PLoS medicine
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There is increasing emphasis on using patient-reported outcomes (PROs) to complement traditional clinical outcomes in medical research, including in multiple sclerosis (MS). Research, particularly in oncology and heart failure, has shown that PROs can be prognostic of hard clinical endpoints such as survival time (time from study entry until death). However, unlike in oncology or cardiology, it is unknown whether PROs are associated with survival time in neurological diseases. The Multiple Sclerosis Impact Scale-29 (MSIS-29) is a PRO sensitive to short-term change in MS, with questions covering both physical and psychological quality of life. This study aimed to investigate whether MSIS-29 scores can be prognostic for survival time in MS, using a large observational cohort of people with MS. ⋯ This study reports that PROs can be prognostic for hard clinical outcomes in neurological disease, and supports PROs as a meaningful clinical outcome for use in research and clinical settings.
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Mitchell J. Cohen discusses why trauma care must go beyond restoring perfusion to target disorders of inflammation and coagulation in severely injured patients.
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Children living with HIV who are not diagnosed in infancy often remain undiagnosed until they present with advanced disease. Provider-initiated testing and counselling (PITC) in health facilities is recommended for high-HIV-prevalence settings, but it is unclear whether this approach is sufficient to achieve universal coverage of HIV testing. We aimed to investigate the change in community burden of undiagnosed HIV infection among older children and adolescents following implementation of PITC in Harare, Zimbabwe. ⋯ Facility-based approaches are inadequate in achieving universal coverage of HIV testing among older children and adolescents. Alternative, community-based approaches are required to meet the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) target of diagnosing 90% of those living with HIV by 2020 in this age group.
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The immunosuppression and immune dysregulation that follows severe injury includes type 2 immune responses manifested by elevations in interleukin (IL) 4, IL5, and IL13 early after injury. We hypothesized that IL33, an alarmin released early after tissue injury and a known regulator of type 2 immunity, contributes to the early type 2 immune responses after systemic injury. ⋯ These results suggest that IL33 may initiate early detrimental type 2 immune responses after trauma through ILC2 regulation of neutrophil IL5 production. This IL33-ILC2-IL5-neutrophil axis defines a novel regulatory role for ILC2 in acute lung injury that could be targeted in trauma patients prone to early lung dysfunction.
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Observational Study
Temporal profile of intracranial pressure and cerebrovascular reactivity in severe traumatic brain injury and association with fatal outcome: An observational study.
Both intracranial pressure (ICP) and the cerebrovascular pressure reactivity represent the dysregulation of pathways directly involved in traumatic brain injury (TBI) pathogenesis and have been used to inform clinical management. However, how these parameters evolve over time following injury and whether this evolution has any prognostic importance have not been studied. ⋯ We demonstrated the temporal evolution of ICP and PRx and their relationship with fatal outcome, indicating a potential early prognostic and therapeutic window. The combination of dynamic monitoring variables and their time profile improved prediction of outcome. Therefore, time-driven dynamic modelling of outcome in patients with severe TBI may allow for more accurate and clinically useful prediction models. Further research is needed to confirm and expand on these findings.