Medicine
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Multicenter Study Observational Study
Refined Phenotyping of Modic Changes: Imaging Biomarkers of Prolonged Severe Low Back Pain and Disability.
Low back pain (LBP) is the world's most disabling condition. Modic changes (MC) are vertebral bone marrow changes adjacent to the endplates as noted on magnetic resonance imaging. The associations of specific MC types and patterns with prolonged, severe LBP and disability remain speculative. ⋯ This large-scale study is the first to definitively note MC types and specific morphologies to be independently associated with prolonged severe LBP and back-related disability. This proposed refined MC phenotype may have direct implications in clinical decision-making as to the development and management of LBP. Understanding of these imaging biomarkers can lead to new preventative and personalized therapeutics related to LBP.
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Overuse of antibiotics among patients with upper respiratory tract infection (URTI) is a worldwide problem, and the problem is especially serious in developing countries, such as China. This systematic review is aimed at summarizing previous findings on outpatient prescriptions of antibiotics associated with URTI in China in order to help policymakers and the public understand and tackle the problem. We systematically searched and reviewed studies of antibiotic prescribing patterns for outpatients with URTI in China that were published in Chinese or English before December 31, 2014. ⋯ The rates of antibiotic prescription varied greatly across hospitals and showed a downward trend over time. An extremely high percentage of URTI patients in China were prescribed antibiotics and, the overuse is especially problematic in lower-level hospitals. Although there appears a downward trend, likely attributable to China's recent efforts in curbing antibiotic abuse, greater efforts are needed to promote the rational use of antibiotics.
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Meta Analysis
The Association Between Genetic Polymorphism rs703842 in CYP27B1 and Multiple Sclerosis: A Meta-Analysis.
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is the most frequent nontraumatic disabling neurological disease among young adults. Previous studies have examined the association of rs703842 in CYP27B1 with MS susceptibility, with inconsistent results reported. The objective of this study is to conduct a systematic literature search and perform meta-analyses to examine whether rs703842 is associated with MS risk. ⋯ As a result, we could not perform meta-analysis for assessing the relationship in other ethnic groups. In summary, we found that the genetic variant rs703842 in CYP27B1 is associated with MS risk in Caucasians. More studies with larger sample size that control for important confounding factors are needed to validate the findings from this study.
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Meta Analysis
No Significant Effect of ASAP1 Gene Variants on the Susceptibility to Tuberculosis in Chinese Population.
Recent studies have proposed that the ASAP1 gene participates in regulating the adaptive immune response to Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection. A GWAS study has reported that ASAP1 polymorphisms (rs4733781 and rs10956514) were associated with the risk of tuberculosis (TB) in Russians. But due to population heterogeneity, different races would have different causative polymorphisms, and the aim of this study was to investigate the association between single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of the ASAP1 gene and TB risk in Chinese population. ⋯ Meta-analysis showed no evidence supporting association between rs10956514 and overall risk for TB. Subsequent analysis referring to the genotypes of SNPs in relationship to clinical phenotypes identified that rs4236749 was associated with different serum C-reactive protein levels, suggesting a role of this locus in influencing the inflammatory state of Western Chinese Han patients with TB. Our present data revealed that ASAP1 polymorphisms are unlikely to confer susceptibility to TB in the Western Chinese Han and Tibetan populations, which challenges the promising roles of the ASAP1 gene in the development of TB and highlights the importance of validating the association findings across ethnicities.
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Meta Analysis
Risk of Parkinson Disease in Diabetes Mellitus: An Updated Meta-Analysis of Population-Based Cohort Studies.
Previous meta-analysis has identified the associations between diabetes mellitus (DM) and the risk of Parkinson disease (PD). However, the results are still debatable. The purpose of this study is to perform an updated meta-analysis to investigate the up-to-date pooling evidence based on published population-based cohort studies and assess the association between DM and the risk of PD. ⋯ The trim-and-fill approach confirmed the robutness of the result (RR 1.31, 95% CI 1.09-1.57, P = 0.015). Our findings based on population-based cohort studies indicate that diabetes is associated with increased PD risk by about 38%. More large-scale prospective studies are warranted to further clarify this association and its mechanism.