How to... Revisar un artículo científico

Uno de los pilares básicos de la publicación científica contemporánea es la denominada “revisión por pares” o “peer-review”. Si usted ha sido elegido como revisor de uno de los artículos enviados para su publicación en Archivos de Medicina Univeristaria, es debido a que es usted un “par” del autor de dicho trabajo, es decir, una persona con un nivel de formación y experiencia investigadora semejante y equiparable. Además, en opinión del Comité Editorial de AMU, usted atesora un nivel de conocimiento y experiencia sobre la temática del artículo en revisión que hacen que su opinión sobre el mismo sea inestimable

Family Refusal to Consent Donation: Retrospective Quantitative Analysis of Its Increasing Tendency and the Associated Factors Over the Last Decade at a Spanish Hospital.

Background Organ and tissue recovery remains limited by several factors. This study retrospectively analyzes the factors associated with family refusal to consent to donation at a high-donor-volume Spanish hospital. Methods Data regarding the annual number of potential donors and family refusal rates at hospital and regional levels were retrieved from 2008 to 2017. Descriptive, bivariate, and multivariate analyses were performed to detect those factors independently associated with family refusal. Results were cross-validated using the data from years 2018 and 2019 as the validation group. To explore potential inter-relations between factors a Multiple Correspondence Analysis was performed. Results A total of 601 family interviews for petition of consent were conducted between 2008 and 2017, 531 (88.4%) resulted in acceptance and 70 (11.6%) resulted in refusal of the donation. Lesser experience of the interviewers (odds ratio [OR], 2.980; P = .001), donation after brain death (OR, 2.485; P = .013), number of interviews conducted per family (OR, 1.892; P < .001), age of the main decision maker (OR, 1.025; P = .045), and high or middle attributed cultural levels (OR, 0.142; P < .001 and OR, 0.199; P < .001 respectively) were observed to be independently associated with the family final decision. The logistic regression model displayed good predictive power for both derivation and validation cohorts, with an overall predictive accuracy of 80.9% (95% confidence interval, 0.747-0.870; P < .001) and 74.4% (95% confidence interval, 0.635-0.854; P = .001), respectively. Conclusions Transplant coordination team members having a thorough knowledge of the family decision mechanisms may be a key factor in donation process optimization.post-print633 K

Virological Correlates of IgM–IgG Patterns of Response to SARS-CoV-2 Infection According to Targeted Antigens

The virological meaning of the different patterns of serology in COVID-19 has been little examined in clinical settings. Asymptomatic subjects with IgM-spike (S) and IgG-nucleocapsid (N) determinations by chemiluminescence were studied for SARS-CoV-2 shedding in respiratory secretions by transcription-mediated amplification (TMA). In subjects showing IgM-S positive and IgG-N negative, IgG-S was determined by lateral flow assay. A total of 712 individuals were tested: 30.0% presented IgM-S(+)/IgG-N(−), 25.8% had IgM-S(+)/IgG-N(+) and 44.2% had IgM-S(−)/IgG-N(+); the proportion with TMA(+) were comparable in these three groups: 12.1, 8.7 and 10.5%, respectively. In individuals with IgM-S(+)/IgG-N(−), IgG-S(+) was detected in 66.5%. The frequency of IgM-S(+)/IgG-S(−) in the total population was 10.0%, of whom 24.1% had TMA(+); the chances for TMA(+) in subjects with an IgM-S(+) alone pattern were 2.4%. Targeting of the same SARS-CoV-2 antigen seems to be better for the characterization of IgM/IgG patterns of response. IgM-S(+) alone reactivity is rare, and a small proportion is associated with viral shedding

Atheromatosis of the brain-supplying arteries: Circle of Willis, basilar, vertebral and their branches

Purpose: Atherosclerotic plaques in the brain-supplying arteries are slowly-developing alterations of vascular structures that can lead to neurological impairment due to stenosis and insufficient oxygenation of eloquent brain areas. The aim of this study is to provide detailed demographic information related to the incidence of atherosclerotic plaques in the cerebral arteries. Material and methods: Forty-eight circles of Willis (21 men, 21 women, mean age: 70.26, six samples unknown) were macroscopically analyzed for length, diameter, and presence of atherosclerotic plaques. Statistical analysis was used to identify potential differences in the locations and frequencies of atherosclerotic plaques in relation to age and sex. Results: The study sample revealed 261 atherosclerotic plaques. The key findings were significant correlations between plaque development and age and between plaque location and age; however, there was no significant sex difference. Conclusion: The upper and lower branches of the middle cerebral artery (MCA) were novel locations predisposing to plaque development. A cut-off value at 60 years revealed a significant difference in plaque development and distribution. There were no significant sex differences in the occurrence of atherosclerotic plaques.Depto. de Anatomía y EmbriologíaFac. de MedicinaTRUEpu

Humoral and Cellular Response after mRNA Vaccination in Nursing Homes: Influence of Age and of History of COVID-19

Background: Most residents and staff in nursing homes have received full vaccination. Factors related to the immune response to vaccination might be related to the risk of future severe COVID-19 and may guide the need for vaccine boosters. Design: Nursing homes that were tested in a point survey in July-October 2020 were again analyzed after a vaccination campaign in June-July 2021. Immune responses according to IgG against nucleocapsid and spike antigens, and CD4 and CD8 interferon-gamma release assay against spike antigens, were evaluated. Results: A total of 1973 subjects were tested (61.7% residents, 48.3% staff), with a mean (SD) follow-up of 46.4 (3.6) weeks between assessments. More than half of residents and more than a third of staff had evidence of COVID-19 before vaccination; 26.9% and 22.7% had seroreversion of IgG-N, and 8.9% and 4.6% had IgG-N seroconversion at second assessment, respectively. Up to 96.8% of residents and 98.1% of workers had positive IgG-S after a mean of 19.9 (2.1) weeks after vaccination. In residents with vs without a history of COVID-19, IgG-S titers were 4.11 (0.54) vs. 2.73 (0.74) logAU/mL (p &lt; 0.001); in workers these titers were 3.89 (0.61) vs. 3.15 (0.64) logAU/mL (p &lt; 0.001). Linear regression analysis showed that younger age (OR: &minus;0.03 per 10 years-older [95% CI, &minus;0.04 to &minus;0.02], p &lt; 0.001) and evidence of COVID-19 (OR: 1.14 [95% CI, 1.08 to 1.20], p &lt; 0.001) are associated with greater IgG-S titers after vaccination. A direct association was found between IgG-S titers and the intensity of IFN-gamma response against spike antigens. Conclusions: Waning of humoral response and reinfection seems to be more frequent in older as compared to younger adults, although cellular responses shortly after vaccination are comparable between these groups. Younger age and prior COVID-19 are related to greater humoral response after vaccination against SARS-CoV-2

Discovering HIV related information by means of association rules and machine learning

Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is still one of the main health problems worldwide. It is therefore essential to keep making progress in improving the prognosis and quality of life of affected patients. One way to advance along this pathway is to uncover connections between other disorders associated with HIV/AIDS-so that they can be anticipated and possibly mitigated. We propose to achieve this by using Association Rules (ARs). They allow us to represent the dependencies between a number of diseases and other specific diseases. However, classical techniques systematically generate every AR meeting some minimal conditions on data frequency, hence generating a vast amount of uninteresting ARs, which need to be filtered out. The lack of manually annotated ARs has favored unsupervised filtering, even though they produce limited results. In this paper, we propose a semi-supervised system, able to identify relevant ARs among HIV-related diseases with a minimal amount of annotated training data. Our system has been able to extract a good number of relationships between HIV-related diseases that have been previously detected in the literature but are scattered and are often little known. Furthermore, a number of plausible new relationships have shown up which deserve further investigation by qualified medical experts