER-positive tumours (p = 2.3 x 10(-6)) in the New Zealand cohort. Model calibration was modest with 940 observed deaths compared to 1151 predicted.Conclusion: The inclusion of the prognostic effect of PR status to PREDICT Breast has led to an improvement of model performance and more accurate absolute treatment benefit predic-tions for individual patients. Further studies should determine whether the baseline hazard function requires recalibration. (C) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Peer reviewe

Incorporating progesterone receptor expression into the PREDICT breast prognostic model

Background: Predict Breast (www.predict.nhs.uk) is an online prognostication and treatment benefit tool for early invasive breast cancer. The aim of this study was to incorporate the prognostic effect of progesterone receptor (PR) status into a new version of PREDICT and to compare its performance to the current version (2.2).Method: The prognostic effect of PR status was based on the analysis of data from 45,088 European patients with breast cancer from 49 studies in the Breast Cancer Association Consortium. Cox proportional hazard models were used to estimate the hazard ratio for PR status. Data from a New Zealand study of 11,365 patients with early invasive breast cancer were used for external validation. Model calibration and discrimination were used to test the model performance.Results: Having a PR-positive tumour was associated with a 23% and 28% lower risk of dying from breast cancer for women with oestrogen receptor (ER)-negative and ER-positive breast cancer, respectively. The area under the ROC curve increased with the addition of PR status from 0.807 to 0.809 for patients with ER-negative tumours (p = 0.023) and from 0.898 to 0. 902 for patients with ER-positive tumours (p = 2.3 x 10(-6)) in the New Zealand cohort. Model calibration was modest with 940 observed deaths compared to 1151 predicted.Conclusion: The inclusion of the prognostic effect of PR status to PREDICT Breast has led to an improvement of model performance and more accurate absolute treatment benefit predic-tions for individual patients. Further studies should determine whether the baseline hazard function requires recalibration. (C) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Peer reviewe

Exome-wide association study to identify rare variants influencing COVID-19 outcomes : Results from the Host Genetics Initiative

Publisher Copyright: Copyright: © 2022 Butler-Laporte et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Host genetics is a key determinant of COVID-19 outcomes. Previously, the COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative genome-wide association study used common variants to identify multiple loci associated with COVID-19 outcomes. However, variants with the largest impact on COVID-19 outcomes are expected to be rare in the population. Hence, studying rare variants may provide additional insights into disease susceptibility and pathogenesis, thereby informing therapeutics development. Here, we combined whole-exome and whole-genome sequencing from 21 cohorts across 12 countries and performed rare variant exome-wide burden analyses for COVID-19 outcomes. In an analysis of 5,085 severe disease cases and 571,737 controls, we observed that carrying a rare deleterious variant in the SARS-CoV-2 sensor toll-like receptor TLR7 (on chromosome X) was associated with a 5.3-fold increase in severe disease (95% CI: 2.75–10.05, p = 5.41x10-7). This association was consistent across sexes. These results further support TLR7 as a genetic determinant of severe disease and suggest that larger studies on rare variants influencing COVID-19 outcomes could provide additional insights.Peer reviewe

Canagliflozin and renal outcomes in type 2 diabetes and nephropathy

BACKGROUND Type 2 diabetes mellitus is the leading cause of kidney failure worldwide, but few effective long-term treatments are available. In cardiovascular trials of inhibitors of sodium–glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2), exploratory results have suggested that such drugs may improve renal outcomes in patients with type 2 diabetes. METHODS In this double-blind, randomized trial, we assigned patients with type 2 diabetes and albuminuric chronic kidney disease to receive canagliflozin, an oral SGLT2 inhibitor, at a dose of 100 mg daily or placebo. All the patients had an estimated glomerular filtration rate (GFR) of 30 to &lt;90 ml per minute per 1.73 m2 of body-surface area and albuminuria (ratio of albumin [mg] to creatinine [g], &gt;300 to 5000) and were treated with renin–angiotensin system blockade. The primary outcome was a composite of end-stage kidney disease (dialysis, transplantation, or a sustained estimated GFR of &lt;15 ml per minute per 1.73 m2), a doubling of the serum creatinine level, or death from renal or cardiovascular causes. Prespecified secondary outcomes were tested hierarchically. RESULTS The trial was stopped early after a planned interim analysis on the recommendation of the data and safety monitoring committee. At that time, 4401 patients had undergone randomization, with a median follow-up of 2.62 years. The relative risk of the primary outcome was 30% lower in the canagliflozin group than in the placebo group, with event rates of 43.2 and 61.2 per 1000 patient-years, respectively (hazard ratio, 0.70; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.59 to 0.82; P=0.00001). The relative risk of the renal-specific composite of end-stage kidney disease, a doubling of the creatinine level, or death from renal causes was lower by 34% (hazard ratio, 0.66; 95% CI, 0.53 to 0.81; P&lt;0.001), and the relative risk of end-stage kidney disease was lower by 32% (hazard ratio, 0.68; 95% CI, 0.54 to 0.86; P=0.002). The canagliflozin group also had a lower risk of cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction, or stroke (hazard ratio, 0.80; 95% CI, 0.67 to 0.95; P=0.01) and hospitalization for heart failure (hazard ratio, 0.61; 95% CI, 0.47 to 0.80; P&lt;0.001). There were no significant differences in rates of amputation or fracture. CONCLUSIONS In patients with type 2 diabetes and kidney disease, the risk of kidney failure and cardiovascular events was lower in the canagliflozin group than in the placebo group at a median follow-up of 2.62 years

Uso de drogas e o aumento das infecções sexualmente transmissíveis: uma revisão sistemática: Drug use and the increase in sexually transmitted infections: a systematic review

Populações de usuários de drogas têm sido associadas a epidemias de infecções ou Infecções Sexualmente Transmissíveis, especialmente a infecção pelo HIV (que está associada a drogas injetáveis, uso de equipamentos contaminados para drogas injetáveis e sexo inseguro). A droga mais associada às DSTs é a cocaína fumável de base livre (crack), devido ao aumento dos comportamentos sexuais de risco. Diante disso, o presente estudo teve como objetivo compreender o impacto do uso de drogas no aumento das infecções sexualmente transmissíveis. Para isso, adotou-se como metodologia a revisão sistemática de literatura, realizando buscas nas bases de dados Scielo, Pubmed e BVS/Medline a partir do uso de descritores DeCS/MeSH e aplicação de critérios de inclusão e exclusão. A partir da análise e interpretação dos dados, concluiu-se que que pessoas que fazem uso abusivo de drogas lícitas ou ilícitas, sejam elas mulheres, homens, adolescentes, jovens, adultos, idosos, em situação de rua ou não, tendem a desenvolver comportamentos vulneráveis que pode resultar em IST. Somado a isso, enquanto comportamento de risco, tem-se a preferência por não usar preservativo, seja em relações sexuais com pessoas monogâmicas como com dois ou mais parceiros. Nesses casos, tanto o uso exacerbado de drogas como a falta de informação sobre comportamento sexual demonstram-se insuficientes

25th annual computational neuroscience meeting: CNS-2016

The same neuron may play different functional roles in the neural circuits to which it belongs. For example, neurons in the Tritonia pedal ganglia may participate in variable phases of the swim motor rhythms [1]. While such neuronal functional variability is likely to play a major role the delivery of the functionality of neural systems, it is difficult to study it in most nervous systems. We work on the pyloric rhythm network of the crustacean stomatogastric ganglion (STG) [2]. Typically network models of the STG treat neurons of the same functional type as a single model neuron (e.g. PD neurons), assuming the same conductance parameters for these neurons and implying their synchronous firing [3, 4]. However, simultaneous recording of PD neurons shows differences between the timings of spikes of these neurons. This may indicate functional variability of these neurons. Here we modelled separately the two PD neurons of the STG in a multi-neuron model of the pyloric network. Our neuron models comply with known correlations between conductance parameters of ionic currents. Our results reproduce the experimental finding of increasing spike time distance between spikes originating from the two model PD neurons during their synchronised burst phase. The PD neuron with the larger calcium conductance generates its spikes before the other PD neuron. Larger potassium conductance values in the follower neuron imply longer delays between spikes, see Fig. 17.Neuromodulators change the conductance parameters of neurons and maintain the ratios of these parameters [5]. Our results show that such changes may shift the individual contribution of two PD neurons to the PD-phase of the pyloric rhythm altering their functionality within this rhythm. Our work paves the way towards an accessible experimental and computational framework for the analysis of the mechanisms and impact of functional variability of neurons within the neural circuits to which they belong

The evolving SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in Africa: Insights from rapidly expanding genomic surveillance

INTRODUCTION Investment in Africa over the past year with regard to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) sequencing has led to a massive increase in the number of sequences, which, to date, exceeds 100,000 sequences generated to track the pandemic on the continent. These sequences have profoundly affected how public health officials in Africa have navigated the COVID-19 pandemic. RATIONALE We demonstrate how the first 100,000 SARS-CoV-2 sequences from Africa have helped monitor the epidemic on the continent, how genomic surveillance expanded over the course of the pandemic, and how we adapted our sequencing methods to deal with an evolving virus. Finally, we also examine how viral lineages have spread across the continent in a phylogeographic framework to gain insights into the underlying temporal and spatial transmission dynamics for several variants of concern (VOCs). RESULTS Our results indicate that the number of countries in Africa that can sequence the virus within their own borders is growing and that this is coupled with a shorter turnaround time from the time of sampling to sequence submission. Ongoing evolution necessitated the continual updating of primer sets, and, as a result, eight primer sets were designed in tandem with viral evolution and used to ensure effective sequencing of the virus. The pandemic unfolded through multiple waves of infection that were each driven by distinct genetic lineages, with B.1-like ancestral strains associated with the first pandemic wave of infections in 2020. Successive waves on the continent were fueled by different VOCs, with Alpha and Beta cocirculating in distinct spatial patterns during the second wave and Delta and Omicron affecting the whole continent during the third and fourth waves, respectively. Phylogeographic reconstruction points toward distinct differences in viral importation and exportation patterns associated with the Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Omicron variants and subvariants, when considering both Africa versus the rest of the world and viral dissemination within the continent. Our epidemiological and phylogenetic inferences therefore underscore the heterogeneous nature of the pandemic on the continent and highlight key insights and challenges, for instance, recognizing the limitations of low testing proportions. We also highlight the early warning capacity that genomic surveillance in Africa has had for the rest of the world with the detection of new lineages and variants, the most recent being the characterization of various Omicron subvariants. CONCLUSION Sustained investment for diagnostics and genomic surveillance in Africa is needed as the virus continues to evolve. This is important not only to help combat SARS-CoV-2 on the continent but also because it can be used as a platform to help address the many emerging and reemerging infectious disease threats in Africa. In particular, capacity building for local sequencing within countries or within the continent should be prioritized because this is generally associated with shorter turnaround times, providing the most benefit to local public health authorities tasked with pandemic response and mitigation and allowing for the fastest reaction to localized outbreaks. These investments are crucial for pandemic preparedness and response and will serve the health of the continent well into the 21st century