Plos One
-
Major depressive disorder afflicts an estimated 17% of individuals during their lifetimes at tremendous suffering and costs. Interpersonal psychotherapy and other psychodynamic therapies may be effective interventions for major depressive disorder, but the effects have only had limited assessment in systematic reviews. ⋯ We did not find convincing evidence supporting or refuting the effect of interpersonal psychotherapy or psychodynamic therapy compared with 'treatment as usual' for patients with major depressive disorder. The potential beneficial effect seems small and effects on major outcomes are unknown. Randomized trials with low risk of systematic errors and low risk of random errors are needed.
-
Multicenter Study
Effectiveness of non-adjuvanted pandemic influenza A vaccines for preventing pandemic influenza acute respiratory illness visits in 4 U.S. communities.
We estimated the effectiveness of four monovalent pandemic influenza A (H1N1) vaccines (three unadjuvanted inactivated, one live attenuated) available in the U. S. during the pandemic. Patients with acute respiratory illness presenting to inpatient and outpatient facilities affiliated with four collaborating institutions were prospectively recruited, consented, and tested for influenza. ⋯ Adjusted effectiveness for inactivated vaccines alone (79% of total) was 62% (25%, 81%) overall and 32% (-92%, 76%), 89% (15%, 99%), and -6% (-231%, 66%) in those aged 0.5 to 9, 10 to 49, and 50+ years, respectively. Effectiveness for the live attenuated vaccine in those aged 2 to 49 years was only demonstrated if vaccination >7 rather than >14 days prior to illness onset was considered (61%∶ 12%, 82%). Inactivated non-adjuvanted pandemic vaccines offered significant protection against confirmed pandemic influenza-associated medical care visits in young adults.
-
Privacy legislation in most jurisdictions allows the disclosure of health data for secondary purposes without patient consent if it is de-identified. Some recent articles in the medical, legal, and computer science literature have argued that de-identification methods do not provide sufficient protection because they are easy to reverse. Should this be the case, it would have significant and important implications on how health information is disclosed, including: (a) potentially limiting its availability for secondary purposes such as research, and (b) resulting in more identifiable health information being disclosed. Our objectives in this systematic review were to: (a) characterize known re-identification attacks on health data and contrast that to re-identification attacks on other kinds of data, (b) compute the overall proportion of records that have been correctly re-identified in these attacks, and (c) assess whether these demonstrate weaknesses in current de-identification methods. ⋯ The current evidence shows a high re-identification rate but is dominated by small-scale studies on data that was not de-identified according to existing standards. This evidence is insufficient to draw conclusions about the efficacy of de-identification methods.
-
Continuing improvements in analytical technology along with an increased interest in performing comprehensive, quantitative metabolic profiling, is leading to increased interest pressures within the metabolomics community to develop centralized metabolite reference resources for certain clinically important biofluids, such as cerebrospinal fluid, urine and blood. As part of an ongoing effort to systematically characterize the human metabolome through the Human Metabolome Project, we have undertaken the task of characterizing the human serum metabolome. ⋯ Our use of multiple metabolomics platforms and technologies allowed us to substantially enhance the level of metabolome coverage while critically assessing the relative strengths and weaknesses of these platforms or technologies. Tables containing the complete set of 4229 confirmed and highly probable human serum compounds, their concentrations, related literature references and links to their known disease associations are freely available at http://www.serummetabolome.ca.
-
Comparative Study
Reduction of plasma gelsolin levels correlates with development of multiple organ dysfunction syndrome and fatal outcome in burn patients.
Depletion of the circulating actin-binding protein, plasma gelsolin (pGSN) has been described in critically ill surgical patients. We hypothesized that the extent of pGSN reduction might correlate with different outcome of burn patients. The study was performed to evaluate the prognostic implications of pGSN levels on the development of multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS) and fatal outcome in a group of severely burn patients. ⋯ pGSN levels appear to be an early prognostic marker in patients suffering from major burns.