Tag: statistics

Methods Mol Biol. 2026;3031:377-398. doi: 10.1007/978-1-0716-5253-4_29.

ABSTRACT

Shaped by evolution, human skin cells have acquired a remarkable capacity to detect and react to sunlight photons through a wide array of photochemical processes. These reactions trigger intricate intracellular signaling cascades, ultimately resulting in photobiological effects that help regulate skin cell homeostasis. Some of these photobiological responses (also so-called photobiomodulation or low-level light therapy) are capable of initiating profound and beneficial therapeutic effects. To identify the regimes for these light-based therapeutic solutions, one needs to carefully decipher the physical, optical, biological, and chemical conditions that all need to be fulfilled to facilitate such positive photobiological effects. Here, we provide the protocols specifically developed to investigate multidimensional parameter space driving photobiological interactions triggered by light in the cells of human integumentary system. The approach also includes the so-called design of experiment (DoE), a statistical method, which allows for the investigation of multidimensional parameters landscapes. This goes hand in hand with sharing practical tips for the design of light-based devices for experimental work. We illustrate practical applications of our methods and light-based devices by sharing comprehensive experimental datasets, highlighting both the robustness and reproducibility of the results.

PMID:42149463 | DOI:10.1007/978-1-0716-5253-4_29

Ophthalmic Physiol Opt. 2026 May 18. doi: 10.1007/s44402-026-00093-5. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: To evaluate systematically the effect of different concentrations of atropine eye drops on accommodative amplitude and binocular visual function in children and adolescents with myopia.

METHODS: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials was conducted in accordance with PRISMA 2020 guidelines and registered in PROSPERO (registration number: CRD420261297760). PubMed, Web of Science and Scopus were searched up to January 15, 2025. Eligible studies compared atropine eye drops (0.01-1%) with placebo, single-vision correction or no treatment and reported accommodative or binocular vision outcomes. The primary outcome was the change in accommodative amplitude. Secondary outcomes included accommodative lag, stereoacuity, heterophoria and fusional vergence. Mean differences (MD) with 95% confidence intervals (CI) were pooled using fixed- or random-effects models based on heterogeneity.

RESULTS: Thirteen randomised controlled trials were included, most of which were conducted in Asian populations. Low-dose atropine (0.01%) was associated with a small but statistically significant reduction in accommodative amplitude (MD: -0.84 D, 95% CI: -1.50 to -0.18), with substantial heterogeneity and no consistent effects at individual follow-up time points. Intermediate concentrations (0.02-0.03%) showed variable and heterogeneous effects. Atropine 0.05% produced a consistent and clinically meaningful reduction in accommodative amplitude (MD: -1.96 D, 95% CI: -2.36 to -1.57) and measurable changes in binocular parameters. Higher concentrations (≥0.1%) resulted in marked cycloplegic effects.

CONCLUSIONS: The effects of atropine on accommodation and binocular visual function are dose-dependent. Low-dose atropine demonstrates a favourable functional safety profile, while higher concentrations are associated with clinically relevant accommodative impairment.

PMID:42149424 | DOI:10.1007/s44402-026-00093-5

Environ Monit Assess. 2026 May 18;198(6):605. doi: 10.1007/s10661-026-15472-1.

ABSTRACT

The development processes of soil are influenced by temperature and precipitation; moreover, changes in soil properties are influenced by land use factors. This study aimed to identify the pattern of changes in climate over 40 years (from 1985-2024) and, concomitantly, the spatial and temporal variabilities in the soil properties of Sylhet, a humid subtropical region of Bangladesh. Soil samples were taken from 8 unions of the Sylhet sadar upazila during 2024 and tested in the laboratory to determine the present status of different soil parameters. The temporal changes in soil properties were assessed by comparing the laboratory-analysed data with soil resource development institute-reported soil data from 2007. The annual maximum temperature during the last 20 years of the study (2005-2024) increased by 0.42°C on average, and the hottest year was 2023. The total annual precipitation sharply decreased by 762.34 mm compared with that in the first 20 years (1985-2004), with continuous below-normal precipitation events (-1270.96 mm to -104.32 mm) from 2018-2023 and high interannual variability. In addition, this study revealed greater spatial variability in soils than temporal variability, which was influenced mainly by inherent soil characteristics such as texture and pH and assumed land management practices. Moderate temporal variability in soil organic carbon and other nutrient availability might be associated with changing climates. These findings on spatial and temporal changes in soil properties are expected to be helpful for guiding future soil and crop management in humid subtropical regions in a better way under changing climates.

PMID:42149408 | DOI:10.1007/s10661-026-15472-1

J Community Genet. 2026 May 18;17(3):63. doi: 10.1007/s12687-026-00899-3.

ABSTRACT

Hemoglobinopathies remain a major public health concern in Tunisia. Effective prevention depends on informed prenatal screening, yet the role of health literacy in screening acceptability is poorly documented in North Africa. This pilot study developed and culturally adapted a 9-item health literacy questionnaire based on Nutbeam’s multidimensional framework and examined its direct and indirect associations, via perceived understanding, with screening acceptability. A cross-sectional pilot study was conducted at the national referral maternity center CHU La Rabta in Tunis with 256 pregnant women aged 18-49 years. The questionnaire was rigorously adapted to Tunisian Arabic dialect through forward-back translation and cognitive debriefing with five pregnant women. Health literacy was assessed using functional, interactive, and critical subscales (1-4 Likert scale). Screening acceptability and perceived understanding to decide were also measured. Data was analyzed with descriptive statistics, reliability testing (Cronbach’s α), Spearman correlations, and bootstrapped mediation analysis. Mean global health literacy was 2.70 ± 0.77 (59.8% in the “high” category). The 9-item scale showed good reliability (Cronbach’s α = 0.826). Interactive literacy scored highest (2.95 ± 0.92), while functional (2.58 ± 0.93) and critical (2.56 ± 1.00) dimensions were lower. The analysis revealed associations consistent with partial mediation: higher health literacy was associated with screening acceptability both directly (c’ = 0.438, p = 0.042) and indirectly through perceived understanding (indirect effect = 0.314, 95% CI 0.128-0.562, p < 0.001), accounting for 41.8% of the total effect. After adjustment for age, education, and residence, global health literacy remained independently associated with screening acceptability (adjusted OR = 1.55, p = 0.041). A brief, culturally adapted health literacy tool proved feasible and reliable in the Tunisian prenatal context. Higher health literacy was associated with greater screening acceptability both directly and indirectly through improved perceived understanding. These findings provide a strong empirical basis for integrating health literacy assessment and targeted literacy-enhancing interventions into Tunisia’s national hemoglobinopathy prevention program.

PMID:42149388 | DOI:10.1007/s12687-026-00899-3

Ann Nucl Med. 2026 May 18. doi: 10.1007/s12149-026-02218-9. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: To compare whole-brain histogram analysis (WBHA) of amyloid-β (Aβ) positron emission tomography (PET) using several magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-based brain extraction (brain extraction tool [BET]) methods, to evaluate a novel quantitative analysis method, namely the Top 20% Gray and White Matter Ratio (GW-ratio), to determine appropriate thresholds, and to evaluate diagnostic performance in comparison with the Centiloid scale (CL).

METHODS: We analyzed structural MRI, ¹⁸F-flutemetamol amyloid PET images, and dementia severity scores (Global Clinical Dementia Rating [G-CDR] and Mini-Mental State Examination [MMSE]) of 262 participants. For WBHA, BET was performed using structural MRI and three different BET software programs, namely High-Definition-BET (HD-BET), FMRIB Software Library (FSL), and Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM). Skewness and mode-to-mean ratio (MMR) were measured using brain-extracted PET. The Top 20% Map was generated from SPM BET images, separated into gray and white matter voxels, and their ratio was calculated as the GW-ratio. The CL value was computed using structural MRI. Aβ-negativity or positivity was visually determined.

RESULTS: Skewness from three BET methods was strongly negatively correlated with CL. Skewness (HD-BET) showed the strongest correlation (R = -0.9043). Moreover, the GW-ratio strongly correlated with CL (R = 0.8332), whereas MMR, particularly MMR (FSL) (R = 0.2112), showed poor correlation. All indicators significantly distinguished Aβ-negative from Aβ-positive visuals. CL had the highest area under the curve (AUC, 0.9959), followed by skewness (HD-BET) (0.9927), Top 20% GW-ratio (0.9872), and skewness (SPM) (0.9779), with no statistical difference between CL and skewness (HD-BET) (P = 0.5763). Based on mean and SD values from 118 cognitively unimpaired (G-CDR = 0, MMSE ≥ 28) and visually Aβ-negative participants, 95% cut-off limits for Aβ-negative individuals without dementia symptoms were: CL ≤ 12.9, skewness (HD-BET) ≥ 0.1769, MMR (HD-BET) ≤ 0.9372, skewness (FSL) ≥ 0.1819, MMR (FSL) ≤ 1.9132, skewness (SPM) ≥ -0.0382, MMR (SPM) ≤ 1.1274, and GW-ratio ≤ 0.1079.

CONCLUSION: WBHA using MRI-based BET and GW-ratio showed strong correlations with CL and demonstrated a diagnostic performance comparable to that of CL.

PMID:42149370 | DOI:10.1007/s12149-026-02218-9

Yi Chuan. 2026 May;48(5):483-505. doi: 10.16288/j.yczz.25-172.

ABSTRACT

Examining a greater number of short tandem repeats (STRs) is essential for cases involving mutations, consanguinity, and complex kinship testing. However, previous population studies were mostly limited to fewer than 40 STRs. Therefore, this study investigated the genetic polymorphism, linkage disequilibrium, and mutation rates of 81 autosomal STR loci in the Han Chinese population of northern China. We confirmed the core repeat structure of STR loci, and focused on evaluating the forensic application value of the Category C and 21 additional STR loci not included in the standard “Forensic science-Data structures of selected loci from the DNA database” (GB/T 41009-2021). Blood samples from 400 unrelated healthy Northern Han Chinese individuals and parent-child blood samples from 157 families were detected using GSTAR ^TM25, GSTAR ^TM31FS, and GSTAR ^TM29HS kits. Genetic analysis was performed on genotyping data of 81 autosomal STR loci. The core sequence structures of newly added 15 STR loci were confirmed by sequencing the allelic ladder. After applying Bonferroni correction, all 81 autosomal STR loci conformed to Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. The observed heterozygosity ranged from 0.4375 to 0.9075, discrimination power from 0.6332 to 0.9845 (lowest at LPL), polymorphism information content from 0.3938 to 0.9092, probability of exclusion for trios from 0.1384 to 0.8108, and for duos from 0.0955 to 0.7069. Significantly, linkage disequilibrium was observed between D5S2500 and D5S2800 loci. When excluding the D5S2800 locus, the cumulative discrimination power (CDP) of remaining 80 autosomal STR loci was 1-2.293×10^-89, cumulative probability of exclusion (CPE) of trios was 1-5.074×10^-31, and cumulative exclusion probability of duos was 1-1.400×10^-19. A total of 13 mutations were observed across 508 meiotic events in 157 families at 10 STR loci. The mutation rates for D5S818, D11S2368 and D18S51 were 0.004, while those of D6S1043, D7S1517, D11S4463, D13S325, D14S1434, D20S482 and D20S85 were 0.002. In conclusion, the 81 genetic loci, including Category C and newly added STRs, exhibit good or moderate polymorphism and are suitable for individual identification, paternity testing, and kinship identification. Given the linkage disequilibrium between the D5S2500 and D5S2800, if simultaneous on the capillary electrophoresis platform, it is recommended to use only the test results from the D5S2500 locus for statistical analysis. This data generated provide allele frequency and mutation rate for a large number of STRs, along with the clarified core sequences, thus offering an important data foundation for DNA evidence evaluation.

PMID:42145195 | DOI:10.16288/j.yczz.25-172

J Obstet Gynaecol. 2026 Dec;46(1):2665632. doi: 10.1080/01443615.2026.2665632. Epub 2026 May 18.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: The objective of this study was to review type 2 diabetes (T2D) remission and glycaemic improvement in gynaecologic oncology patients with class 3 obesity undergoing preoperative weight loss.

METHODS: This was a case series of 92 gynaecologic oncology patients with BMI ≥40 kg/m² and T2D who underwent preoperative weight loss with a low-calorie liquid meal replacement. Patients were classified as high or low likelihood of remission based on diabetes duration, glycated haemoglobin (A1C) and insulin use. Data were summarised descriptively and Fisher’s exact test and paired t-test were used as inferential statistics using SAS 9.4.

RESULTS: Twenty-one patients with a mean age of 57.8 (SD = 11.7) years completed a weight loss protocol of median 14 (IQR = 10.5-16.5) weeks. Eighteen (86%) had endometrioid endometrial carcinoma or atypical endometrial hyperplasia. Initial mean BMI and A1C were 48.0 (SD = 6.7) kg/m² and 8.2% (SD = 2.3%). After the protocol, mean BMI and A1C were 43.1 (SD = 5.5) kg/m² and 7.1% (SD = 1.7%). On average, A1C decreased 1.1% (95% CI: 0.5-1.6, p < 0.05) after weight loss. 3/21 patients experienced diabetes remission. The rate of remission was 2/6 and 1/15 for patients coded as high and low likelihood of remission (p = 0.18).

CONCLUSIONS: Weight, BMI and A1C were significantly reduced by preoperative weight loss in gynaecologic oncology patients with T2D. There was a low rate of diabetes remission, with most patients having clinical characteristics predictive of a low likelihood of remission.

PMID:42145191 | DOI:10.1080/01443615.2026.2665632

Biometrics. 2026 Apr 9;82(2):ujag070. doi: 10.1093/biomtc/ujag070.

ABSTRACT

Extracting biologically meaningful information from high-dimensional, heterogeneous omics data is one of the key challenges in many biomedical studies. Among various biomedical applications, disease subtyping is of particular interest due to its critical role in improving diagnosis and designing personalized treatments. To address this, biclustering has become a widely used statistical method for subtyping. Additionally, it has been demonstrated across various statistical learning methods that incorporating biological graph knowledge such as gene regulatory network can significantly enhance variable selection, prediction accuracy, and model interpretability. However, existing graph-guided methods, while often yielding promising results, tend to overlook potential misspecifications, such as false positive (FP) and false negative (FN) edges in the graphs. Ignoring this noise can lead to suboptimal identification of biclusters. Therefore, it is essential to develop biclustering methods that can effectively handle noisy graphs as well as provide biological insight. We propose a Bayesian denoising knowledge-guided biclustering method that enables to integrate multiple graphs simultaneously. The incorporated graphs, viewed as noisy variations of the underlying true graph, are de-noised through modeling of FP and FN errors. A Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm is developed to estimate the biclusters. Extensive simulation studies and real data analyses, including gene expression and proteomics datasets of Alzheimer’s disease, have been conducted to validate the superior performance of the proposed method.

PMID:42145180 | DOI:10.1093/biomtc/ujag070

Biometrics. 2026 Apr 9;82(2):ujag082. doi: 10.1093/biomtc/ujag082.

ABSTRACT

A concentration index, a standardised covariance between a health variable and relative income ranks, is often used to quantify income-related health inequalities. There is a lack of formal approach to study the effect of an exposure, e.g., education, on such measures of inequality. In this paper we contribute by filling this gap and developing the necessary theory and method. Thus, we define a counterfactual concentration index for different levels of an exposure. We give conditions for the identification of this complex estimand, and then deduce its efficient influence function. This allows us to propose estimators, which are regular asymptotic linear under certain conditions. In particular, we show that these estimators are $sqrt{n}$-consistent and asymptotically normal, as well as locally efficient. The implementation of the estimators is based on the fit of several nuisance functions. The estimators proposed have rate robustness properties allowing for convergence rates slower than $sqrt{n}$-rate for some of the nuisance function fits. The relevance of the asymptotic results for finite samples is studied with simulation experiments. We also present a case study of the effect of education on income-related health inequalities for a Swedish cohort.

PMID:42145179 | DOI:10.1093/biomtc/ujag082

J Contemp Dent Pract. 2026 Feb 1;27(2):190-200. doi: 10.5005/jp-journals-10024-4028.

ABSTRACT

AIM: To systematically review studies to evaluate the correlation and agreement between facial photographic measurements and cephalometric parameters in assessing jaw discrepancy.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: An extensive search was performed in PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science to retrieve articles published from January 2015 to December 2024, and the literature search itself was conducted from 2 to 20 December 2024. The systematic review was carried out following the PRISMA 2020 guidelines. The participants, intervention, control, and outcome (PICO) framework used was as follows: (P) Orthodontic patients who underwent cephalometric and facial photographic assessment; (I): Cephalometric measurements derived from standardized 2D lateral facial photographs; (C): Cephalometric measurements obtained from lateral cephalograms; (O): Agreement between photographic and cephalometric parameters, evaluated through correlation coefficient, agreement statistics, or diagnostic accuracy measures (sensitivity/specificity); and (S): Observational correlation studies and diagnostic accuracy studies. The data extracted comprised study design, participant details, measurement parameters, and outcome statistics. Data extraction and quality appraisal were performed independently by two reviewers using the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) diagnostic test accuracy checklist.

RESULTS: A total of 83 studies were screened, of which seven studies met the inclusion criteria, comprising six cross-sectional and one prospective design. Risk of bias (ROB) assessment indicated an overall low to moderate risk. Most studies reported clear inclusion criteria and applied both index and reference tests within the same session. However, blinding of assessors was frequently unclear, introducing potential interpretation bias. Photographic measurements showed significant correlations with cephalometric parameters, with reliability highest for vertical dimensions and selected sagittal measures. Diagnostic accuracy ranged from fair to excellent. Transverse discrepancies were not assessed in any of the studies reviewed.

CONCLUSION: Standardized facial photographs can serve as a valuable adjunct in orthodontic assessment, particularly for evaluating sagittal and vertical relationships. Although facial photographs demonstrate diagnostic utility, comprehensive assessment of skeletal discrepancies continues to rely on lateral cephalograms.

CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE: Facial photography provides a practical, radiation-free tool that may enhance orthodontic diagnosis in selected contexts, especially when radiographic imaging is unavailable. Its greatest utility lies in sagittal and vertical assessment, while future integration with 3D photogrammetry and AI-based landmark detection may further improve diagnostic precision. How to cite this article: Novianty SI, Alhasyimi AA, Dewi AH, et al. Facial Photography vs Cephalometry for Assessing Jaw Discrepancies: A Systematic Review. J Contemp Dent Pract 2026;27(2):190-200.

PMID:42145169 | DOI:10.5005/jp-journals-10024-4028