Tag: statistics

J Periodontol. 2021 Nov 13. doi: 10.1002/JPER.21-0428. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Three- dimensional (3D) technology has been suggested to overcome these limitations in guided bone regeneration (GBR) procedures because 3D-printed scaffolds can be easily molded to patient-specific bone defect site. This study aimed to investigate the effect of 3-D printed polylactic acid (PLA) scaffolds with or without hyaluronic acid (HA) in a rabbit calvaria model.

METHODS: A calvaria defect with a diameter of 15 mm was created in 30 New Zealand white rabbits. The rabbits were randomly allocated into 3 groups including no graft group (control, n = 10) , 3D printed PLA graft group (3D-PLA, n = 10) , and 3D printed PLA with hyaluronic acid graft group (3D-PLA/HA, n = 10) . Five animals in each group were sacrificed at 4 and 12 weeks after surgery. Microcomputed tomography and histologic and histomorphometric analyses were performed.

RESULTS: Over the whole examination period, no significant adverse reactions were observed. There were no statistically significant differences in bone volume (BV) /tissue volume (TV) among the three groups at 4 weeks. However, the highest BV/TV was observed in the 3D-PLA/HA group at 12 weeks. The new bone area for control, 3D-PLA, and 3D-PLA/HA showed no statistical differences at 4 weeks. However, the value was significantly higher in the 3D-PLA and 3D-PLA/HA groups compared to the control group at 12 weeks.

CONCLUSION: The 3D printed PLA scaffolds was biocompatible and integrated well with bone defect margin. They were also provided the proper space for new bone formation. Therefore, 3D printed PLA/HA might be a potential tool to enhance bone augmentation. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

PMID:34773704 | DOI:10.1002/JPER.21-0428

Turk J Med Sci. 2021 Nov 13. doi: 10.3906/sag-2105-168. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND/AIM: The aim of this study was to investigate the healing effects of bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (BM-MSCs) on experimental testicular torsion in rats.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: Three groups consisting of 10 Wistar albino rats each were created. In Group I, the left testicle was explored and relocated in the scrotum without any attempt to modify it. In Group II, the left testicle underwent torsion for three hours and then was detorsed and relocated. In Group III, in addition to torsion and detorsion, BM-MSCs were administered intratesticularly. The rats were sacrificed on the seventh day, and the healing status of the testicles was investigated with histopathological and biochemical analyses. BM-MSC involvement was investigated by immunofluorescence microscopy. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS 15.0. A p-value < 0.05 was considered statistically significant for all variables.

RESULTS: Immunofluorescence microscopy showed that BM-MSCs were located around the Leydig cells in Group III. Under light microscopy, the mean Johnsen Score of Group III was significantly higher than that of Group II (p = 0.035). The interleukin-10 (IL-10) level was significantly higher in Group III compared to Group II (p = 0.003). While the malondialdehyde (MDA) values in Group I (the control group) were lower than in the other groups (p = 0.037), the superoxide dismutase (SOD) values were similar (p = 0.158). Although there was no statistically significant difference between Group II and Group III in terms of MDA, it was lower in Group III. Although the tissue SOD levels were higher in Group III than in Group II, the difference was not statistically significant.

PMID:34773694 | DOI:10.3906/sag-2105-168

Rheumatol Ther. 2021 Nov 13. doi: 10.1007/s40744-021-00392-y. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: To compare the effectiveness of azathioprine (AZA) and cyclosporine (CsA) as initial treatments for patients with idiopathic inflammatory myopathies (IIM).

METHODS: A retrospective cohort study was conducted using information from the National Health Insurance Service database of Republic of Korea. Patients with IIM who had started AZA or CsA as initial treatment between January 2007 and December 2011 were selected for the study. They were followed from the day of treatment initiation to the occurrence of study outcomes or the end of the study until December 2016. Effectiveness outcomes, defined as switching the drug or adding immunosuppressants, and discontinuation of corticosteroids, were compared between the two groups. The Cox proportional-hazards model was used to calculate the adjusted relative risk (aRR) with 95% confidence interval (CI) between the AZA and CsA groups.

RESULTS: A total of 376 patients with incident IIM who used AZA (n = 288) or CsA (n = 88) were identified. The aRR of switching the drug or adding immunosuppressants (1.45 [95% CI 0.99-2.11]) was not significantly different between the CsA and AZA groups. Among patients who were treated with corticosteroids at baseline, the rate of discontinuation of corticosteroids was not different between the two groups (1.69 [95% CI 0.82-3.47]).

CONCLUSIONS: The effectiveness of AZA and CsA as initial treatments for the management of IIM was comparable.

PMID:34773610 | DOI:10.1007/s40744-021-00392-y

Nurs Forum. 2021 Nov 13. doi: 10.1111/nuf.12671. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Hospital ethical climate (HEC) has been associated with nurses’ interprofessional collaboration, moral decision-making and judgment, job satisfaction, and job burnout.

OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to examine the effect of hospitals’ ethical climate on nurses’ quality of working life.

METHODS: A cross-sectional study design was employed and 286 nurses from two hospitals in Athens participated in the study from January to February 2020. The data collected using a three-part self-administrated questionnaire were analyzed using the IBM Statistical Package for Social Sciences 25 (SPSS).

RESULTS: According to the results, the staff nurses working on rotating shifts reported poorer Work-Related Quality of Life (WrQoL). Positive correlations were observed between age, control at work, and home-work interface, between the period of time the nurses were working in a specific department with the dimensions of the ethical climate scale, and between almost all the HEC aspects with WRQoL subscales. Only the domain of stress at work had fewer and less significant correlations.

CONCLUSIONS: Health authorities and hospital managers should provide the necessary ground for the institutionalization of professional ethics by creating an appropriate ethical climate. A positive ethical climate may lead to a better working environment with less distress for health professionals and better quality of care for the patients.

PMID:34773637 | DOI:10.1111/nuf.12671

Int J Comput Assist Radiol Surg. 2021 Nov 13. doi: 10.1007/s11548-021-02527-6. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: The diseases and injuries of the knee joint are the most common orthopedic disorders. Personalized knee models can be helpful in the process of early intervention and lasting treatment techniques development. Fully automatic reconstruction of knee joint anatomical structures from medical images (CT, MRI, ultrasound) remains a challenge. For this reason, most of state-of-the-art knee joint models contain simplifications such as representation of muscles and ligaments as line segments connecting two points which replace attachment areas. The paper presents algorithms for automatic detection of such points on knee CT images.

METHODS: This paper presents three approaches to automatic detection of ligaments and tendons attachment sites on the patients CT images: qualitative anatomical descriptions, analysis of bones curvature, and quantitative anatomical descriptions. Combinations of these approaches result in new automatic detection algorithms. Each algorithm exploits anatomical peculiarities of each attachment site, e.g., bone curvature and number of other attachments in a neighborhood of the site.

RESULTS: The experimental dataset consisted of 26 anonymized CT sequences containing right and left knee joints in different resolutions. The proposed algorithms take into account bone surface curvatures and spatial differences in locations of medial and lateral parts of both knees. The algorithms for detection of quadriceps femoris, popliteus, biceps femoris tendons, and lateral collateral and medial collateral ligaments attachment sites are provided, as well as examples of their application. Two algorithms are validated by comparison with known statistics of ligaments lengths and also using ground truth annotations for anatomical landmarks approved by clinical experts.

CONCLUSIONS: The algorithms simplify generation of patient-specific knee joint models demanded in personalized biomechanical models. The algorithms in the current implementation have two important limitations. First, the correctness of the produced results depends on the bones segmentation quality. Second, the presented algorithms detect a point of the attachment site, which is not necessarily its center. Therefore, manual correction of the attachment site location may be required for attachments with relatively large area.

PMID:34773571 | DOI:10.1007/s11548-021-02527-6

Biol Trace Elem Res. 2021 Nov 13. doi: 10.1007/s12011-021-03025-1. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

A cross-sectional survey of 425 male artisanal and small-scale goldminers (ASGM) was conducted to examine the relationship between the occupational activities of the miners and their blood mercury levels while controlling for relevant biosocial and socio-cultural factors. The data was subjected to descriptive and inferential statistics. Initial findings showed that 43.29% of the ASGM miners had blood mercury levels above the occupational exposure threshold. Among the occupational factors, ASGM miners who amalgamate gold, burn amalgam, and ASGM miners who smelt gold were 2.260, 1.881, and 2.094 times respectively more likely to have high blood mercury levels as compared to ASGM miners who did not carry out these activities. Also, ASGM miners who suck excess mercury with their mouth (OR = 0.197, p < 0.001) were less likely to have high blood mercury levels. For the biosocial and socio-cultural attributes, high blood mercury levels was less likely among older ASGM miners (OR = 0.507, p < 0.05). Inversely, high blood mercury levels was more likely among ASGM miners who are married (OR = 1.627, p < 0.05), ASGM miners with junior (OR = 2.240, p < 0.001) and senior (OR = 1.575, p < 0.05) high school education, and ASGM miners who have 6-10 years (OR = 3.802, p < 0.001) and above 10 years (OR = 2.591, p < 0.001) work experience. ASGM miners who amalgamate gold, burn amalgam, and smelt gold are exposed to mercury and are at risk of mercury poisoning. This could, however, be minimized with the right capturing devices and personal protective equipment. This notwithstanding, unsafe, and unsustainable occupational practices such as working in mercury contaminated water and sucking excess mercury with the mouth should be discouraged.

PMID:34773577 | DOI:10.1007/s12011-021-03025-1

J Magn Reson Imaging. 2021 Nov 13. doi: 10.1002/jmri.27992. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Deep learning-based reconstruction (DLR) can potentially improve image quality by reduction of noise, thereby enabling fast acquisition of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). However, a systematic evaluation of image quality and diagnostic performance of MRI using short acquisition time with DLR has rarely been investigated in men with prostate cancer.

PURPOSE: To assess the image quality and diagnostic performance of MRI using short acquisition time with DLR for the evaluation of extraprostatic extension (EPE).

STUDY TYPE: Retrospective.

POPULATION: One hundred and nine men.

FIELD STRENGTH/SEQUENCE: 3 T; turbo spin echo T2-weighted images (T2WI), echo-planar diffusion-weighted, and spoiled gradient echo dynamic contrast-enhanced images.

ASSESSMENT: To compare image quality, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) and subjective analysis using Likert scales on three T2WIs (MRI using conventional acquisition time, MRI using short acquisition time [fast MRI], and fast MRI with DLR) were performed. The diagnostic performance for EPE was evaluated by three independent readers.

STATISTICAL TESTS: SNR, CNR, and image quality scores across the three imaging protocols were compared using Friedman tests. The diagnostic performance for EPE was assessed using the area under receiver operating characteristic curves (AUCs). P < 0.05 was considered statistically significant.

RESULTS: Fast MRI with DLR demonstrated significantly higher SNR (mean ± SD, 14.7 ± 6.8 vs. 8.8 ± 4.9) and CNR (mean ± SD, 6.5 ± 6.3 vs. 3.4 ± 3.6) values and higher image quality scores (median, 4.0 vs. 3.0 for three readers) than fast MRI. The AUCs for EPE were significantly higher with the use of DLR (0.86 vs. 0.75 for reader 2 and 0.82 vs. 0.73 for reader 3) compared with fast MRI, whereas differences were not significant for reader 1 (0.81 vs. 0.74; P = 0.09).

DATA CONCLUSION: DLR may be useful in reducing the acquisition time of prostate MRI without compromising image quality or diagnostic performance.

LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: 4 TECHNICAL EFFICACY: Stage 3.

PMID:34773449 | DOI:10.1002/jmri.27992

Hum Brain Mapp. 2021 Nov 13. doi: 10.1002/hbm.25713. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Task-fMRI researchers have great flexibility as to how they analyze their data, with multiple methodological options to choose from at each stage of the analysis workflow. While the development of tools and techniques has broadened our horizons for comprehending the complexities of the human brain, a growing body of research has highlighted the pitfalls of such methodological plurality. In a recent study, we found that the choice of software package used to run the analysis pipeline can have a considerable impact on the final group-level results of a task-fMRI investigation (Bowring et al., 2019, BMN). Here we revisit our work, seeking to identify the stages of the pipeline where the greatest variation between analysis software is induced. We carry out further analyses on the three datasets evaluated in BMN, employing a common processing strategy across parts of the analysis workflow and then utilizing procedures from three software packages (AFNI, FSL, and SPM) across the remaining steps of the pipeline. We use quantitative methods to compare the statistical maps and isolate the main stages of the workflow where the three packages diverge. Across all datasets, we find that variation between the packages’ results is largely attributable to a handful of individual analysis stages, and that these sources of variability were heterogeneous across the datasets (e.g., choice of first-level signal model had the most impact for the balloon analog risk task dataset, while first-level noise model and group-level model were more influential for the false belief and antisaccade task datasets, respectively). We also observe areas of the analysis workflow where changing the software package causes minimal differences in the final results, finding that the group-level results were largely unaffected by which software package was used to model the low-frequency fMRI drifts.

PMID:34773436 | DOI:10.1002/hbm.25713

J Magn Reson Imaging. 2021 Nov 13. doi: 10.1002/jmri.27993. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Breast tumor heterogeneity is associated with histological characteristics. However, pharmacokinetic (PK) heterogeneity within tumor might merit further exploration.

PURPOSE: To enhance the predictive power of molecular subtypes, Ki-67, and tumor grade by analyzing PK heterogeneity within tumor based on dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI).

STUDY TYPE: Retrospective.

POPULATION: Two hundred and eight biopsy-proven breast cancer patients, randomly divided into a training cohort (N = 144) and a testing cohort (N = 64).

FIELD STRENGTH/SEQUENCE: T₁ -weighted DCE-MRI at 3.0 T.

ASSESSMENT: A convex analysis of mixtures-compartmental modeling decomposition method was used to estimate the PK parameter (i.e., the volume transfer constant K^trans ) in tumor subregions with distinct physiological kinetic patterns, including fast-flow kinetics, slow-flow kinetics, and plasma input. Radiomic features based on the PK parameter were calculated from each tumor subregion.

STATISTICAL TESTS: The training cohort was used to build random forest classifiers based on the optimal features determined by the 5-fold cross-validation method. The performance was assessed on the testing cohort using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC). The AUCs derived from the tumor subregion-based PK parameter were compared with those of the original images of the entire tumor using the DeLong test. A P-value of <0.05 was considered statistically significant.

RESULTS: The tumor subregion-based PK parameter, which yielded the highest AUCs of 0.8782, 0.7568, 0.7019, 0.7963, 0.8080, and 0.7375 for luminal A, luminal B, basal-like, human epidermal growth factor receptor 2, Ki-67, and tumor grade, respectively, obtained better diagnostic performance than the original images in the entire tumor (highest AUCs = 0.8612, 0.6191, 0.5593, 0.7704, 0.7494, and 0.6261, respectively). In particular, statistically significant improvement in the diagnostic performance was obtained for luminal B.

DATA CONCLUSION: Radiomic analysis of PK heterogeneity within tumor can enhance the predictive performance of radiomic models compared with that of the entire tumor.

LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: 4 TECHNICAL EFFICACY STAGE: 3.

PMID:34773446 | DOI:10.1002/jmri.27993

Dermatol Ther. 2021 Nov 13:e15202. doi: 10.1111/dth.15202. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory dermatosis affecting 2-3% of the general population. The link between psoriasis and renal dysfunction has been investigated, demonstrating a common pro-inflammatory pathogenesis. This study is aimed at evaluating renal function in patients with moderate-to-severe chronic plaque psoriasis treated with biological therapy.

PATIENTS AND METHODS: We analyzed 92 patients, correlating PASI and serum creatinine levels at baseline, after 6 months and after 1 year of continuous treatment with biological therapy. Data were analyzed using paired t-test and the linear mixed model for PASI and serum creatinine levels correlation, whereas the analysis of variances (ANOVA) was used for creatinine levels assessment between the baseline, the 6-months and, 1-year later evaluation.

RESULTS: We observed a significant mean decrease in comparing serum creatinine levels after 1 year of biological therapy (p<0.001). Interestingly, PASI reduction is correlated with creatinine decrease, and the renal function improvement is greater when complete psoriasis remission is attained.

CONCLUSION: Our data suggest that a drop in systemic inflammation, secondary to biological therapy administration, might improve renal function. Future research is needed to confirm and expand our findings. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

PMID:34773435 | DOI:10.1111/dth.15202