Nevin Manimala

Sex Med. 2021 Jun 1;9(3):100363. doi: 10.1016/j.esxm.2021.100363. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: There are many Western reports on factors influencing coital frequency among men. However, no articles could be found about the factors influencing sexual activity among Chinese men.

AIM: The aim of this study was to identify the factors that influence the coital frequency of Chinese men.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The main outcome measures included self-reported monthly coital frequency, age, occupation, education level, andrology-related scales and dietary habits.

METHODS: Data for 1,407 men aged 18-79 years were collected in the Health Management Center of the Third Xiangya Hospital of Central South University from January 2019 to May 2019. The respondents completed the questionnaires independently or with the help of an interviewer (who read or explained the questionnaires to them) to analyse the factors that influence coital frequency.

RESULTS: In the previous 6 months, the sample had a mean monthly coital frequency (±SD) of 4.34 ± 3.18. Univariate logistic regression results indicated that the number of children (P = 0.004), IIEF-5 scores (P <0.001), EHSs (P <0.001) and frequency of milk consumption (P = 0.001) were associated with more frequent sexual activity. These statistical associations did not change after further adjustment for age, occupation, and reproductive history. We observed that the frequency of sexual activity showed an increasing trend with a greater number of children, higher IIEF-5 scores, higher EHSs and greater frequency of milk consumption (test for trend, P<0.05). Both univariate and multivariate analysis results indicated that the frequency of sexual activity decreased with increasing age (test for trend, P<0.001).

CONCLUSION: The coital frequency of Chinese men is associated with erectile function, anthropometric parameters, age, occupation, and dietary habits. Xiang Y, Peng J, Yang J, et al. What Influences Coital Frequency Among Chinese Men?: A Cross-Sectional Study. Sex Med 2021;9:100363.

PMID:34090240 | DOI:10.1016/j.esxm.2021.100363

Int J Nurs Stud. 2021 May 18;120:103976. doi: 10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2021.103976. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: A pressure injury is an area of localised damage to the skin and underlying tissues. Patient repositioning is an important prevention strategy, as those with limited mobility are at increased risk of developing pressure injury.

OBJECTIVES: To assess the clinical and cost-effectiveness of repositioning schedules on the prevention of pressure injury in adults.

DESIGN: Systematic review and meta-analysis.

DATA SOURCES: The Cochrane Wounds Specialised Register; the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials; MEDLINE (Ovid); Embase (Ovid) and Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature Plus (EBSCO) were searched in February 2019. No restrictions were applied to language or date of publication.

REVIEW METHODS: Studies were eligible if they were randomised controlled trials including cluster trials, published or unpublished, and undertaken in any healthcare setting that assessed the clinical and/or cost effectiveness of repositioning schedules for prevention of pressure injury in adults. Methodological quality of the studies was independently assessed by three authors. Heterogeneity between studies was assessed using the I² statistic, and the pooled risk ratios along with their 95% confidence intervals were estimated using either fixed and random effects models, as indicated. Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation was used to appraise the certainty of evidence.

RESULTS: Eight eligible trials involving 3,941 participants published between 2004 and 2018 were identified. Trials compared either different repositioning frequencies or positioning regimens. Three trials (1074 participants) compared 2-hourly with 4-hourly repositioning (risk ratio 1.06, 95% confidence interval 0.80 to 1.41; I² = 45%). Two other trials (252 participants) compared a 30-degree tilt with a 90-degree tilt (risk ratio0.62, 95% confidence interval 0.10 to 3.97; I² =69%). Only two trials included economic analyses, both amongst nursing home residents. One study estimated the costs of repositioning to be Canadian dollars $11.05 and Canadian dollars $16.74 less per resident per day for the 3-hourly or 4-hourly regimens, respectively, when compared to 2-hourly regimen. The second study reported 3-hourly repositioning using a 30-degree tilt to cost €46.50 (95% confidence interval €1.25 to €74.60) less per patient in nursing time compared with 6-hourly repositioning with a 90-degree lateral rotation.

CONCLUSION: It remains unclear which repositioning frequencies or positions are most effective in preventing pressure injury in adults. There is limited evidence to support the cost effectiveness of repositioning frequencies and positions. Registration: Cochrane protocol published in 2012.

PMID:34090235 | DOI:10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2021.103976

Acta Anaesthesiol Scand. 2021 Jun 5. doi: 10.1111/aas.13937. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Randomised clinical trials (RCTs) conducted in intensive care units (ICUs) frequently focus on all-cause mortality, but other patient-important outcomes are increasingly used and recommended. Their use, however, is not straightforward: choices and definitions, operationalisation of death, handling of missing data, choice of effect measures, and statistical analyses for these outcomes vary greatly.

METHODS: We will conduct a scoping review in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews. We will search 10 selected general and speciality journals for RCTs conducted in adult ICU patients from 2018 and onwards reporting at least one patient-important outcome other than mortality (including days alive without life support/days alive and out of hospital-type outcomes, health-related quality of life, functional/cognitive/neurological outcomes and other general patient-important outcomes). We will summarise data on outcome measures and definitions, assessment time points, proportions and handling of death, proportions and handling of missing data, and effect measures and statistical methods used for analysis.

DISCUSSION: The outlined scoping review will provide an overview of choices, definitions and handling of patient-important outcomes other than mortality in contemporary RCTs conducted in adult ICU patients. This may guide discussions with patients and relatives, the design of future RCTs, and research on optimal outcome choices and handling.

PMID:34089522 | DOI:10.1111/aas.13937

Pharmacol Rep. 2021 Jun 5. doi: 10.1007/s43440-021-00288-2. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: The strong inter-individual pharmacokinetic variability and the narrow therapeutic window of tacrolimus (TAC) have hampered the clinical application. Gene polymorphisms play an important role in TAC pharmacokinetics. Here, we investigate the influence of genotypes of IL-10, CYP3A5, CYP2C8, and ABCB1 on dose-adjusted trough blood concentrations (the C₀/D ratio) of TAC to reveal unclear genetic factors that may affect TAC dose requirements for renal transplant recipients.

METHODS: Genetic polymorphisms of IL-10, CYP3A5, CYP2C8, and ABCB1 in 188 renal transplant recipients were determined using Kompetitive Allele Specific PCR (KASP). Statistical analysis was applied to examine the effect of genetic variation on the TAC C₀/D at 5, 10, 15, and 30 days after transplantation.

RESULTS: Recipients carrying the IL-10 -819C > T TT genotype showed a significantly higher TAC C₀/D than those with the TC/CC genotype (p < 0.05). Additionally, the TAC C₀/D values of recipients with the capacity for low IL-10 activity (-819 TT) engrafted with CYP3A5 non-expressers were higher compared to the intermediate/high activity of IL-10 -819C > T TC or CC carrying CYP3A5 expressers, and the difference was statistically significant at different time points (p < 0.05).

CONCLUSIONS: Genetic polymorphisms of IL-10 -819C > T and CYP3A5 6986A > G influence the TAC C₀/D, which may contribute to variation in TAC dose requirements during the early post-transplantation period. Detecting IL-10 -819C > T and CYP3A5 6986A > G polymorphisms may allow determination of individualized tacrolimus dosage regimens for renal transplant recipients during the early post-transplantation period.

PMID:34089513 | DOI:10.1007/s43440-021-00288-2

Obes Surg. 2021 Jun 5. doi: 10.1007/s11695-021-05511-w. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: This study assessed the benefits and efficacy of bariatric surgery (BS) in reducing the risk of cancer in Asians with morbid obesity.

METHODS: Records for patients aged between 18 and 55 years whose diagnoses corresponded with the ICD-9 codes for obesity and BS were extracted from the National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD) in Taiwan between 2000 and 2015. The patients who underwent BS (BS group), those who did not undergo BS (NS group), and the general population (GP group) were propensity score matched. The outcome was newly diagnosed malignancy. Data were extracted from the Registry for Catastrophic Illness Patient Database (RCIPD) of the NHIRD.

RESULTS: The BS group developed significantly less malignancy (1.18%) than the GP group (1.46%, p = 0.0364). There was no statistically significant difference in malignancy risk between the BS and GP groups (aHR =1.00, p = 0.9997). The NS group developed significantly higher malignancy (2.48%) than the GP group (1.97%, p < 0.0001). There was a significantly higher malignancy risk in the NS group (aHR =1.22, p < 0.0001) than in the GP group. In the subgroup analysis, the malignancy risks of the NS group were significantly higher in the subgroup of men aged between 18 and 35 years (aHR =1.37, p = 0.003) and women aged between 18 and 35 years (aHR = 1.62, p < 0.0001), and 35-55 years (aHR = 1.27, p < 0.0001). All the subgroup analyses between the BS and GP groups demonstrated no significant differences.

CONCLUSIONS: Our study demonstrated that BS reduced the risk of malignancy in patients with morbid obesity, particularly in women and young men.

PMID:34089441 | DOI:10.1007/s11695-021-05511-w

Int J Comput Assist Radiol Surg. 2021 Jun 5. doi: 10.1007/s11548-021-02386-1. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a growing therapy for a variety of psychiatric and neurological disorders that arise from or are modulated by cortical regions of the brain represented by singular 3D target points. These target points are often determined manually with assistance from a pre-operative T1-weighted MRI, although there is growing interest in automatic target point localisation using an atlas. However, both approaches can be time-consuming which has an effect on the clinical workflow, and the latter does not take into account patient variability such as the varying number of cortical gyri where these targets are located.

METHODS: This paper proposes a multi-resolution convolutional neural network for point localisation in MR images for a priori defined points in increasingly finely resolved versions of the input image. This approach is both fast and highly memory efficient, allowing it to run in high-throughput centres, and has the capability of distinguishing between patients with high levels of anatomical variability.

RESULTS: Preliminary experiments have found the accuracy of this network to be [Formula: see text] mm, compared to [Formula: see text] mm for deformable registration and [Formula: see text] mm for a human expert. For most treatment points, the human expert and proposed CNN statistically significantly outperform registration, but neither statistically significantly outperforms the other, suggesting that the proposed network has human-level performance.

CONCLUSIONS: The human-level performance of this network indicates that it can improve TMS planning by automatically localising target points in seconds, avoiding more time-consuming registration or manual point localisation processes. This is particularly beneficial for out-of-hospital centres with limited computational resources where TMS is increasingly being administered.

PMID:34089439 | DOI:10.1007/s11548-021-02386-1

Radiol Med. 2021 Jun 5. doi: 10.1007/s11547-021-01371-7. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: To evaluate CT and laboratory changes in COVID-19 patients treated with tocilizumab, compared to a control group, throughout a combined semiquantitative and texture analysis of images.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: From March 11 to April 20, 2020, 57 SARS-CoV-2 positive patients were retrospectively compared: group T (n = 30) receiving tocilizumab and group non-T (n = 27) undergoing only antivirals/antimalarials. Chest-CT and laboratory findings were analyzed before and after treatment. CT evaluation included both semiquantitative scoring and texture analysis of all parenchymal lesions. Survival and recovery analyses were also provided with Kaplan-Meier method.

RESULTS: In group T, no significant differences were found for CT score after treatment, while several texture features significantly changed, including mean attenuation (p < 0.0001), skewness (p < 0.0001), entropy (p = 0.0146) and higher-order parameters, suggesting considerable fading of parenchymal lesions. PaO₂/FiO₂ mean value significantly increased after treatment, from 240 ± 93 to 363 ± 107 (p = 0.0003), with parallel decrease in inflammatory biomarkers (CRP, D-dimer and LDH). In group non-T, CT scoring, texture and laboratory parameters showed significant worsening at follow-up. Findings were clinically associated with opposite trends between two groups, with reduction of severe cases in group T (from 21/30 to 5/30; p < 0.0001) as compared to a significant worsening in group non-T (severe cases increasing from 6/27 to 14/27; p = 0.0473). Probability of discharge was significantly higher in group T (p < 0.0001), as well as survival rate, although not statistically significant.

CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest the potential role of CT texture analysis for assessing response to treatment in COVID-19 pneumonia, using Tocilizumab, as compared to semiquantitative evaluation, providing insight into the intrinsic parenchymal changes.

PMID:34089436 | DOI:10.1007/s11547-021-01371-7

Cardiovasc Drugs Ther. 2021 Jun 5. doi: 10.1007/s10557-021-07209-8. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: Atrial high-rate episodes (AHREs) recorded with cardiac implantable electronic devices (CIEDs) have been associated with the development of clinical atrial fibrillation (AF) and increase in stroke and death risk. We sought to perform a systematic review with a meta-analysis to evaluate the prevalence of AHREs detected by CIEDs, their association with stroke risk, development of clinical AF, and mortality among patients without a documented history of AF.

METHODS: We searched several databases, ClinicalTrials.gov, references of reviews, and meeting abstract books without any language restrictions up to 9 September 2020. We studied patients with CIEDs in whom AHREs were detected. Exclusion criterion was AF history. Our primary outcome was the risk of ischemic stroke in patients with AHREs.

RESULTS: We deemed eligible eight studies for the meta-analysis enrolling a total of 4322 patients with CIED and without a documented AF history. The overall AHRE incidence ratio was estimated to be 17.56 (95% CI, 8.61 to 35.79) cases per 100 person-years. Evidence of moderate certainty suggests that patients with documented AHREs were 4.45 times (95% CI 2.87-6.91) more likely to develop clinical AF. Evidence of low confidence suggests that AHREs were associated with a 1.90-fold increased stroke risk (95% CI 1.19-3.05). AHREs were not associated with a statistically significant increased mortality risk.

CONCLUSION: The present systematic review and meta-analysis demonstrated that among patients without a documented history of AF, the detection of AHREs by CIEDs was associated with significant increased risk of clinical AF and stroke.

REGISTRATION NUMBER (DOI): Available in https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/ZRF6M .

PMID:34089429 | DOI:10.1007/s10557-021-07209-8

J Relig Health. 2021 Jun 5. doi: 10.1007/s10943-021-01301-x. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study was to examine the effects of sexual behaviour, intercourse, satisfaction-related myths and spirituality on sexual dysfunctions in Muslim pregnant women. The study had a descriptive, cross-sectional and correlational design and was performed with 215 Muslim pregnant women. Descriptive statistics and multiple regression analyses were utilized for data analysis. As a result of the multiple regression analyses, sexual dysfunctions were most affected by sexual behaviour myths and least affected by perceived spirituality. It can be suggested that sexuality should be incorporated into prenatal care and counselling.

PMID:34089421 | DOI:10.1007/s10943-021-01301-x

Ecohealth. 2021 Jun 5. doi: 10.1007/s10393-021-01523-1. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Soil microbes are important for public health. Increasing urbanisation is adversely affecting soil microbiota, which may be contributing to the global rise of immune-related diseases. Fungi are key components of urban environments that can be negatively impacted by altered land-use, land-management and climate change, and are implicated in the development and exacerbation of non-communicable diseases such as allergy, asthma and chronic inflammatory conditions. Fungal metagenomics is building knowledge on fungi within different environments (the environmental mycobiome), fungi on and within the human body (the human mycobiome), and their association with disease. Here, we demonstrate the added value of a multi-region metabarcoding approach to analyse soil mycobiomes from five urban greenspaces (lawns, parklands, bareground, young forest and old forest). While results were comparable across the three regions (ITS1, ITS2 and LSU), each identified additional fungal taxa that were unique to the region. Combining the results therefore provided a more comprehensive analysis across all fungal taxonomic ranks, identifying statistically significant differences in the fungal composition of the five soil types. Assignment of fungal taxa into ecological guilds revealed those differences of biological relevance to public health. The greatest differences were between the soil mycobiome of lawns and forests. Of most concern was the significant increase in the known human allergens Alternaria, Bipolaris, Cladosporium and Fusarium within urban lawn and parkland vs forest soils. By improving our understanding of local variations in fungal taxa across urban greenspaces, we have the potential to boost the health of local residents through improved urban planning.

PMID:34089413 | DOI:10.1007/s10393-021-01523-1