Tag: statistics

Adv Physiol Educ. 2023 May 4. doi: 10.1152/advan.00211.2022. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

The analysis of spontaneous tail coiling (STC) in zebrafish embryos is a functional parameter that allows the study of motor development, and it has recently gained relevance as a biomarker to assess the neurotoxicity of environmental substances. Its practicability in the laboratory makes it a good pedagogical tool for promoting students’ inquiry skills. However, the time and cost of materials and facilities limit their usage in undergraduate laboratories. This study presents the design of a computer-based educational module called “ZebraSTMe,” which is based on a tail coiling assay and aims to improve science processing skills in undergraduate students by connecting them to relevant and novel content. We evaluate students’ perception of learning, the quality of materials used, and the learning gained. Our results show that students perceived an improvement in their statistical analysis, representation, and discussion of experimental data. An improvement in acquired knowledge confirmed this perception. Additionally, the students evaluated the materials’ quality and ease of use and provided feedback for revision. A thematic analysis of the opinions revealed that the module activities promoted students’ reflection on their professional strengths and weaknesses.

PMID:37141434 | DOI:10.1152/advan.00211.2022

Nurs Ethics. 2023 May 4:9697330231160006. doi: 10.1177/09697330231160006. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: There is ongoing debate regarding how moral distress should be defined. Some scholars argue that the standard “narrow” definition overlooks morally relevant causes of distress, while others argue that broadening the definition of moral distress risks making measurement impractical. However, without measurement, the true extent of moral distress remains unknown.

RESEARCH AIMS: To explore the frequency and intensity of five sub-categorizations of moral distress, resources used, intention to leave, and turnover of nurses using a new survey instrument.

RESEARCH DESIGN: A mixed methods embedded design included a longitudinal, descriptive investigator-developed electronic survey with open-ended questions sent twice a week for 6 weeks. Analysis included descriptive and comparative statistics and content analysis of narrative data.

PARTICIPANTS: Registered nurses from four hospitals within one large healthcare system in Midwest United States.

ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS: IRB approval was obtained.

RESULTS: 246 participants completed the baseline survey, 80 participants provided data longitudinally for a minimum of 3 data points. At baseline, moral-conflict distress occurred with the highest frequency, followed by moral-constraint distress and moral-tension distress. By intensity, the most distressing sub-category was moral-tension distress, followed by “other” distress and moral-constraint distress. Longitudinally, when ranked by frequency, nurses experienced moral-conflict distress, moral-constraint distress, and moral-tension distress; by intensity, scores were highest for moral-tension distress, moral-uncertainty distress, and moral-constraint distress. Of available resources, participants spoke with colleagues and senior colleagues more frequently than using consultative services such as ethics consultation.

CONCLUSIONS: Nurses experienced distress related to a number of moral issues extending beyond the traditional understanding of moral distress (as occurring due to a constraint) suggesting that our understanding and measurement of moral distress should be broadened. Nurses frequently used peer support as their primary resource but it was only moderately helpful. Effective peer support for moral distress could be impactful. Future research on moral distress sub-categories is needed.

PMID:37141428 | DOI:10.1177/09697330231160006

JAMA Netw Open. 2023 May 1;6(5):e2311673. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.11673.

ABSTRACT

IMPORTANCE: The American Institute for Cancer Research and American Cancer Society regularly publish modifiable lifestyle recommendations for cancer prevention. Whether these recommendations have an impact on high-risk breast cancer survival remains unknown.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate whether adherence to cancer prevention recommendations before, during, and 1 and 2 years after breast cancer treatment was associated with disease recurrence or mortality.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: The Diet, Exercise, Lifestyles, and Cancer Prognosis Study (DELCaP) was a prospective, observational cohort study designed to assess lifestyles before diagnosis, during treatment, and at 1 and 2 years after treatment completion, implemented ancillary to the Southwest Oncology Group (SWOG) S0221 trial, a multicenter trial that compared chemotherapy regimens in breast cancer. Participants were chemotherapy-naive patients with pathologic stage I to III high-risk breast cancer, defined as node-positive disease with hormone receptor-negative tumors larger than 1 cm or any tumor larger than 2 cm. Patients with poor performance status and comorbidities were excluded from S0221. The study was conducted from January 1, 2005, to December 31, 2010; mean (SD) follow-up time for those not experiencing an event was 7.7 (2.1) years through December 31, 2018. The analyses reported herein were performed from March 2022 to January 2023.

EXPOSURE: An aggregated lifestyle index score comprising data from 4 time points and 7 lifestyles, including (1) physical activity, (2) body mass index, (3) fruit and vegetable consumption, (4) red and processed meat intake, (5) sugar-sweetened beverage consumption, (6) alcohol consumption, and (7) smoking. Higher scores indicated healthier lifestyle.

MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: Disease recurrence and all-cause mortality.

RESULTS: A total of 1340 women (mean [SD] age, 51.3 [9.9] years) completed the baseline questionnaire. Most patients were diagnosed with hormone-receptor positive breast cancer (873 [65.3%]) and completed some education beyond high school (954 [71.2%]). In time-dependent multivariable analyses, patients with highest vs lowest lifestyle index scores experienced a 37.0% reduction in disease recurrence (hazard ratio, 0.63; 95% CI, 0.48-0.82) and a 58.0% reduction in mortality (hazard ratio, 0.42; 95% CI, 0.30-0.59).

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: In this observational study of patients with high-risk breast cancer, strongest collective adherence to cancer prevention lifestyle recommendations was associated with significant reductions in disease recurrence and mortality. Education and implementation strategies to help patients adhere to cancer prevention recommendations throughout the cancer care continuum may be warranted in breast cancer.

PMID:37140922 | DOI:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.11673

Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2023 May 4. doi: 10.1007/s11356-023-27248-y. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Spontaneous combustion of coal leading to mine fire is a major problem in most of the coal mining countries in the world. It causes major loss to the Indian economy. The liability of coal to spontaneous combustion varies from place to place and mainly depends on the coal intrinsic properties and other geo-mining factors. Hence, the prediction of spontaneous combustion susceptibility of coal is of utmost importance for preventing the risk of fire in coal mines and utility sectors. Machine learning tools are pivotal in system improvements in relation to the statistical analysis of experimental results. Wet oxidation potential (WOP) of coal determined in the laboratory is one of the most relied indices used for assessing the spontaneous combustion susceptibility of coal. In this study, multiple linear regression (MLR) and five different machine learning (ML) techniques, such as Support Vector Regression (SVR), Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Random Forest (RF), Gradient Boosting (GB) and Extreme Gradient Boost (XGB) algorithms, were used to predict the spontaneous combustion susceptibility (WOP) of coal seams based on the coal intrinsic properties. The results derived from the models were compared with the experimental data. The results indicated excellent prediction accuracy and ease of interpretation of tree-based ensemble algorithms, like Random Forest, Gradient Boosting and Extreme Gradient Boosting. The MLR exhibited the least while XGB demonstrated the highest predictive performance. The developed XGB achieved R² of 0.9879, RMSE of 4.364 and VAF of 84.28%. In addition, the results of sensitivity analysis showed that the volatile matter is most sensitive to the changes in WOP of coal samples considered in the study. Thus, during spontaneous combustion modelling and simulation, volatile matter can be used as the most influential parameter for assessing the fire risk of the coal samples considered in the study. Further, the partial dependence analysis was done to interpret the complex relationships between the WOP and intrinsic properties of coal.

PMID:37140867 | DOI:10.1007/s11356-023-27248-y

Neurol Sci. 2023 May 4. doi: 10.1007/s10072-023-06831-8. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Parkinson’s disease (PD) is one of the common causes of disability in the elderly. This study aims to estimate the prevalence of hallucinations in Parkinson’s patients in the world.

METHODS: A systematic review of PubMed/Medline, ISI Web of Knowledge, and Google Scholar was conducted from 2017 to 2022. This study investigated the prevalence of hallucinations in Parkinson’s patients. Point prevalence was analyzed with a 95% confidence interval. The variances of each study were calculated using the binomial distribution formula The researcher used Cochrane Q-test with a significance level of less than 0.1 to check the heterogeneity between studies and the change index assigned to heterogeneity I₂. Due to the heterogeneity between the studies, the random effects model was used to combine the results of the studies. All statistical analyses were performed by STATA version 14 software using meta-analysis commands.

RESULTS: Reports indicated that the prevalence of hallucinations in Parkinson’s patients in 32 studies was 28% (0.22-0.34 = 95%CI). The highest prevalence was 34% and 95% CI = 0.07- 0.61 in developing countries and 27% with CI = 0.33-0.21 in developed countries. Reports showed the prevalence in men was 30% (CI = 0.22-0.38) and in women 23% (95% CI = 0.14-0.31).

CONCLUSIONS: Considering the relatively high prevalence of hallucinations in these patients, checking up for the presence of hallucinations on every visit of Parkinson’s patients is recommended, and providing appropriate treatment for that is necessary.

PMID:37140832 | DOI:10.1007/s10072-023-06831-8

Eur Phys J E Soft Matter. 2023 May 4;46(5):31. doi: 10.1140/epje/s10189-023-00286-7.

ABSTRACT

Inference problems for two-dimensional snapshots of rotating turbulent flows are studied. We perform a systematic quantitative benchmark of point-wise and statistical reconstruction capabilities of the linear Extended Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (EPOD) method, a nonlinear Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN). We attack the important task of inferring one velocity component out of the measurement of a second one, and two cases are studied: (I) both components lay in the plane orthogonal to the rotation axis and (II) one of the two is parallel to the rotation axis. We show that EPOD method works well only for the former case where both components are strongly correlated, while CNN and GAN always outperform EPOD both concerning point-wise and statistical reconstructions. For case (II), when the input and output data are weakly correlated, all methods fail to reconstruct faithfully the point-wise information. In this case, only GAN is able to reconstruct the field in a statistical sense. The analysis is performed using both standard validation tools based on [Formula: see text] spatial distance between the prediction and the ground truth and more sophisticated multi-scale analysis using wavelet decomposition. Statistical validation is based on standard Jensen-Shannon divergence between the probability density functions, spectral properties and multi-scale flatness.

PMID:37140827 | DOI:10.1140/epje/s10189-023-00286-7

Jpn J Radiol. 2023 May 4. doi: 10.1007/s11604-023-01436-9. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: The present study aimed to determine whether the water content change in the medullary cavity of occult rib fractures by spectral computed tomography (CT).

METHODS: The material decomposition (MD) images were reconstructed using the water-hydroxyapatite basis material pairs from spectral CT. The water contents of the medullary cavity in subtle or occult rib fractures and the symmetrical sites of the contralateral ribs were measured, and their difference was calculated. The absolute value of the water content difference was compared to patients without trauma. An independent samples t-test was adopted to compare the consistency of the water content in the medullary cavity of the normal ribs. Intergroup and pairwise comparisons were applied to the difference in water content among the subtle/occult fractures and normal ribs, followed by receiver operating characteristic curve calculations. p < 0.05 was considered to have a statistically significant difference.

RESULTS: A total of 100 subtle fractures, 47 occult fractures, and 96 pairs of normal ribs were included in this study. The water content of the medullary cavity in the subtle and occult fractures was both higher than that in their symmetrical sites with the difference value of 31.06 ± 15.03 mg/cm³ and 27.83 ± 11.40 mg/cm³, respectively. These difference values between the subtle and occult fractures were not statistically significant (p = 0.497). For the normal ribs, the bilateral water contents were not statistically different (p > 0.05) with a difference value of 8.05 ± 6.13 mg/cm³. The increased water content of fractured ribs was higher than that of normal ribs (p < 0.001). According to the classification based on whether the ribs were fractured, the area under the curve was 0.94.

CONCLUSIONS: The water content measured on MD images in spectral CT in the medullary cavity increased as a response to subtle/occult rib fractures.

PMID:37140822 | DOI:10.1007/s11604-023-01436-9

Virus Genes. 2023 May 4. doi: 10.1007/s11262-023-01995-z. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Although comprehensive vaccination is the cornerstone of public health programs to control hepatitis B virus (HBV) infections, 5% of people who receive the existing vaccine do not develop proper immunity against HBV. To overcome this challenge, researchers have tried using various protein fragments encoded by the virus genome to achieve better immunization rates. An important antigenic component of HBsAg called the preS2/S or M protein has also received much attention in this area. The gene sequences of preS2/S and Core18-27 peptide were extracted from the GenBank (NCBI). Final gene synthesis was conducted with pET28. Groups of BALB/c mice were immunized with 10 μg/ml of recombinant proteins and 1 μg/ml CPG7909 adjuvant. Serum levels of IF-γ, TNF-α, IL-2, IL-4, and IL-10 were measured by ELISA assay method on spleen cell cultures on day 45, and IgG1, IgG2a, and total IgG titers obtained from mice serum were quantified on days 14 and 45. Statistical analysis did not show any significant difference between the groups regarding IF-γ level. There were, however, significant differences in terms of IL-2 and IL-4 levels between the groups receiving preS2/S-C18-27 with and without adjuvant and the groups receiving both preS2/S and preS2/S-C18-27 (Plus Recomb-Plus Recomb: the group of mice that received both preS2/S and preS2/S-C18-27 simultaneously). The strongest total antibody production was induced by immunization with both recombinant proteins without CPG adjuvant. The groups that received both preS2/S and preS2/S-C18-27, whether with or without adjuvant, were significantly different from those that received the conventional vaccine considering most abundant interleukins. This difference suggested that higher levels of efficacy can be achieved by the use of multiple virus antigen fragments rather than using a single fragment.

PMID:37140777 | DOI:10.1007/s11262-023-01995-z

Ir J Med Sci. 2023 May 4. doi: 10.1007/s11845-023-03373-y. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Topical insulin can promote and accelerate corneal regeneration, even in eyes with serious comorbidities, and offers several benefits over other treatment options.

AIMS: The aim of this study is to evaluate the effect of topical insulin in treatment of recurrent epithelial corneal erosion.

METHODS: Patients with recurrent epithelial erosions were included in a prospective non-randomized hospital-based study, divided into two groups, one of them received persistent epithelial defects (PEDs) conventional treatment and the other received the same treatment with insulin eye drops 4 times/day. All patients were examined carefully by slit lamp. Patients during the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th weeks as well as after 2 months. Demographics, etiology, therapy, comorbidities, and the healing time of PED were performed.

RESULTS: Area shows significant improvement after 2 weeks (p = 0.006), 2 months (p = 0.046), and 3 months (p = 0.002) in group II (cornetears gel and topical insulin) as compared to group I (cornetears gel). The recurrence was statistically significant decreased with cornetears gel and topical insulin (group II) by 0.0%, as compared to cornetears gel (group I) by 3 patients (21.4%).

CONCLUSION: Topical insulin can promote corneal reepithelization in recurrent epithelial erosion and decreases recurrence in these cases. Other advantages include excellent tolerance, availability, and cost-effectiveness.

PMID:37140764 | DOI:10.1007/s11845-023-03373-y

Bull Environ Contam Toxicol. 2023 May 4;110(5):89. doi: 10.1007/s00128-023-03729-1.

ABSTRACT

In the present study, livers, kidneys and adipose tissue of Yellow-legged Gull (Larus michahellis) were collected. Samples were used to determine relationships between heavy metals/metalloids in liver and kidneys (Hg, Cd, Pb, Se and As) or persistent organic pollutants in adipose tissue (7 PCBs and 11 organochlorine pesticides) with biomarkers of oxidative stress (CAT, GPx, GR, GSH, GST, MDA) analysed in both internal organs. Three possible influencing variables have been studied: age, sex and sampling area. As a result, statistically significant differences (P < 0.05, P < 0.01) were only found according to the sampling area, with differences among the three studied areas found in both organs. Significant positive correlations (P < 0.01) were found in liver (Hg vs. GST; Se vs. MDA) and in kidney (As vs. GR; As vs. GPx; PCB52 vs. CAT; PCB138 vs. CAT). The scarcity in correlations suggests that the levels of pollutants found in animals were not high enough to trigger an effect at the oxidative level.

PMID:37140760 | DOI:10.1007/s00128-023-03729-1