Increase in Weight in Low Birth Weight and Very Low Birth Weight Infants Fed Fortified Breast Milk versus Formula Milk: A Retrospective Cohort Study

There has been a dramatic rise in preterm births in developed countries owing to changes in clinical practices and greater use of assisted reproductive techniques. However, few studies have examined the growth and outcomes of preterm infants according to the type of feeding (with fortified breast milk or formula). The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of breast milk feedings and formula on the growth and short-term outcomes of preterm infants in Hong Kong. In a single-center retrospective cohort study, we included 642 preterm infants at gestational age <37 weeks with birth weights <2200 g. According to World Health Organization criteria, 466 were classified as low birth weight (LBW) infants (≥1500 g and <2200 g) and 176 were classified as very low birth weight (VLBW) infants (<1500 g). The mothers of approximately 80% of VLBW infants and 60% LBW infants initiated breast milk feeding. When compared with no breast milk intake, LBW infants that received breast milk were significantly more likely to have growth z-scores closer to the median of the reference population on admission and experienced slower weight gain from birth to discharge. When breast milk was categorized by percent of total enteral intake, significant differences were seen among LBW infants, with lower percentages of small-for-gestational-age (SGA) status at discharge with increased proportions of breast milk intake. Our results suggest that LBW infants fed breast milk had better growth z-scores and lower SGA status at discharge compared with those predominately fed preterm formula.published_or_final_versio

Classifying text streams in the presence of concept drifts

Concept drifting is always an interesting problem. For instance, a user is interested in a set of topics, X, for a period, may switches to a different set of topics, Y, in the next period. In this paper, we focus on two issues of concept drifts, namely, concept drifts detection and model adaptation in a text stream context. We use statistical control to detect concept drifts, and propose a new multi-classifier strategy for model adaptation. We conducted extensive experiments and reported our findings in this paper

A balanced ensemble approach to weighting classifiers for text classification

This paper studies the problem of constructing an effective heterogeneous ensemble classifier for text classification. One major challenge of this problem is to formulate a good combination function, which combines the decisions of the individual classifiers in the ensemble. We show that the classification performance is affected by three weight components and they should be included in deriving an effective combination function. They are: (1) Global effectiveness, which measures the effectiveness of a member classifier in classifying a set of unseen documents; (2) Local effectiveness, which measures the effectiveness of a member classifier in classifying the particular domain of an unseen document; and (3) Decision confidence, which describes how confident a classifier is when making a decision when classifying a specific unseen document. We propose a new balanced combination function, called Dynamic Classifier Weighting (DCW), that incorporates the aforementioned three components. The empirical study demonstrates that the new combination function is highly effective for text classification. © 2006 IEEE.link_to_subscribed_fulltex

Growth In Low Birth Weight And Very Low Birth Weight Infants Fed Fortified Breast Milk Versus Formula Milk: A Retrospective Cohort Study

Background and Aims There has been a dramatic rise in preterm births in developed countries owing to changes in clinical practices and greater use of assisted reproductive techniques. Few studies have examined the growth and outcomes of preterm infants according to the type of feeding. The aim of this study was to examine the effect of breast milk feedings and formula on the growth and short-term outcomes of preterm infants in Hong Kong. Methods A single-center retrospective cohort study was employed. From 2010-2014, we included 642 preterm infants at gestational age 750 g and < 2500 g. Results 466 were classified as low birth weight (LBW) infants and 176 were classified as very low birth weight (VLBW) infants. The mothers of approximately 80% of VLBW infants and 60% LBW infants initiated breast milk feeding. When compared with no breast milk intake, LBW infants that received breast milk were significantly more likely to have growth z-scores closer to the median of the reference population and experienced slower weight gain from birth to discharge (See Fig.1). When breast milk was categorized by percent of total enteral intake, significant differences were seen among LBW infants, with lower percentages of small-forgestational-age (SGA) status at discharge with increased proportions of breast milk intake. Conclusions LBW infants showed slower growth when predominately fed fortified breast milk than those solely fed formula. Overall, LBW infants fed breast milk had better growth z-scores and lower SGA status at discharge compared with those predominately fed preterm formula

Mandibulofacial dysostosis with microcephaly caused by a novel "EFTUD2" mutation in a Chinese infant

Poster Presentatio