Plos One
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To assess different methods for determining cause of death from verbal autopsy (VA) questionnaire data, the intra-rater reliability of Physician-Certified Verbal Autopsy (PCVA) and the accuracy of PCVA, expert-derived (non-hierarchical) and data-driven (hierarchal) algorithms were assessed for determining common causes of death in Ugandan children. A verbal autopsy validation study was conducted from 2008-2009 in three different sites in Uganda. The dataset included 104 neonatal deaths (0-27 days) and 615 childhood deaths (1-59 months) with the cause(s) of death classified by PCVA and physician review of hospital medical records (the 'reference standard'). ⋯ Inter-rater reliability of PCVA was high, and overall PCVA performed well. Hierarchical algorithms performed better than non-hierarchical algorithms due to higher specificity and more accurate CSMF estimates. Use of PCVA to determine cause of death from VA questionnaire data is reasonable while automated data-driven algorithms are improved.
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Infections are common complications among patients on chronic hemodialysis. This population-based cohort study aims to estimate risk and case fatality of bloodstream infection among chronic hemodialysis patients. ⋯ Hemodialysis patients have extraordinary high risk of bloodstream infection while short-term case fatality following is similar to that of population controls.
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Observational Study
Prognostic Value of the Six-Second Spirometry in Patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: A Cohort Study.
The six-second spirometry has been proposed as an alternative to diagnose airflow limitation, although its prognostic value in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) remains unknown. The purpose of this study was to determine the prognostic value of the postbronchodilator forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1)/forced expiratory volume in 6 seconds (FEV6) ratio and FEV6 in COPD patients. ⋯ In a general COPD outpatient population, airflow obstruction assessed by the FEV1/FEV6 is an independent risk factor for both death and hospitalization.
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Work-related functional impairment in terms of sickness absence and disability pension (SA/DP) has been reported to be associated with subsequent suicide. However, there is only limited knowledge on SA/DP patterns prior to suicide. The aim was to identify trajectories of work-related functional impairment prior to suicide and to describe associations of socio-demographic and medical factors with such trajectories. ⋯ This study identified five different groups of work-related functional impairment trajectories before suicide. These differences might be partly explained by the variations in socio-demographic profiles and health care consumptions five years before suicide.
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The first identification of swine-originated influenza A/CA/04/2009 (pH1N1) as the cause of an outbreak of human influenza accelerated efforts to develop vaccines to prevent and control influenza viruses. The current norm in many countries is to prepare influenza vaccines using cell-based or egg-based killed vaccines, but it is difficult to elicit a sufficient immune response using this approach. To improve immune responses, researchers have examined the use of cytokines as vaccine adjuvants, and extensively investigated their functions as chemoattractants of immune cells and boosters of vaccine-mediated protection. Here, we evaluated the effect of Granulocyte-macrophage Colony-Stimulating Factor (GmCSF) as an influenza vaccine adjuvant in BALB/c mice. ⋯ Thus, these results indicate that AcHERV-GmCSF is an effective molecular adjuvant that augments immune responses against influenza virus.