Tag: statistics

Addiction. 2022 Mar 21. doi: 10.1111/add.15880. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: In previous research, the spatial distribution of alcohol outlets has been shown to be related to the spatial distribution of crime. However, the spatial distribution of alcohol outlets is also related to the spatial distribution of other retail (and non-retail) activities. We measured whether a residual relationship between alcohol outlets and crime remains statistically significant after controlling for retail density.

DESIGN AND SETTING: A cross-sectional analysis of area unit data for Hamilton, New Zealand.

MEASUREMENTS: We constructed index measures of retail density using principal component analysis, based on counts of retail outlets (non-alcohol outlets alone, and all outlets in total). We estimated the relationship between outlets and police calls-for-service using negative binomial regression, controlling for social deprivation, population and demographics. In our primary analysis, we employed a two-stage process that first accounted for the correlation between calls-for-service and retail density in a negative binomial regression model, then tested for correlation between alcohol outlet counts and the first-stage residuals.

FINDINGS: The spatial distributions of retail outlets of all types were highly correlated with each other, and all types of retail outlets (alcohol and non-alcohol) were correlated with crime, after controlling for social deprivation, population and demographics. After controlling for index measures of retail density and other controls, statistically significant semipartial correlations remained with counts of alcohol outlets of all types. For example, in our preferred specification, which controlled for non-alcohol retail density in the first stage, an additional off-licence alcohol outlet was associated with 97.34 (95% confidence interval [C.I.] 36.66-158.0) additional police calls-for service.

CONCLUSIONS: There is a positive relationship between the spatial distribution of alcohol outlets and the spatial distribution of crime that appears to persist even after controlling for non-alcohol retail density. The relationship between alcohol outlets and crime is not simply an artefact of retail geography.

PMID:35315160 | DOI:10.1111/add.15880

J Magn Reson Imaging. 2022 Mar 21. doi: 10.1002/jmri.28170. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Detecting and measuring intraluminal thrombus has prognostic and therapeutic implications for stroke patients.

PURPOSE: To investigate the feasibility of 3D isotropic high-resolution T1w-CUBE imaging to detect and measure intraluminal thrombus in stroke patients.

STUDY TYPE: Retrospective.

SUBJECTS: A total of 93 patients with acute (N = 39) and subacute (N = 54) stroke.

FIELD STRENGTH/SEQUENCE: A 3.0 T/spin-echo echo-planar diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI), high-resolution T1w-CUBE imaging and 3D flow compensated gradient-echo susceptibility-weighted imaging (SWI).

ASSESSMENT: Data assessment was performed by three neuroradiologists with 11, 13, and 20 years of clinical experience. The accuracy of T1W-CUBE and SWI in diagnosing thrombosis was compared by using digital subtraction angiography (DSA) as the reference. For thrombus length measurement, the image quality of proximal and distal thrombus of T1w-CUBE images was first evaluated with a 4-point rating system. Then, the proximal and distal positions to lesions were determined on T1w-CUBE images and compared with those from DSA acquired during endovascular reperfusion therapy. If comparable both locations were found between CUBE and DSA, CUBE imaging can thus be considered for accurate measurement of thrombus length.

STATISTICAL TESTS: Fleiss’ Kappa; the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC); Pearson’s chi-squared test with Yates’ continuity correction.

RESULTS: Moderate-to-good interobserver agreements were validated with all Kappa coefficients higher than 0.40 in thrombus diagnosis and measurement. CUBE imaging showed higher clinical efficacy than SWI (AUC: 0.966 vs. 0.850) in thrombus diagnosis. Additionally, high quality of CUBE imaging was confirmed with 3 or 4 points rated by all three observers. Compared to intraoperative DSA, T1w CUBE showed consistent proximal and distal positions of thrombi in 16 of the 18 patients, validating the accuracy of T1w-CUBE in measuring thrombus length.

DATA CONCLUSION: T1w-CUBE imaging has potential to facilitate diagnosis and measurement of intraluminal thrombus.

EVIDENCE LEVEL: 4 TECHNICAL EFFICACY: Stage 2.

PMID:35315157 | DOI:10.1002/jmri.28170

Addiction. 2022 Mar 21. doi: 10.1111/add.15881. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: There are few longitudinal studies assessing the association of cannabis use and subsequent onset of bipolar disorder. We aimed to measure the association between early cannabis exposure and subsequent bipolar disorder.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: Observational study linking a sample from the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1986 (n=6,325) to nationwide register data to examine the association of life-time cannabis exposure at age 15/16 years and subsequent bipolar disorder until age 33 (until the end of 2018). 6,325 individuals (48.8% males) were included in the analysis.

MEASUREMENTS: Cannabis exposure was measured via self-report. Bipolar disorder was measured via bipolar disorder-related diagnostic codes (ICD-10: F30.xx, F31.xx) collected from the Care Register for Health Care 2001-2018, the Register of Primary Health Care Visits 2011 – 2018, the medication reimbursement register of the Social Insurance Institution of Finland 2001 – 2005 and the disability pensions of the Finnish Center for Pensions 2001 – 2016. Potential confounders included demographic characteristics, parental psychiatric disorders, emotional and behavioral problems and other substance use.

FINDINGS: 352 adolescents (5.6 %) reported any cannabis use until the age of 15-16 years. Of the whole sample, 66 (1.0 %) were diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Adolescent cannabis use was associated with bipolar disorder (hazard ratio [HR] =3.46; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.81-6.61). This association remained statistically significant after adjusting for sex, family structure, and parental psychiatric disorders (HR =3.00; 95% CI 1.47-6.13) and after further adjusting for adolescent emotional and behavioral problems (HR =2.34; 95% CI 1.11-4.94). Further adjustments for frequent alcohol intoxications, daily smoking and lifetime illicit drug use attenuated the associations to statistically non-significant.

CONCLUSIONS: In Finland, the positive association between early cannabis exposure and subsequent development of bipolar disorder appears to be confounded by other substance use.

PMID:35315149 | DOI:10.1111/add.15881

Chirality. 2022 Mar 21. doi: 10.1002/chir.23436. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

The occurrence of racemic and enantiomerically enriched (scalemic) mixtures of secondary metabolites in their natural sources is a rare phenomenon. The unprecedent case of enantiomeric variations from levorotatory to dextrorotatory, and back to levorotatory, passing through an almost racemic mixture, was recently documented for areolal, the major epoxythymol of Piptothrix areolare. In an attempt to shed some light to understand the reasons for such an unusual behavior, herein, we evaluated this phenomenon by correlating the areolal enantiomeric purity with several environmental variables, including temperature, humidity, rain precipitation, wind speed, and radiation during over 1 year of the plant life cycle. The specific rotation and enantiomeric excess determined by ¹ H-NMR-BINOL measurements provided the scalemic variations of areolal samples isolated from the roots collected from the same location along a 427-day period. The ¹ H-NMR-BINOL methodology provided better sensitivity to enantiomeric variations than specific rotation measurements. Statistical data, including matrix correlation analysis, exploratory analysis by heatmap plotting, and the principal component analysis (PCA), suggested direct correlation of the scalemic variation with humidity, rain precipitation, and radiation variables with the best PCA explanation (78.4%) and noncritical or poor correlations in PCA explained in 60.2% and 48.4%, respectively. When variations in the optical activity parameter of any metabolite are observed, the search for scalemic mixtures along their host plant life cycle should be undertaken. Herein, this phenomenon could be associated with interactions with soil microorganisms and with evolutionary aspects of Piptothrix areolare which belongs to Asteraceae, one of the most successfully adaptable plant families.

PMID:35315141 | DOI:10.1002/chir.23436

Int J Paediatr Dent. 2022 Mar 21. doi: 10.1111/ipd.12964. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this research was to present an artificial intelligence (AI) model which can automatically segment and detect ectopic eruption of the permanent first molars (EMMs) in early mixed dentition on panoramic radiographs using no-new-Net (nnU-Net) model.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: 438 EMMs obtained from 285 panoramic radiographs were included in this study. AI model based on nnU-Net was trained to segment and detect the EMMs. The performance of the model was evaluated by the intersection over union (IoU), precision, F1-score, accuracy and FROC. Furthermore, the detecting performance of nnU-Net was compared with three dentists with different years of experience using the McNemar chi-square test. The reliability of different dentists was evaluated by intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC).

RESULTS: The nnU-Net yielded an IoU of 0.834, a precision of 0.845, an F1-score of 0.902 and an accuracy of 0.990. Moreover, the dentists yielded a mean IoU of 0.530, a mean precision of 0.539, a mean F1-score of 0.699 and a mean accuracy of 0.811. The ICC of different dentists was 0.776. The statistical analysis of the McNemar chi-square test showed that the nnU-Net results were statistically significant and superior to that of dentists (P <0.05).

CONCLUSIONS: This study validated an AI model based on nnU-Net for automatically segmenting and detecting EMMs more consistently and accurately on panoramic radiography.

PMID:35315146 | DOI:10.1111/ipd.12964

J Med Virol. 2022 Mar 21. doi: 10.1002/jmv.27728. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Members of the human Herpesviridae are found in high prevalence in the human virome. While these viruses are known to cause numerous disease pathologies in symptomatic individuals little is known concerning the role that these viruses may have in modulating the host immune system in asymptomatic “healthy” individuals especially during the aging process. Examination of three cohorts of “healthy asymptomatic” individuals (n = 255) for the presence of antibodies against the herpesviruses deoxyuridine triphosphate nucleotidohydrolase (dUTPase) as a marker for lytic/abortive-lytic replication demonstrated that all cohorts exhibited differential anti-herpesvirus dUTPase antibodies positivity frequencies ranging from 40.4% to 84% with some individuals in these cohorts expressing antibodies to the dUTPases of multiple herpesviruses (17.2-56%). Furthermore, our results demonstrate that there was a statistically significant difference in anti-HHV-6 A/B dUTPase antibodies in cohort 3 (age = 66.2 ± 15.02 years) versus cohort 1 (age 46.88 ± 8.61 years), suggesting that reactivation of HHV-6 A/B is not attenuated by aging. It is well established/documented that herpesvirus dUTPases induce immune dysfunction, as such it is of critical importance that additional studies be performed to determine how these viral proteins alter immune responses in asymptomatic individuals. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

PMID:35315111 | DOI:10.1002/jmv.27728

J Sch Health. 2022 Mar 21. doi: 10.1111/josh.13178. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: The comprehensive school health (CSH) framework has four components: social and physical environment; partnerships and services; teaching and learning; and policy. This study examines associations between CSH and student physical activity (PA).

METHODS: Using 2015/2016 COMPASS study survey data of 37,397 students (grades 9-12) from 80 secondary schools in Ontario and Alberta, Canada, associations between school-level factors within CSH and student PA outcomes (weekly moderate-to-vigorous PA [MVPA] minutes and achieving the national PA recommendations of ≥60 min of MVPA daily, vigorous PA ≥3 days/week, strengthening activities ≥3 days/week) were analyzed using multilevel regression models stratified by gender and grade.

RESULTS: Factors within all four CSH components were associated with student PA. Four student subgroups were more likely to achieve the recommendations if their school had youth organization partnerships (Range of AORs:1.15-1.33, p <.05) and female students were less likely if their school had low prioritization of PA (AOR = 0.77, 95% CI: [0.65-0.92]). Grade 9 students had higher MVPA when provided non-competitive PA opportunities (β = 100.4, 95%CI: [30.0-170.9]). All student subgroups had better PA outcomes when schools provided access to equipment during non-instructional time.

CONCLUSION: There is opportunity to improve student PA through CSH-guided interventions, but different strategies may be more effective for each gender/grade.

PMID:35315080 | DOI:10.1111/josh.13178

Ecology. 2022 Mar 22:e3686. doi: 10.1002/ecy.3686. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

The structure of interactions between species within a community plays a key role in maintaining biodiversity. Previous studies have found that the effects of these structures might substantially differ depending on interaction type, for example, a highly connected and nested architecture stabilizes mutualistic communities, while the stability of antagonistic communities is enhanced in modular and weakly connected structures. Here we show that, when network dynamics are modelled using a patch-dynamic metacommunity framework, the qualitative differences between antagonistic and mutualistic systems disappear, with nestedness and modularity interacting to promote metacommunity persistence. However, the interactive effects are significantly weaker in antagonistic metacommunities. Our model also predicts an increase in connectance, nestedness and modularity over time in both types of interaction, except in antagonistic networks where nestedness declines. At steady state, we find a strong negative correlation between nestedness and modularity in both mutualistic and antagonistic metacommunities. These predictions are consistent with the structural trends found in a large dataset of real-world antagonistic and mutualistic communities.

PMID:35315055 | DOI:10.1002/ecy.3686

Perspect Psychiatr Care. 2022 Mar 22. doi: 10.1111/ppc.13069. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: The study was conducted to evaluate the effects of the Alzheimer’s blanket activity program (ABAP) on the behavioral symptoms, activities of daily living, and quality of life of people with Alzheimer’s disease.

DESIGN AND METHOD: The study was conducted between November 2019 and February 2020 in the homes of the participants with Alzheimer’s disease with a single group pre- post-test design. As part of the ABAP, the researchers made two home visits, conducted telephone interviews, and provided counseling services during the 3-month follow-up process.

FINDINGS: It was found that after the program, the people with Alzheimer’s disease had improved daily life activity, quality of life, and neuropsychiatric symptom scores; however, the change was not statistically significant.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: Future studies involving longer intervention and follow-up using the ABAP may help assess the long-term effects of the program.

PMID:35315078 | DOI:10.1111/ppc.13069

Aust N Z J Obstet Gynaecol. 2022 Mar 22. doi: 10.1111/ajo.13519. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: The higher burden of post-caesarean infection in the remote Kimberley region of Australia is intimately associated with poorer social determinants of health. This results in a confluence of environmental factors such as overcrowding and limited access to clean water and host factors such as diabetes mellitus and obesity which result in heightened susceptibility and vulnerability to infection.

AIM: To ascertain infection rates following caesarean section in Broome Hospital, before and after the implementation of evidence-based strategies intended to reduce bacterial load and mitigate the impact of poor underlying social determinants of health.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: This is a retrospective observational longitudinal audit study including women who underwent caesarean section in Broome Hospital between the time of 1 January 2019 and 1 May 2019 or 1 January 2021 and 1 May 2021. Files and theatre records were audited to determine demographic, surgical and post-partum infection in women who underwent caesarean section at Broome Hospital. The main outcome measure was infection within six weeks post-caesarean section.

RESULTS: This study found a statistically significant improvement in post-operative infection rates in women who underwent caesarean section at Broome Hospital (41.7% vs 11.6%, P = 0.002). The two groups were statistically similar in background.

CONCLUSION: The combination of various infection prevention initiatives targeted at reducing infection burden can result in clinical and statistically significant reductions in post-caesarean infections in high-risk populations with poor underlying social determinants of health.

PMID:35315054 | DOI:10.1111/ajo.13519