29 research outputs found

    A prediction rule to stratify mortality risk of patients with pulmonary tuberculosis

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    Tuberculosis imposes high human and economic tolls, including in Europe. This study was conducted to develop a severity assessment tool for stratifying mortality risk in pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) patients. A derivation cohort of 681 PTB cases was retrospectively reviewed to generate a model based on multiple logistic regression analysis of prognostic variables with 6-month mortality as the outcome measure. A clinical scoring system was developed and tested against a validation cohort of 103 patients. Five risk features were selected for the prediction model: hypoxemic respiratory failure (OR 4.7, 95% CI 2.8-7.9), age >= 50 years (OR 2.9, 95% CI 1.7-4.8), bilateral lung involvement (OR 2.5, 95% CI 1.44.4), >= 1 significant comorbidity-HIV infection, diabetes mellitus, liver failure or cirrhosis, congestive heart failure and chronic respiratory disease-(OR 2.3, 95% CI 1.3-3.8), and hemoglobin = 6) mortality risk. The mortality associated with each group was 2.9%, 22.9% and 53.9%, respectively. The model performed equally well in the validation cohort. We provide a new, easy-to-use clinical scoring system to identify PTB patients with high-mortality risk in settings with good healthcare access, helping clinicians to decide which patients are in need of closer medical care during treatment.This work was supported by Fundacao Amelia de Mello/Jose de Mello Saude and Sociedade Portuguesa de Pneumologia (SPP). This work was developed under the scope of the project NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000013, supported by the Northern Portugal Regional Operational Programme (NORTE 2020), under the Portugal 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER). NSO is a FCT (Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia) investigator. MS is an Associate FCT Investigator. The fundershad no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

    Repositioning of the global epicentre of non-optimal cholesterol

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    High blood cholesterol is typically considered a feature of wealthy western countries(1,2). However, dietary and behavioural determinants of blood cholesterol are changing rapidly throughout the world(3) and countries are using lipid-lowering medications at varying rates. These changes can have distinct effects on the levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol and non-HDL cholesterol, which have different effects on human health(4,5). However, the trends of HDL and non-HDL cholesterol levels over time have not been previously reported in a global analysis. Here we pooled 1,127 population-based studies that measured blood lipids in 102.6 million individuals aged 18 years and older to estimate trends from 1980 to 2018 in mean total, non-HDL and HDL cholesterol levels for 200 countries. Globally, there was little change in total or non-HDL cholesterol from 1980 to 2018. This was a net effect of increases in low- and middle-income countries, especially in east and southeast Asia, and decreases in high-income western countries, especially those in northwestern Europe, and in central and eastern Europe. As a result, countries with the highest level of non-HDL cholesterol-which is a marker of cardiovascular riskchanged from those in western Europe such as Belgium, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Malta in 1980 to those in Asia and the Pacific, such as Tokelau, Malaysia, The Philippines and Thailand. In 2017, high non-HDL cholesterol was responsible for an estimated 3.9 million (95% credible interval 3.7 million-4.2 million) worldwide deaths, half of which occurred in east, southeast and south Asia. The global repositioning of lipid-related risk, with non-optimal cholesterol shifting from a distinct feature of high-income countries in northwestern Europe, north America and Australasia to one that affects countries in east and southeast Asia and Oceania should motivate the use of population-based policies and personal interventions to improve nutrition and enhance access to treatment throughout the world.Peer reviewe

    Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

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    Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear un derstanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5–7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8–11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world’s most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepre sented in biodiversity databases.13–15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may elim inate pieces of the Amazon’s biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological com munities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple or ganism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region’s vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most ne glected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lostinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

    Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

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    Masculinidades e práticas de saúde na região metropolitana de Belo Horizonte - MG

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    O objetivo desta investigação foi identificar e analisar as representações sociais de saúde e de doença e as práticas de saúde masculina junto a homens residentes na Região Metropolitana de Belo Horizonte-MG. Foram entrevistados 100 sujeitos com idade entre 45 e 55 anos. Os dados foram submetidos às análises de evocação e de conteúdo. RESULTADOS: elementos centrais da Representação Social (RS) de saúde: "bem-estar", "cuidado" e "importante". Elementos periféricos próximos: "alegria/felicidade" e "alimentação". Elementos centrais da RS de doença: "tristeza" e "dor". Elementos periféricos próximos: "sofrimento" e "morte". Definição de "cuidar da saúde": "cuidar da alimentação" (17,25% das respostas) e "praticar atividades físicas" (11,11%). Dos sujeitos, 52% afirmaram que cuidam da própria saúde e 34% que o fazem "às vezes". Quem contribui para o cuidado com a própria saúde: "eu mesmo" (29,63%), "esposa" (25,93%). Busca por atendimento médico: "às vezes" no Hospital (69% dos sujeitos; motivo principal: "dor forte/persistente", 13,87% das respostas) ou nos consultórios (72% dos sujeitos; motivo principal: "exames de rotina", 22,22% das respostas). A análise dos resultados indica a percepção mais geral do cuidar da saúde como um conjunto de práticas individuais objetivando o "bem-estar". Os resultados também indicam considerável quantidade de ações objetivando os cuidados com a saúde, o que contraria parte das percepções tradicionais quanto à fraca associação entre masculinidades e cuidado de si
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