Bmc Med
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New Global Burden of Disease estimates for liver cirrhosis, published in BMC Medicine, suggest that cirrhosis caused over a million deaths in 2010, with a further million due to liver cancer and acute hepatitis. Cause-specific mortality data were very sparse for some regions, particularly in Africa, with no relevant mortality data for 58/187 countries. Liver disease involves infectious, malignant and chronic aetiologies with overlapping symptoms. ⋯ There is hope: coming generations of adults will have been vaccinated against hepatitis B, and this is envisaged to reduce the burden of fatal liver disease. But more complete civil registration globally is needed to fully understand the burden of liver disease. Please see related article: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/12/145/abstract.
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Preventive immunization has provided one of the major advances in population health during the past century. However, a surprising cultural phenomenon is the emergence of concerns about immunization safety, in part due to prominently controversial biomedical studies. ⋯ The study of Polymeros et al. in this BMC Medicine presents a systematic evaluation and refutation of this safety concern. This provides significant new scientific evidence in support of the safety of pediatric vaccines, which will inform the ongoing policy and cultural understanding of this important public health measure.
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Liver cirrhosis is a major yet largely preventable and underappreciated cause of global health loss. Variations in cirrhosis mortality at the country level reflect differences in prevalence of risk factors such as alcohol use and hepatitis B and C infection. We estimated annual age-specific mortality from liver cirrhosis in 187 countries between 1980 and 2010. ⋯ Liver cirrhosis is a significant cause of global health burden, with more than one million deaths in 2010. Our study identifies areas with high and/or rapidly increasing mortality where preventive measures to control and reduce liver cirrhosis risk factors should be urgently strengthened.
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Most of newly discovered cancer biomarkers fail in the clinic because they lack sensitivity and/or specificity. The current explosion in knowledge of the mutational spectrum of many cancer types, as a result of whole exome and whole genome sequencing, has revealed a wide spectrum of mutations that appear to be highly specific for various cancer types. ⋯ The power of genomic and proteomic technologies can be combined to identify highly specific analytes for biomarker applications.
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Several non-invasive prediction scores for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) have been developed, but their performance has not been compared and validated in the same population, and whether these prediction scores can predict clinical outcomes remains unknown. In this study, we aimed to validate and compare the performance of four NAFLD prediction scores: fatty liver index, hepatic steatosis index, lipid accumulation product, and NAFLD liver fat score (LFS), and to evaluate the ability of the best NAFLD prediction score to predict mortality. ⋯ LFS is the best non-invasive prediction score for NAFLD, and people with a high LFS score have an increased risk for cardiovascular and liver-related mortality.