Tag: nevin manimala

Gynecol Oncol. 2022 Jun 6:S0090-8258(22)00330-4. doi: 10.1016/j.ygyno.2022.05.019. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: Previous studies suggest that sleeping problems are frequent after cervical cancer. However, the evidence on the use of hypnotics is sparse. We investigated if women diagnosed with cervical cancer have an increased risk of using hypnotics and identified risk factors for prolonged use.

METHODS: In this nationwide register-based cohort study, 4264 women diagnosed with cervical cancer from 1997 to 2013 and 36,632 cancer-free women were followed in registers until 2016. Prolonged use of hypnotics was defined as more than three prescriptions with no more than three months in between. Data were analysed using Cox proportional hazards regression models and multistate Markov models separately for women with localized and advanced cervical cancer.

RESULTS: The rate of first use of hypnotics was substantially increased during the first year after cervical cancer diagnosis compared to cancer-free women (HR_localized 4.4, 95% CI 3.9-5.1; HR_advanced 8.9, 95% CI 7.5-10.6) and remained markedly increased for up to five years after diagnosis. Dependent on stage of disease and age, 1.4 to 4.7 excess women per 100 with cervical cancer were prolonged users of hypnotics compared to cancer-free women one year after diagnosis. Risk factors for prolonged use of hypnotics were higher age, short education, previous use of antidepressants or anxiolytics, and advanced disease.

CONCLUSIONS: Women diagnosed with cervical cancer are at increased risk of prolonged use of hypnotics. For the majority, treatment with hypnotics is initiated within the first year after cancer diagnosis, but the rate of first use is increased for up to five years.

PMID:35680430 | DOI:10.1016/j.ygyno.2022.05.019

Eur J Public Health. 2022 Jun 9:ckac063. doi: 10.1093/eurpub/ckac063. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: In May 2020, the European Union Tobacco Products Directive mandated that EU member states, including Poland, ban the sale of menthol cigarettes. With menthol making up 28% of cigarette sales before the ban, Poland is the country with likely the largest menthol cigarette sales share in the world to ban their sale. We analyze how this ban changed the Polish tobacco market.

METHODS: We use monthly NielsenIQ data (May 2018-April 2021) on sales of cigarettes and roll-your-own tobacco by menthol and standard flavor in eight regions of Poland. We set up a bite-style regression model controlling for pre-ban menthol share, climate, border opening status, and Apple movement data to estimate the effect of the May 2020 menthol ban.

RESULTS: We find menthol cigarette sales fell at least 97% after the menthol cigarette ban across Poland and standard cigarette sales replaced them. Regression modeling indicates that total cigarette sales fell, after the ban, an average of 2.2 sticks per capita per month, equal to a 2.9% decline, however, results were not significant (P = 0.199). The bite component of our model reveals total cigarette sales did decline significantly in the regions with the highest pre-ban menthol sales shares. Roll-your-own tobacco sales increased by a statistically insignificant 0.03 stick-equivalents after the ban (P = 0.798). Product prices also fell in the wake of the menthol ban.

CONCLUSIONS: In Poland, the EU state with the one of the largest pre-ban menthol shares, we find mixed evidence that the ban is working as intended.

PMID:35679583 | DOI:10.1093/eurpub/ckac063

PLoS One. 2022 Jun 9;17(6):e0265930. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0265930. eCollection 2022.

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: Kidney dysfunction is prevalent in oncology patients and has an impact on their treatment and quality of life. The aim of our study was to analyze the prevalence of CKD in a large cohort of several types of cancer patients in an East European Region.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: We conducted an observational retrospective cohort study on 5831 consecutive, biopsy-diagnosed cancer patients between January 2019 -December 2020 in the largest oncology hospital and outpatient clinic in Western Romania. 4342 subjects were included in the statistical analysis.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: From the 24 cancer types, the most prevalent cancers were represented by: breast (22.02%), lung (10.18%) and colonic cancer (9.51%). The prevalence of CKD (G3 -G5) was 12.27% after the first year of follow-up and 13.42 after the second year. The prevalence of CKD was higher in patients with renal (50%), urinary tract (33.6%) and pancreatic cancers (19.6%) and lower in patients with colonic cancers (5.3%) and brain tumors (2.5%). At the end of our 2-year survey period, 0,7% of the CKD cases had an eGFR around 6 ml/min/1.73m2 -an indication for renal replacement therapy.

CONCLUSION: Oncology patients have a significantly higher prevalence of CKD compared to the general population, dependent of the age of the patients and the type of cancer. The prevalence of advanced CKD was surprisingly high (stages G4-G5 Pre-Dialysis 22.15%) one third of the CKD- G5 patients having indication for initiation of renal replacement therapy. An onco- nephrology team should be needed for the best medical care of these patients.

PMID:35679539 | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0265930

West J Emerg Med. 2022 May 5;23(3):432-438. doi: 10.5811/westjem.2022.1.55029.

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)-related articles published in emergency medicine (EM) journals provide insight into the responses of EM researchers and journal editors globally to a newly emerging infectious disease. We studied trends in the number, types, and national origins of COVID-19 literature published in EM journals to investigate knowledge transmission via scientific publication during the pandemic.

METHODS: This was a retrospective observational study. The EM journal list was adopted from the 2019 Journal Citation Reports. We retrieved data from the SCOPUS database, limited to publication year 2020, and identified COVID-19 publications when the title, abstract, or keywords included “COVID” or “SARS.” The outcome measurements were as follows: 1) monthly COVID-19 publication numbers in EM journals; 2) the percentage of COVID-19 published literature in terms of total journal publications; 3) the countries, affiliations, and authors of COVID-19-related publications; 4) the differences in the proportions of “Articles” and “Letters” between COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 publications; and 5) the total, average, and maximum number of times cited for different types of COVID-19-related scientific literature.

RESULTS: We retrieved a total of 7,457 published papers from 31 EM journals. There were 765 (10.26%) COVID-19-related publications in 27 journals contributed by 67 countries; the first authors were from 49 countries. The monthly COVID-19 publication numbers in the categories of “Letters” and “Articles” were nearly equal before July 2020. The yearly proportions of COVID-19-focused articles and letters were 48.8% and 29.9%, respectively, while non-COVID-19 proportions were 72.1% and 9.8%, respectively. The chi-squared statistic of the differences between the numbers of articles and letters in COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 published research was significant (P < .001).

CONCLUSION: An analysis of COVID-19 publications in EM journals indicated that, in the early stage of a newly emerging infectious disease, the number of letters and articles increased simultaneously. The proportion of COVID-19-focused letters was higher than those published on other topics. The “Article” and “Review” category of COVID-19 research was cited more times than that of “Letters.”

PMID:35679497 | DOI:10.5811/westjem.2022.1.55029

Science. 2022 Jun 10;376(6598):1220-1223. doi: 10.1126/science.abj2972. Epub 2022 Jun 9.

ABSTRACT

Infant microbiome assembly has been intensely studied in infants from industrialized nations, but little is known about this process in nonindustrialized populations. We deeply sequenced infant stool samples from the Hadza hunter-gatherers of Tanzania and analyzed them in a global meta-analysis. Infant microbiomes develop along lifestyle-associated trajectories, with more than 20% of genomes detected in the Hadza infant gut representing novel species. Industrialized infants-even those who are breastfed-have microbiomes characterized by a paucity of Bifidobacterium infantis and gene cassettes involved in human milk utilization. Strains within lifestyle-associated taxonomic groups are shared between mother-infant dyads, consistent with early life inheritance of lifestyle-shaped microbiomes. The population-specific differences in infant microbiome composition and function underscore the importance of studying microbiomes from people outside of wealthy, industrialized nations.

PMID:35679413 | DOI:10.1126/science.abj2972

Aust Endod J. 2022 Jun 9. doi: 10.1111/aej.12641. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

This study compared the effects of 3 different cavity disinfection protocols (CDP) on the shear bond strength (SBS) of resin-modified glass ionomer cement (RM-GIC) to mineral trioxide aggregate (MTA). One hundred eighty standard holes were prepared and filled with MTA. They then divided into 3 main groups based on the chosen time intervals (15 min, 24 h, and 72 h). Main groups were divided into 3 subgroups based on the CDP [chlorhexidine gluconate (CHX), ozone, laser, and control]. RM-GIC was applied on MTA after CDP for all groups. A universal testing device was then used for test and the data was statistically analysed. CHX showed significantly lower SBS values except ozone and laser than the control (p < 0.05). There were no statistically significant differences among the time intervals. As a result, CHX decreased the bond strength between the MTA and RM-GIC while ozone and laser had no negative effect.

PMID:35679483 | DOI:10.1111/aej.12641

IEEE Trans Neural Netw Learn Syst. 2022 Jun 9;PP. doi: 10.1109/TNNLS.2022.3175627. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Steganography is an important and prevailing information hiding tool to perform secret message transmission in an open environment. Existing steganography methods can mainly fall into two categories: predefined rule-based and data-driven methods. The former is susceptible to the statistical attack, while the latter adopts the deep convolution neural networks to promote security. However, deep learning-based methods suffer from perceptible artificial artifacts or deep steganalysis. In this article, we introduce a novel composition-aware image steganography (CAIS) to guarantee both visual security and resistance to deep steganalysis through the self-generated supervision. The key innovation is an adversarial composition estimation module, which has integrated the rule-based composition method and generative adversarial network to help synthesize steganographic images with more naturalness. We first perform a rule-based image blending method to obtain infinite synthetically data-label pairs. Then, we utilize an adversarial composition estimation branch to recognize the message feature pattern from the composite image based on these self-generated data-label pairs. Through the adversarial training, we force the steganography function to synthesize steganographic images, which can fool the composition estimation network. Thus, the proposed CAIS can achieve better information hiding and higher security to resist deep steganalysis. Furthermore, an effective global-and-part checking is designed to alleviate visual artifacts caused by hiding secret information. We conduct a comprehensive analysis of CAIS from various aspects (, security and robustness) to verify the superior performance of the proposed method. Comprehensive experimental results on three large-scale widely used datasets have demonstrated the superior performance of our CAIS compared with several state-of-the-art approaches.

PMID:35679383 | DOI:10.1109/TNNLS.2022.3175627

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2022 Jun 14;119(24):e2117234119. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2117234119. Epub 2022 Jun 9.

ABSTRACT

Investigating neural interactions is essential to understanding the neural basis of behavior. Many statistical methods have been used for analyzing neural activity, but estimating the direction of network interactions correctly and efficiently remains a difficult problem. Here, we derive dynamical differential covariance (DDC), a method based on dynamical network models that detects directional interactions with low bias and high noise tolerance under nonstationarity conditions. Moreover, DDC scales well with the number of recording sites and the computation required is comparable to that needed for covariance. DDC was validated and compared favorably with other methods on networks with false positive motifs and multiscale neural simulations where the ground-truth connectivity was known. When applied to recordings of resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI), DDC consistently detected regional interactions with strong structural connectivity in over 1,000 individual subjects obtained by diffusion MRI (dMRI). DDC is a promising family of methods for estimating connectivity that can be generalized to a wide range of dynamical models and recording techniques and to other applications where system identification is needed.

PMID:35679342 | DOI:10.1073/pnas.2117234119

PLoS One. 2022 Jun 9;17(6):e0269000. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0269000. eCollection 2022.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Studies have shown that women aging with HIV have significantly lower health-related quality of life (HRQoL) compared to women without HIV. However, no studies have examined this issue in Latin America and the Caribbean. We aimed to explore HRQoL measured by the 36-Item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36) among women aging with and without HIV in Peru.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: We conducted a cross-sectional study at a large HIV-clinic in Peru. Outcomes of the SF-36 were evaluated, exploring the relationship between physical activity (International Physical Activity Questionnaire), sociodemographic factors (ethnicity, alcohol/tobacco use, age, BMI) and clinical data (AIDS progression, treatment duration, CD4+ cell count and viral load, years since HIV diagnosis) with HRQoL using regression analysis. Statistical significance was set with a two-tailed p-value <0.05.

RESULTS: We enrolled 427 women (175 HIV-infected) with mean age of 54±8 years. From the SF-36 individual domains: physical functioning, role limitations due to physical and emotional health, and emotional wellbeing were significantly lower for HIV-infected women. Summary component scores were lower for the HIV-subset for both physical (45.8 vs 47.3) and mental (45.1 vs 45.8) components, although they did not achieve statistical significance. Regression analysis of the HIV-infected women revealed that the physical component score was significantly associated with physical activity, ethnicity, and chronic comorbidities while the mental component was significantly associated with physical activity, employment, and CD4+ cell count.

CONCLUSION: In our study, HIV-infected women scored lower in both physical and mental component scores. Important determinants for each component included CD4+ cell count as an assessment of HIV severity for the mental component, and ethnicity, reflecting socio-cultural factors, for the physical component. These results reveal the importance of a holistic approach to addressing HRQoL in this population. Better understanding of these factors will help shape future policies and interventions to improve HRQoL of women aging with HIV.

PMID:35679332 | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0269000

Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2022 Jun 9. doi: 10.1164/rccm.202110-2418OC. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: The relationship between eczema, wheeze/asthma and rhinitis is complex, and epidemiology and mechanisms of their comorbidities is unclear.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate within-individual patterns of morbidity of eczema, wheeze and rhinitis from birth to adolescence/early adulthood.

METHODS: We investigated onset/progression/resolution of eczema, wheeze and rhinitis using descriptive statistics, sequence mining and Latent Markov modelling (LMM) in four population-based birth cohorts. We used logistic regression to ascertain if early-life eczema or wheeze, or genetic factors (filaggrin mutations and 17q21 variants), increase the risk of multimorbidity.

RESULTS: Single conditions, although the most prevalent, were observed significantly less frequently than by chance. There was considerable variation in the timing of onset/remission/persistence/intermittence. Multimorbidity of eczema+wheeze+rhinitis was rare, but significantly over-represented (3-6 times more often than by chance). Although infantile eczema was associated with subsequent multimorbidity, most children with eczema (75.4%) did not progress to any multimorbidity pattern. FLG mutations and rs7216389 were not associated with persistence of eczema/wheeze as single conditions, but both increased the risk of multimorbidity (FLG by 2-3-fold, rs7216389 risk variant by 1.4-1.7-fold). LMM revealed 5 latent states (No disease/low risk; Mainly eczema; Mainly Wheeze; Mainly rhinitis; Multimorbidity). The most likely transition to Multimorbidity was from Eczema state (0.21). However, although this was one of the highest transition probabilities, only 1/5 of those with eczema transitioned to multimorbidity.

CONCLUSIONS: Atopic diseases fit a multimorbidity framework, with no evidence for sequential “atopic march” progression. The highest transition to multimorbidity was from eczema, but most children with eczema (>three quarters) had no comorbidities.

PMID:35679320 | DOI:10.1164/rccm.202110-2418OC