Plos One
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Depression ranges among the leading causes of early exit from the labor market worldwide. We aimed to investigate the associations of socio-demographic factors, sickness absence, health care and prescription patterns with the risk of being granted a disability pension in psychiatric outpatients with depression. ⋯ Identified risk markers should be considered when monitoring individuals with depression and when designing intervention programs.
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Several EGFR-tyrosine kinase inhibitors (EGFR-TKIs) including erlotinib, gefitinib, afatinib and icotinib are currently available as treatment for patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who harbor EGFR mutations. However, no head to head trials between these TKIs in mutated populations have been reported, which provides room for indirect and integrated comparisons. ⋯ The current study indicated that erlotinib, gefitinib, afatinib and icotinib shared equivalent efficacy but presented different efficacy-toxicity pattern for EGFR-mutated patients. Erlotinib and afatinib revealed potentially better efficacy but significant higher toxicities compared with gefitinib and icotinib.
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The impact of pre-existing diabetes on the development of acute lung injury/acute respiratory distress syndrome (ALI/ARDS) in critically ill patients remains unclear. We performed a meta-analysis of cohort studies to evaluate the risk of ALI/ARDS in critically ill patients with and without pre-existing diabetes. ⋯ Our meta-analysis suggests that pre-existing diabetes was associated with a decreased risk of ALI/ARDS in critically ill adult patients. However, the result should be interpreted with caution because of the potential bias and confounding in the included studies.
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Meta Analysis
Evaluation of the quality of guidelines for myasthenia gravis with the AGREE II instrument.
Clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) are systematically developed statements to assist practitioners in making decisions about appropriate healthcare in specific clinical circumstances. The methodological quality of CPGs for myasthenia gravis (MG) are unclear. ⋯ The qualities of CPGs on MG were generally acceptable with several flaws. The AGREE II instrument should be adopted by guideline developers, particularly in China.
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Multicenter Study
DGKI methylation status modulates the prognostic value of MGMT in glioblastoma patients treated with combined radio-chemotherapy with temozolomide.
Consistently reported prognostic factors for glioblastoma (GBM) are age, extent of surgery, performance status, IDH1 mutational status, and MGMT promoter methylation status. We aimed to integrate biological and clinical prognostic factors into a nomogram intended to predict the survival time of an individual GBM patient treated with a standard regimen. In a previous study we showed that the methylation status of the DGKI promoter identified patients with MGMT-methylated tumors that responded poorly to the standard regimen. We further evaluated the potential prognostic value of DGKI methylation status. ⋯ Our results improve the conventional MGMT stratification of GBM patients receiving standard treatment. These results could help the interpretation of published or ongoing clinical trial outcomes and refine patient recruitment in the future.