Category: Statistics

Pediatr Int. 2026 Jan-Dec;68(1):e70534. doi: 10.1111/ped.70534.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Pediatric home mechanical ventilation (HMV) use has risen globally, driven by advances in pediatric critical care and a shift toward community-based management. However, long-term outcome data from Japanese regional core hospitals remain limited.

METHODS: We conducted a single-center retrospective cohort study of all patients between 1995 and 2024 aged ≤ 20 years for whom there was initiation of HMV (n = 37). HMV included invasive mechanical ventilation (tracheostomy positive-pressure ventilation) and/or noninvasive ventilation. Cumulative survival after HMV initiation was estimated using the Kaplan-Meier method and compared using log-rank tests according to age at initiation (≤ 7 vs. > 7 years), ventilation modality (invasive mechanical ventilation vs. noninvasive ventilation), predominant pathophysiological indication (respiratory pump insufficiency [Pump], airway disease [Airway], or restrictive lung mechanics [Restrictive]), and presence of severe motor and intellectual disabilities (SMID).

RESULTS: The Kaplan-Meier-estimated cumulative survival was 69.1% (maximum follow-up, 29.1 years). In our cohort, survival did not significantly differ by age at initiation or ventilation modality. In contrast, it was significantly lower in patients with restrictive lung mechanics and lower in those with SMID. Among the eight deaths, cardiac disease was common, and death was seen to be clustered in the winter months; it often followed respiratory infections, and it was associated with notable growth impairment.

CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that children receiving HMV can achieve long-term survival. Nevertheless, high-risk groups, particularly those with restrictive lung mechanics or SMID, warrant risk-stratified care, proactive prevention of winter infection, and timely advance care planning.

PMID:42658053 | DOI:10.1111/ped.70534

Am J Biol Anthropol. 2026 Aug;190(4):e70338. doi: 10.1002/ajpa.70338.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVES: This paper uses deciduous dental morphology to evaluate the spatial structure of the Archaic period site of Phaleron (Athens, Greece) with the goal of identifying possible biological kin- or community structuring of the burial ground.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: Deciduous morphological data (77 total root-trait combinations) were collected by the author using published standards for 231 preadult individuals from Phaleron. After pre-analysis data treatments evaluating the effects of age, sex, and inter-trait correlation, remaining variables were compared among burial subsectors using Mean Measure of Divergence statistics, with statistical significance assessed following both standard protocols and with bootstrapping methods.

RESULTS: Results are consistent with, but not identical to, those presented using permanent dental morphology, with deciduous data presenting stronger evidence of spatial structuring. This suggests that the same principles governing grave placement applied to both adults and preadults, which I argue reflects biological kinship as a structuring principle of Archaic period burial grounds.

DISCUSSION: This paper makes three contributions: (1) enhances understanding of ancient Greek burial practices, particularly of the non-elite individuals who lived during the critical centuries of Athenian political development, (2) demonstrates the complementary value of using both deciduous and permanent dentition in analyses of biological distance, and (3) presents the first large sample of deciduous trait frequencies from ancient Greece, thus informing future comparative studies.

PMID:42658037 | DOI:10.1002/ajpa.70338

Pediatr Int. 2026 Jan-Dec;68(1):e70527. doi: 10.1111/ped.70527.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Kawasaki disease is an acute systemic vasculitis, and the clinical significance of serum thymus and activation-regulated chemokine (TARC) remains incompletely understood. We examined whether pre-treatment age-adjusted serum TARC was associated with inflammation-based intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) resistance risk stratification.

METHODS: We retrospectively studied 109 children with Kawasaki disease after excluding documented allergic comorbidities and age younger than 6 months. All included patients had serum TARC measured before initial treatment, and 18 of them also had paired post-treatment measurements. Serum values were expressed as the percentage of the age-specific upper limit of normal. The primary analysis compared pre-treatment values between high- and low-risk groups according to the Kobayashi score. Paired pre- and post-treatment changes and exploratory analyses of other IVIG resistance risk scores and treatment non-response were also assessed.

RESULTS: Twenty children were classified as high risk by the Kobayashi score. Pre-treatment age-adjusted values were lower in the high-risk group than in the low-risk group, but logistic regression analysis did not support a statistically robust association. In 18 children with paired samples, values decreased significantly after treatment. Exploratory analyses showed no significant associations with other IVIG resistance risk scores, whereas analyses of treatment non-response and coronary artery lesions were limited by the small number of events.

CONCLUSIONS: Age-adjusted serum TARC showed limited clinical associations during the acute phase of Kawasaki disease and was not robustly associated with inflammation-based high-risk classification. Its role in treatment response and coronary artery outcomes remains to be clarified.

PMID:42658035 | DOI:10.1111/ped.70527

Indian J Cancer. 2026 Aug 26. doi: 10.4103/ijc.ijc_172_24. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: We aimed to explore a method to measure the preoperative repair area of the thyroid gland flap (TGF) in patients with neck cancer.

METHODS: A total of 82 patients with nonthyroid diseases were included in this study. The digital imaging and communications in medicine (DICOM) data of enhanced computed tomography (CT) of the neck were collected. Three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction was performed using Mimics software, and data on the thyroid gland was collected. The projected area of the unilateral glandular lobe was measured. The demographic data of the patients, such as sex, age, height, and body mass index, were collected. The influencing factors for the repair area of TGF were analyzed.

RESULTS: As a pedicled flap, the left thyroid lobe could provide a repair area of 7.27 ± 2.00 cm 2 , and the right thyroid lobe could provide 8.09 ± 2.06 cm 2 . A statistically positive correlation was found between the aforementioned area and patients’ height ( P < 0.05).

CONCLUSION: The preoperative repair area of TGF could be measured using enhanced CT and 3D reconstruction for patients with neck tumors. 3D reconstruction can be used to perform preoperative evaluation of TGF application.

PMID:42658033 | DOI:10.4103/ijc.ijc_172_24

Bioinformatics. 2026 Aug 27:btag635. doi: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btag635. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

MOTIVATION: Prioritizing therapeutic targets from high-dimensional transcriptomic profiles is hindered by the underdetermined nature of the p ≫ n setting. While miRNA signatures can inform target prioritization, conventional accuracy-driven methods may yield unstable predictive signatures, reducing downstream network reliability and topology-guided candidate ranking.

RESULTS: We propose TargetPrior, a stability-aware evolutionary learning framework in which EL-CAML derives reproducible miRNA anchors from relapse-associated transcriptomic variation for candidate target prioritization. In childhood acute myeloid leukemia (CAML), EL-CAML identifies a parsimonious 18-miRNA continuous relapse-risk signature and 10 complementary stability-supported biomarkers, yielding 28 miRNAs for literature-curated miRNA-gene network construction. Repeated perturbation analysis supported the stability of high-frequency miRNAs, while analysis of the independent GSE196886 cell-sorted small RNA-seq dataset identified cell-population-specific expression differences. Benchmarking against an expanded set of clinically and biologically supported AML target references showed stronger early-rank retrieval than network-only and statistical approaches. TargetPrior is presented as a computational proof-of-concept for generating prioritized therapeutic hypotheses, rather than as a universal target-discovery solution.

AVAILABILITY: Code is available at: https://github.com/NYCU-ICLAB/TargetPrior and archived on Zenodo (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20394263).

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

PMID:42658031 | DOI:10.1093/bioinformatics/btag635

Stat Med. 2026 Sep;45(20-22):e70720. doi: 10.1002/sim.70720.

ABSTRACT

While balancing covariates between groups is central for observational causal inference, selecting which features to balance remains a challenging problem. Kernel balancing is a promising approach that first estimates a kernel that captures similarity across units and then balances a (possibly low-dimensional) summary of that kernel, indirectly learning important features to balance. In this paper, we propose forest kernel balancing, which leverages the underappreciated fact that tree-based machine learning models, namely random forests and Bayesian additive regression trees (BART), implicitly estimate a kernel based on the co-occurrence of observations in the same terminal leaf node. Thus, even though the resulting kernel is solely a function of baseline features, the selected nonlinearities and other interactions are important for predicting the outcome-and therefore are important for addressing confounding. Through simulations and applied illustrations, we show that forest kernel balancing leads to meaningful computational and statistical improvement relative to standard kernel methods, which do not incorporate outcome information when learning features.

PMID:42658030 | DOI:10.1002/sim.70720

Bioinformatics. 2026 Aug 27:btag640. doi: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btag640. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Timeseries clinical transcriptomic datasets offer the opportunity to gain insights into the dynamics of disease mechanisms/treatment responses. However, their utility in uncovering temporal patterns is often limited by high noise levels and small sample sizes. Leveraging foundational gene embeddings and incorporating interaction information can help address these challenges, improve gene network analysis, and enable the detection of subtle changes that drive disease progression or drug response.

RESULTS: We finetuned gene embeddings from foundation models using healthy tissue gene expression data and used them in temporal GNNs to model gene expression of responder and non-responders to treatment in 4 disease datasets – ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, Alopecia Areata, and psoriasis. Application of our method to these datasets confirmed known mechanisms associated with drug action, and also identified key differences between activated and repressed pathways for responders and non-responders, including B-Cell activation and mitochondria-related activity in ulcerative colitis patients.

CONCLUSION: Finetuning gene embeddings from foundation models provides a richer context to model gene expression data compared to using them in their naive state. Even with smaller sample sizes, results from GNN-based temporal models outperform traditional methods by detecting known mechanisms of response and unraveling role of genes and mechanisms not known to be associated with response and non-response.

CODE AVAILABILITY: Code and data are available in a public GitHub repository – https://github.com/Sanofi-Public/GNN-Timeseries. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20494035.

PMID:42658019 | DOI:10.1093/bioinformatics/btag640

Transl Vis Sci Technol. 2026 Aug 3;15(8):28. doi: 10.1167/tvst.15.8.28.

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: To evaluate how reliably single Goldmann applanation tonometry (GAT) measurements reflect the preceding month’s intraocular pressure (IOP) profile in operated open-angle glaucoma.

METHODS: This longitudinal study included 24 patients with a suprachoroidal telemetric IOP sensor analyzing 156 in-hospital GAT measurements, 154 simultaneous telemetric readings, and 13,734 at-home measurements across follow-up visits. Telemetric data from the 30 days prior to each visit were stratified by time of day and matched to corresponding GAT measurements, which, in turn, were ranked relative to the interquartile range (IQR) of the preceding at-home measurements. Peak-and-trough analyses were performed using hourly aggregated data.

RESULTS: The GAT and telemetric IOP measurements showed good agreement (mean ΔIOP = -0.1 ± 3.0 mm Hg). However, 59.7% of the GAT-measured IOP values exceeded the IQR, and 14.3% fell below the IQR of the corresponding telemetric distributions; only 26.0% were within the IQR. Deviations from the telemetric median were 4.2 ± 2.4 mm Hg (above IQR), -2.3 ± 1.5 mm Hg (below IQR), and 0.5 ± 1.2 mm Hg (within IQR). Of the 99 statistically significant extrema (45 peaks and 54 troughs), most peaks occurred within 3 hours before GAT measurements. Troughs were observed both before and after GAT, but with larger nyctohemeral misalignment to GAT.

CONCLUSIONS: Single GAT measurements frequently failed to represent the underlying 30-day IOP profile and often missed clinically relevant peaks and troughs, despite good pointwise agreement with telemetric measurements.

TRANSLATIONAL RELEVANCE: High-frequency telemetric monitoring provides a more comprehensive assessment of IOP dynamics and may improve individualized glaucoma management compared with infrequent GAT snapshot measurements.

PMID:42658016 | DOI:10.1167/tvst.15.8.28

Front Oncol. 2026 Aug 12;16:1828599. doi: 10.3389/fonc.2026.1828599. eCollection 2026.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Neratinib, an irreversible pan-HER tyrosine kinase inhibitor, is a well-established extended adjuvant therapy for early-stage human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-positive (HER2+) breast cancer. However, its clinical application is often constrained by the high incidence of treatment-related diarrhea. This study sought to assess the dynamic changes in health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and the tolerability of neratinib, with a particular focus on dose escalation strategies and anti-diarrheal prophylaxis, within a real-world Chinese patient cohort.

METHODS: This single-center, prospective observational study included 31 female patients diagnosed with stage I-III HER2-positive breast cancer who initiated neratinib therapy following the completion of trastuzumab-based adjuvant treatment between October 2022 and January 2024. Patients were administered either non-dose-escalation group (240 mg/day) or dose-escalation group (120 mg/160 mg daily during Week 1, 160 mg/200 mg daily during Week 2, and 240 mg daily from Week 3 onward). Diarrhea management was conducted using prophylactic or on-demand loperamide. HRQoL was evaluated longitudinally through the EQ-5D-5L (health utility index and EQ visual analog scale [EQ VAS]) and Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy-Diarrhea (FACIT-D) questionnaires at predefined time points: baseline (D1), D30, D60, D90, D180, and D360. Diarrhea severity was graded according to Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events v5.0 (CTCAE v5.0) criteria. Statistical analyses encompassed descriptive statistics and Wilcoxon signed-rank tests.

RESULTS: The median age of the patients was 48 years (range: 37-65 years), with 58.1% and 41.9% classified as pathological stage II and III, respectively. A total of 64 diarrhea events were recorded (grade 1, 48.4%; grade 2, 50.0%; grade 3, 1.6%), with no grade 4 events or fatalities. Permanent discontinuation of treatment due to diarrhea occurred in 16.1% of patients, 23.5% in the dose-escalation group vs. 7.1% in the non-dose-escalation group. HRQoL temporarily declined during the early treatment phase, as evidenced by a reduction in the EQ-5D-5L health utility index from 0.96 ± 0.07 at baseline to 0.89 ± 0.15 at D30 (p=0.011) and a decrease in the EQ VAS score from 89.94 ± 9.92 to 84.16 ± 12.64 at D30 (p=0.018). However, HRQoL demonstrated progressive recovery from D90 onward, with scores surpassing baseline levels by D180 (EQ-5D-5L utility index: 0.96 ± 0.07; EQ VAS: 89.92 ± 7.74) and D360 (utility index: 0.97 ± 0.06; EQ VAS: 92.84 ± 7.19). The FACIT-D score showed an initial improvement (baseline: 58.81 ± 7.95 vs. D30: 66.90 ± 11.39, p=0.002), followed by stabilization at baseline levels from D180 onward. Notably, no disease recurrence or distant metastasis was observed in patients who completed the treatment.

CONCLUSIONS: Neratinib-associated HRQoL impairment is transient, with initial declines primarily due to diarrhea, which typically resolves within 3-6 months of treatment. With the implementation of appropriate supportive measures, such as loperamide prophylaxis and dose modifications, the majority of patients experience sustained HRQoL recovery, and even improvement, over a 12-month period.

PMID:42656231 | PMC:PMC13506311 | DOI:10.3389/fonc.2026.1828599

Front Psychol. 2026 Aug 12;17:1861330. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1861330. eCollection 2026.

ABSTRACT

Physical education assessments that count toward university admission or course grades typically measure only a student’s fitness at a single time point, overlooking incremental progress and thus providing little incentive for those with lower baseline performance. This study evaluated the feasibility of a multidimensional scoring method that captures changes in standing long jump performance, an indicator of lower-limb explosive power and better reflects student learning. This study had two phases. Phase 1 combined a two-round Delphi process, AHP weighting, and standing long jump data from 211 classes (N = 4,109) to develop the multidimensional evaluation model. Phase 2 is a quasi-experimental study where 4 year 1-2 university classes was randomly selected and assigned to the intervention (IG) and control group (CG). Learning motivation was measured using the college student version of the Work Preference Inventory. Difference-in-difference model was used to analyze the association between motivation and standing long jump distance (post-pre) between IG and CG. Both IG and CG showed significant improvements in both standing long jump and motivation, with IG having significantly better outcomes. The time interaction between the groups confirmed the statistical significance. The OLS regression results showed both internal motivation (p < 0.001) and external motivation (p < 0.001) had significant positive relationship. Both boys’ (p < 0.001) and girls’ (p = 0.029) showed significant improvement. These findings suggest that a multidimensional, progress-sensitive scoring system can enhance students’ motivation and foster positive behavioral change in physical education.

PMID:42656224 | PMC:PMC13506395 | DOI:10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1861330