São Paulo medical journal = Revista paulista de medicina
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People have been using psychoactive substances for a long time. Over the last few years, this practice has spread among university students, who use these substances to improve their academic performance, relieve stress and increase concentration and memory. ⋯ There was high prevalence of psychoactive drug use among the students at the higher education institution investigated. Some variables (female sex, medical students and low academic performance) were associated with the outcome.
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Several continuous measurements of cardiometabolic risk (CMR) have emerged as indexes or scores. To our knowledge, there are no published data on its application and validation in Latin America. ⋯ The findings support the use of the scores assessed here. Follow-up studies should evaluate the predictive capacity of scores for cardiovascular events and diabetes in the Venezuelan population.
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Studies have shown that physical activity levels can be inversely associated with high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) levels. However, the amount of physical activity required to maintain normal hs-CRP levels is still a matter for speculation. ⋯ Physical activity in the leisure-time and commuting domains together, of duration 200 minutes/week, was associated with normal hs-CRP values.
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Statins are used as cholesterol-lowering drugs and may also have direct antimicrobial effects. ⋯ These results demonstrate that simvastatin should be considered to be a therapeutic alternative, capable of potentiating the action of amphotericin B. However, further studies are necessary to clarify the real effect of simvastatin as an antifungal agent.
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Observational Study
Relationships between Bloom's taxonomy, judges' estimation of item difficulty and psychometric properties of items from a progress test: a prospective observational study.
Progress tests are longitudinal assessments of students' knowledge based on successive tests. Calibration of the test difficulty is challenging, especially because of the tendency of item-writers to overestimate students' performance. The relationships between the levels of Bloom's taxonomy, the ability of test judges to predict the difficulty of test items and the real psychometric properties of test items have been insufficiently studied. ⋯ Our study demonstrated that items with high-level taxonomy performed better in discrimination indices and that a panel of experts may develop coherent reasoning regarding the difficulty of items.