Tag: statistics

Heliyon. 2023 Sep 13;9(9):e20121. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e20121. eCollection 2023 Sep.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Health-seeking behavior is an action taken by an individual who perceives to have a health problem. Many childhood morbidities and mortalities are associated with a low level of a mother’s healthcare-seeking behavior. However, there are limited studies about modern health-seeking behavior among mothers of ill under-five children in the study area.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the level of modern health-seeking behavior of mothers/caregivers and associated factors for childhood illness in Hawassa city, Sidama, Ethiopia 2021.

METHODS: A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted from November 15 to December 15, 2021, in Hawassa City. Eight kebeles were selected by using simple random sampling methods. A total of 366 mothers with children less than five years were included in this study and an interviewer-administered questionnaire was used to collect data. Data entry, cleaning, and analysis were done by using Statistical Package for Social sciences version 24 and logistic regression was used to determine the presence of association, and significance was declared at p-value <0.05.

RESULT: The study found that 70.2% of mothers/caregivers seek modern health care for their child’s illnesses. Number of Antenatal care follow up ([AOR(Adjusted Odds Ratio) = 2.106; 95% CI(Confidence Interval) (1.097-4.042)), urban residence ([AOR = 2.688; 95% CI (1.403-5.149)), perceived severity of illness ([AOR2.832; 95% CI1.101-7.290)), four or above birth order (5.501; 95% CI (1.761-17.184)) and symptoms guiding severity of illness ([AOR = 4.664; 95% CI (1.918-11.342)) were associated with modern health-seeking behavior.

CONCLUSION: The overall modern health-seeking behaviors of mothers of under-five children are higher than in previous studies. However, a still significant proportion of mothers do not seek modern health care for their ill children. mothers/caregivers’ residence, birth order, number of Antenatal care follow-ups, perceived severity of childhood illness, and perceived guiding symptoms of severity are the significant predictors of mothers’ healthcare-seeking behavior.

PMID:37810091 | PMC:PMC10559870 | DOI:10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e20121

Small. 2023 Oct 8:e2304670. doi: 10.1002/smll.202304670. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

The Stokes-Einstein-Sutherland (SES) equation is at the foundation of statistical physics, relating a particle’s diffusion coefficient and size with the fluid viscosity, temperature, and the boundary condition for the particle-solvent interface. It is assumed that it relies on the separation of scales between the particle and the solvent, hence it is expected to break down for diffusive transport on the molecular scale. This assumption is however challenged by a number of experimental studies showing a remarkably small, if any, violation, while simulations systematically report the opposite. To understand these discrepancies, analytical ultracentrifugation experiments are combined with molecular simulations, both performed at unprecedented accuracies, to study the transport of buckminsterfullerene C₆₀ in toluene at infinite dilution. This system is demonstrated to clearly violate the conditions of slow momentum relaxation. Yet, through a linear response to a constant force, the SES equation can be recovered in the long time limit with no more than 4% uncertainty both in experiments and in simulations. This nonetheless requires partial slip on the particle interface, extracted consistently from all the data. These results, thus, resolve a long-standing discussion on the validity and limits of the SES equation at the molecular scale.

PMID:37806757 | DOI:10.1002/smll.202304670

J Sep Sci. 2023 Oct 8:e2300196. doi: 10.1002/jssc.202300196. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

After medicinal market research, it was found that the harvest time of Ligustri Lucidi Fructus (LLF) was chaotic in practice. In order to determine the optimal harvest period of LLF to ensure its pharmacological activity, metabolomics analysis of LLF at different harvest times based on ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography-triple quadrupole-(linear ion trap)-tandem mass spectrometry was established. In this study, 166 differential metabolites (DMs) in 448 metabolites at different harvest times were screened out based on variable importance in projection value, and among them, 94 DMs with regular trends of change in relative content (59 increased and 35 decreased with the growth period) were chosen to further research. The result of the multivariate statistical analysis showed that November was the optimal harvest period of LLF. Additionally, 10-hydroxyligustroside, oleoside 11-methyl ester, and salidroside were screened out to be used as the evaluation indicators of immature LLF, while specnuezhenide, nuezhenoside G13, and neonuezhenide were the evaluation indicators of mature LLF. This study provides fundamental insight for metabolite identification and proposes the best harvest period of LLF to avoid confusion in the medicinal market.

PMID:37806751 | DOI:10.1002/jssc.202300196

Enferm Clin (Engl Ed). 2023 Sep-Oct;33(5):316-326. doi: 10.1016/j.enfcle.2023.07.002.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: To assess the influence of an educational intervention on midwives’ knowledge, detection and management of intimate partner violence (IPV).

METHODS: A quasi-experimental study involving 158 midwives from two districts in Ekiti State, Nigeria. The sample was divided into experimental and control groups (79 midwives per group). Data were collected using a questionnaire and an observation checklist. A customized educational training program on IPV detection and management was conducted in the experimental group. Measurement was performed before the intervention, immediately after and 6 weeks later. Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics (Chi-square and binary logistic regression) with a level of significance set at p < 0.05.

RESULTS: Prior knowledge regarding IPV detection and management among midwives in both groups was poor, with only 16.5 % of the experimental group and 17.7 % of the control group having good knowledge in the pre-intervention phase. The experimental group had a significant improvement in knowledge of IPV screening and management, with 82.1 % having good knowledge immediately after the intervention and 92.0 % at 6 weeks after the intervention (p = 0.001). Observed practice of IPV detection and management improved significantly from 21.9 % satisfactory practice before the intervention to 63.5 % after the intervention (p = 0.001) in the experimental group, with no appreciable improvement in practice detected in the control group (21.9% versus 36.5%; p = 0.682).

CONCLUSION: The use of a customized educational training program improved midwives’ knowledge and practice in the detection and management of intimate partner violence.

PMID:37806710 | DOI:10.1016/j.enfcle.2023.07.002

J Nutr Educ Behav. 2023 Oct;55(10):755-760. doi: 10.1016/j.jneb.2023.08.001.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to explore the presence of body image and diet culture rhetoric in videos under the hashtag #HealthyLifestyle on TikTok.

METHODS: The top 250 videos under #HealthyLifestyle were categorized using a codebook of wellness topics. We conducted descriptive statistics and interrater reliability analysis.

RESULTS: #HealthyLifestyle videos had high rates of all coded categories, including negative and positive messages about body image and diet culture. Nearly all content with positive connotations was counteracted by coexisting negative messaging.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: Our findings suggest that content under #HealthyLifestyle contains messaging conflicting with the definition of a healthy lifestyle. Considering the young audience consuming this content, improved nutrition education and health literacy in schools is essential.

PMID:37806709 | DOI:10.1016/j.jneb.2023.08.001

Risk Anal. 2023 Oct 8. doi: 10.1111/risa.14234. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

We consider directed tree networks with a single source, where there exists a positive probability of a disruptive event at any node. Such networks model security considerations in pipelines as well as in unidirectional digital networks. If a disruptive event occurs at a certain node, that node and its downstream nodes incur economic losses. Users thus have an incentive to invest in upstream locations as well as their own sites to reduce the probability of a disruptive event. The initial model we develop to reduce the expected investment plus disruption costs is a multiplicative model for which closed-form solutions cannot be obtained in general. We overcome this problem with an additive model that we show closely approximates the initial formulation. This model reduces the security problem to a public goods setting where we minimize the total expected cost at each node. The users then need to share these costs in an equitable fashion, which gives rise to a set of cooperative games. For the case where disutilities to all users are identical, the Shapley value can be computed efficiently, along the lines of an Airport Game. We also treat the case where risk reduction and disutility vary across the network. Finally, we prove that the cooperative game is concave in this general case, which guarantees that the core of the game is nonempty and that the Shapley value is an element of the core.

PMID:37806672 | DOI:10.1111/risa.14234

J Acad Consult Liaison Psychiatry. 2023 Oct 6:S2667-2960(23)00127-1. doi: 10.1016/j.jaclp.2023.09.004. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Delirium is the most prevalent neuropsychiatric syndrome experienced by patients admitted to inpatient clinical units, occurring in at least 20% of medically hospitalized patients and up to 85% of those admitted to critical care units. Although current guidelines recommend the implementation of universal prevention strategies, the use of management strategies largely depend on constant surveillance and screening. This allows for the timely diagnosis and the correction of its underlying causes and implementation of management strategies.

OBJECTIVE: It was to adapt and analyze the Spanish adaptation of the Stanford Proxy Test for Delirium (S-PTDsv) instrument for its use among Spanish-speaking populations. The S-PTD is an instrument consisting of 13 observational items to be completed by a clinician observer, usually the patient’s nurse. The completion of the questionnaire takes about one minute and does not require the active participation of the person evaluated, which has important clinical advantages compared to other available instruments (e.g., the Confusion Assessment Method [CAM]).

METHODS: The psychometric properties of the S-PTDsv were evaluated in a population of 123 patients, using a quantitative, cross-sectional design. All subjects were over 18 years of age and hospitalized in various inpatient medico-surgical and Intensive care Unit services, either to the Barcelona Clinical Hospital (Barcelona, Spain) or the UC-Christus Health Network Clinical Hospital (Santiago, Chile, S.A.). The ultimate diagnosis of delirium was made by a member of the Psychiatry Consult Service, by means of an independent neuropsychiatric evaluation based on the 5^th Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) criteria, published in 2013 and is the latest version of the diagnostic manual. All study tests were performed by study personnel who were blinded to each other’s test results and within an hour of each other.

RESULTS: In the ROC analysis, the S-PTDsv demonstrated excellent classification qualities when compared with the DSM-5, as the classification gold-standard. Using a cut-off point of ≥3, the S-PTDsv had a sensitivity of 94% and a specificity of 97%. The AUC indicator was equal to 0.95, suggesting the S-PTDsv has an excellent overall performance in accurately identifying cases of Delirium. Accordingly, the S-PTDsv’s positive predictive value (PPV) = 0.93, and the negative predictive value (NPV) = 0.97. The internal reliability measured with Cronbach’s Alpha was 0.96. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed a one-dimensional structure with high loadings (>0.72), demonstrating that all items similarly contribute to the total diagnostic dimension, suggesting adequate construct validity. This provided evidence of convergent validity.

CONCLUSION: The performance of the S-PTDsv, as compared to a blinded neuropsychiatric assessment based on DSM-5, indicates that it is an effective instrument for the detection of Delirium, in the Spanish speaking populations. These results are comparable and consistent with previously published studies in the English language version.

PMID:37806639 | DOI:10.1016/j.jaclp.2023.09.004

Anaerobe. 2023 Oct 6:102784. doi: 10.1016/j.anaerobe.2023.102784. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: Bacteroides fragilis is considered to act in an anti-inflammatory manner on the intestinal tract. On the contrary, enterotoxigenic B. fragilis (ETBF), a subtype of B. fragilis, produces an enterotoxin (BFT; B. fragilis toxin), leading to asymptomatic chronic infections and colonic tumor formation. However, the impact of B. fragilis and ETBF on the clinical outcome of colorectal cancer (CRC) remains unclear. We aim to assess whether their presence affects the outcome in patients with CRC after curative resection.

METHODS: We obtained 197 pairs of matched formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded samples from cancerous and adjacent non-cancerous tissues of patients with pathological stage (pstage) II and III CRC after curative resection. The presence ofB. fragilisand ETBF were estimated using real-time polymerase chain reaction, and recurrence-free survival (RFS) and overall survival (OS) of the patients were analyzed.

RESULTS: 16S rRNA for B. fragilis and bft DNA were detected in 120 (60.9%) and 12 (6.1%) of the 197 patients, respectively. B. fragilis-positive patients had better RFS than B. fragilis-negative patients, although that was not statistically significant. In subgroup analysis, better outcomes on RFS were observed in the presence of B. fragilis in pstage II and left-sided CRC. The association of B. fragilis positivity on OS was accentuated in the depth of the T4 subgroup. No significant differences were observed in RFS and OS between ETBF and non-toxigenic B. fragilis.

CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that the presence of B. fragilis is associated with better outcomes in patients with pstage II and III CRC after curative resection.

PMID:37806638 | DOI:10.1016/j.anaerobe.2023.102784

J Dairy Sci. 2023 Oct 6:S0022-0302(23)00717-8. doi: 10.3168/jds.2023-23741. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study was to infer the effects of heat stress (HS) of dams during late gestation on direct and maternal genetic parameters for traits related to milk production and milk quality parameters (90,558 records) in Italian browns Swiss cattle (12,072 cows in 617 herds). Daily Average Temperature-humidity indices (THI) during the last 56 d of pregnancy were calculated, using the climate data from the nearest public weather station for each herd. Heat load effects were considered as the average across the entire periods considering a thermoneutrality condition for data below the THI 60. For parameter estimation a random regression model using the second order Legendre polynomial regression coefficient for THI considering both animal and maternal effect for heat load. Direct heritability increased sharply from THI 60 to 65, then decreased gradually up to THI ∼72, and sharply thereafter. Maternal heritability showed a different trend, with values close to 0 up until to THI 65 and slightly increasing toward extreme THI values. The study suggests a lower threshold of THI 60 for the onset of heat stress. Higher heritability values indicate greater selective efficiency in the THI range of 65-70, even if an higher standard deviation value have been detected. The effects of high THI during intrauterine life varied among traits with different heritability levels. Genetic correlations for milk, fat and protein content at 60 THI with increasing value of environmental variable, remained constant (∼0.90) until THI >75, where they slightly decreased (∼0.85). Fat and protein yields, as well as milk and ECM, showed correlations dropping to 0.80 around THI 67-68 and stabilizing between 0.75 and 0.85 at extreme THI values. Maternal component correlations dropped close to zero, with negative values for protein content at THI 65-70. Antagonism between direct and maternal components was stronger for intermediate THI values but less divergent for extremes. G x E interaction was observed, indicating the selection of resilient animals would be theoretically possible. The application of climate variables in selection schemes should in the future take into account above all the dimensions of the genetic correlations to be able to decide between the simple inclusion of the environmental effect in the statistical models rather than a real parallel genetic evaluation.

PMID:37806626 | DOI:10.3168/jds.2023-23741

J Dairy Sci. 2023 Oct 6:S0022-0302(23)00722-1. doi: 10.3168/jds.2023-23851. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Mastitis is one of the most significant diseases in dairy cows and causes several economic losses. Somatic cell count (SCC) is often used as an indirect diagnostic tool for mastitis, especially for subclinical mastitis (SCM) where no symptoms or signs can be detected. Streptococcus agalactiae is one of the main causes of contagious mastitis, while Prototheca spp. is an alga inducing environmental mastitis that is not always correlated with increased milk SCC. The aim of this study was to evaluate the changes in the metabolomic profile of blood in relation to subclinical intramammary infection (sIMI) in dairy cows. In addition, differences due to the etiologic agent causing mastitis were also considered. Forty Holstein-Friesian dairy cows in mid and late lactation were enrolled in this study with a cross-sectional design. Based on the bacteriological examination of milk, the animals were divided into 3 groups: Group CTR (control group; n = 16); Group A (affected by SCM with IMI of Streptococcus agalactiae; n = 17); and Group P (affected by SCM with IMI of Prototheca spp.; n = 7). Blood samples were collected in tubes containing clot activator from jugular vein. The serum aliquot was stored until metabolomic analysis by ¹H-NMR. Statistical analysis was conducted fitting a linear model with the group as fixed effect and SCC as covariate. Forty-two metabolites were identified and among them, 10 were significantly different among groups. Group A and P showed greater level of His and lactose, and lower level of acetate, Asn, and dimethylamine compared with Group CTR. Group A showed high level of Val, while the Group P showed also high level of Cit and methylguanidine, and lower level of 3-hydroxybutyrate, acetone, allantoin, carnitine, citrate, and ethanol. These metabolites were related to ruminal fermentations, energy metabolism, urea synthesis and metabolism, immune and inflammatory response, and mammary gland permeability. These results are suggestive of a systemic involvement of sIMI and that the metabolic profile of animals with SCM undergoes changes related to the etiological agent of mastitis.

PMID:37806625 | DOI:10.3168/jds.2023-23851