Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A cost function analysis of shigellosis in Thailand.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to develop a cost function model to estimate the public treatment cost of shigellosis patients in Thailand. METHODS This study is an incidence-based cost-of-illness analysis from a provider's perspective. The sample cases in this study were shigellosis patients residing in Kaengkhoi District, Saraburi Province, Thailand. All diarrhea patients who came to the health-care centers in Kaengkhoi District, Kaengkhoi District Hospital and Saraburi Regional Hospital during the period covering May 2002 to April 2003 were tested for Shigella spp. The sample for our study included all patients with culture that confirmed the presence of shigellosis. Public treatment cost was defined as the costs incurred by the health-care service facilities arising from individual cases. The cost was calculated based on the number of services that were utilized (clinic visits, hospitalization, pharmaceuticals, and laboratory investigations), as well as the unit cost of the services (material, labor and capital costs). The data were summarized using descriptive statistics. Furthermore, the stepwise multiple regressions were employed to create a cost function, and the uncertainty was tested by a one-way sensitivity analysis of varying discount rate, cost category, and drug prices. RESULTS Cost estimates were based from 137 episodes of 130 patients. Ninety-four percent of them received treatment as outpatients. One-fifth of the episodes were children aged less than 5 years old. The average public treatment cost was US$8.65 per episode based on 2006 prices (95% CI, 4.79, and 12.51) (approximately US$1 = 38.084 Thai baht). The majority of the treatment cost (59.3%) was consumed by the hospitalized patients, though they only accounted for 5.8% of all episodes. The sensitivity analysis on the component of costs and drug prices showed a variation in the public treatment cost ranging from US$8.29 to US$9.38 (-4.20% and 8.43% of the base-case, respectively). The public treatment cost model has an adjusted R(2) of 0.788. The positive predictor variables were types of services (inpatient and outpatient), types of health-care facilities (health center, district hospital, regional hospital), and insurance schemes (civil servants medical benefit scheme, social security scheme and universal health coverage scheme). Treatment cost was estimated for various scenarios based on the fitted cost model. CONCLUSION The average public treatment cost of shigellosis in Thailand was estimated in this study. Service types, health-care facilities, and insurance schemes were the predictors used to predict nearly 80% of the cost. The estimated cost based on the fitted model can be employed for hospital management and health-care planning.
Characteristics of self-defining memory in depression vulnerability

There has been a growing recognition of the role of memory processes in depressive vulnerability, as has been suggested by influential cognitive models of depressive disorders (Teasdale, 1988). In this study recovered depressed (n = 35) and never-depressed (n=49) participants recalled self-defining memories following either a sad or neutral mood induction. In a neutral mood, recovered depressed and never-depressed participants did not differ in terms of the characteristics of the memories that they recalled. However, in a sad mood recovered depressed participants recalled more vivid negative memories and less emotionally intense positive memories than never-depressed participants. This study provides support for aspects of Teasdale's differential activation model and contributes to the growing recognition that depressive disorders involve disturbances in both negative and positive memory processes.
The impact of proton pump inhibitor compliance on health-care resource utilization and costs in patients with gastroesophageal reflux disease.

OBJECTIVE Standard pharmacotherapy for patients with gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) includes treatment with proton pump inhibitors (PPIs). This study examined the effect of GERD patients' compliance with PPI therapy on health-care resource utilization and costs. METHODS This was a retrospective study of more than 25 million managed care lives in the United States from January 2000 through February 2005. Administrative claims data were obtained from the National Managed Care Benchmarks database, developed by Integrated Health Care Information Solutions. GERD-diagnosed patients who had at least two PPI dispensings were extracted and grouped into two treatment categories based on their PPI medication possession ratio (MPR): compliant (MPR > 0.8) and noncompliant. A regression-based difference-in-differences approach was used to estimate the effect of compliance on the frequency and costs of inpatient and outpatient visits and pharmacy costs. Statistical controls included health plan type, patient age, baseline use of nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs, and comorbidities. RESULTS Of the total 41,837 patients studied, 68% were compliant. On an annual, per-patient basis, PPI compliance resulted in 0.47 fewer outpatient visits (P = 0.040), 0.03 fewer inpatient visits (P = 0.015), and 0.47 fewer hospitalization days (P = 0.001) from the pre-PPI use period, compared to noncompliance. PPI therapy increased pharmacy costs for both groups, but the total annual health-care costs were reduced for both groups. Compliant patients experienced a greater decline in total cost from the pre-PPI period compared to noncompliant patients (declines of $3261 vs. $2406 per patient per year, P = 0.012). CONCLUSIONS Both health-care resource use and costs were reduced after initiation of PPI therapy. Additional reductions from the pre-PPI period were further observed by compliance with PPI therapy.
Intentional forgetting diminishes memory for continuous events

In a novel event method directed forgetting task, instructions to Remember (R) or Forget (F) were integrated throughout the presentation of four videos depicting common events (e.g., baking cookies). Participants responded more accurately to cued recall questions (E1) and true/false statements (E2-4) regarding R segments than F segments. This was true even when forced to attend to F segments by virtue of having to perform concurrent discrimination (E2) or conceptual segmentation (E3) tasks. The final experiment (E5) demonstrated a larger R >F difference for specific true/false statements (the woman added three cups of flour) than for general true/false statements (the woman added flour) suggesting that participants likely encoded and retained at least a general representation of the events they had intended to forget, even though this representation was not as specific as the representation of events they had intended to remember.
Gender differences in episodic memory and visual working memory including the effects of age

Analysing the relationship between gender and memory, and examining the effects of age on the overall memory-related functioning, are the ongoing goals of psychological research. The present study examined gender and age group differences in episodic memory with respect to the type of task. In addition, these subgroup differences were also analysed in visual working memory. A sample of 366 women and 330 men, aged between 16 and 69 years of age, participated in the current study. Results indicate that women outperformed men on auditory memory tasks, whereas male adolescents and older male adults showed higher level performances on visual episodic and visual working memory measures. However, the size of gender-linked effects varied somewhat across age groups. Furthermore, results partly support a declining performance on episodic memory and visual working memory measures with increasing age. Although age-related losses in episodic memory could not be explained by a decreasing verbal and visuospatial ability with age, women's advantage in auditory episodic memory could be explained by their advantage in verbal ability. Men's higher level visual episodic memory performance was found to result from their advantage in visuospatial ability. Finally, possible methodological, biological, and cognitive explanations for the current findings are discussed.
Gender difference in recognition memory for neutral and emotional faces

Research has shown females' advantage in face memory, but few studies have used emotional faces as stimuli. In addition, it is unclear whether gender difference in memory for faces is mediated by individual factors especially associated with emotion. This study examined gender difference in recognition memory for neutral and emotional faces and whether arousal predisposition, emotion reappraisal, and emotion suppression can play a mediation role. Females (N=48) and males (N=45) viewed and memorised neutral, happy, and angry faces, and then took an immediate recognition test. The findings are: (1) Females outperformed males in recognition memory for happy faces, but not for neutral and negative faces. (2) Gender difference in recognition memory (including recollection and familiarity) was not mediated by arousal predisposition and emotion regulation. (3) Females had an own-sex bias in that they outperformed males with regard to recognition memory only for female faces, but not for male faces. The findings suggest that females' advantage is mediated by valence of face emotionality but not by arousal predisposition and emotion regulation, thus extending the literature by demonstrating the boundary condition for occurrence of females' advantage.
Remembered study mode: Support for the distinctiveness account of the production effect

The production effect is the finding that words spoken aloud at study are subsequently remembered better than are words read silently at study. According to the distinctiveness account, aloud words are remembered better because the act of speaking those words aloud is encoded and later recovery of this information can be used to infer that those words were studied. An alternative account (the strength-based account) is that memory strength is simply greater for words read aloud. To discriminate these two accounts, we investigated study mode judgements (i.e., “aloud”/”silent”/”new” ratings): The strength-based account predicts that “aloud” responses should positively correlate with memory strength, whereas the distinctiveness account predicts that accuracy of study mode judgements will be independent of memory strength. Across three experiments, where the strength of some silent words was increased by repetition, study mode was discriminable regardless of strength—even when the strength of aloud and repeated silent items was equivalent. Consistent with the distinctiveness account, we conclude that memory for “aloudness” is independent of memory strength and a likely candidate to explain the production effect.
Prospective validation of eight different adherence measures for use with administrative claims data among patients with schizophrenia.

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to compare the predictive validity of eight different adherence measures by studying the variability explained between each measure and hospitalization episodes among Medicaid-eligible persons diagnosed with schizophrenia on antipsychotic monotherapy. METHODS This study was a retrospective analysis of the Arkansas Medicaid administrative claims data. Continuously eligible adult schizophrenia (ICD-9-CM = 295.**) patients on antipsychotic monotherapy were identified in the recruitment period from July 2000 through April 2004. Adherence rates to antipsychotic therapy in year 1 were calculated using eight different measures identified from the literature. Univariate and multivariable logistic regression models were used to prospectively predict all-cause and mental health-related hospitalizations in the follow-up year. RESULTS Adherence rates were computed for 3395 schizophrenic patients with a mean age of 42.9 years, of which 52.5% (n = 1782) were females, and 52.8% (n = 1793) were white. The proportion of days covered (PDC) and continuous measure of medication gaps measures of adherence had equal C-statistics of 0.571 in predicting both all-cause and mental health-related hospitalizations. The medication possession ratio (MPR) continuous multiple interval measure of oversupply were the second best measures with equal C-statistics of 0.568 and 0.567 for any-cause and mental health-related hospitalizations. The multivariate adjusted models had higher C-statistics but provided the same rank order results. CONCLUSIONS MPR and PDC were among the best predictors of any-cause and mental health-related hospitalization, and are recommended as the preferred adherence measures when a single measure is sought for use with administrative claims data for patients not on polypharmacy.
Visual perspective in autobiographical memories: Reliability, consistency, and relationship to objective memory performance

Visual perspective in autobiographical memories was examined in terms of reliability, consistency, and relationship to objective memory performance in a sample of 99 individuals. Autobiographical memories may be recalled from two visual perspectives—a field perspective in which individuals experience the memory through their own eyes, or an observer perspective in which individuals experience the memory from the viewpoint of an observer in which they can see themselves. Participants recalled nine word-cued memories that differed in emotional valence (positive, negative and neutral) and rated their memories on 18 scales. Results indicate that visual perspective was the most reliable memory characteristic overall and is consistently related to emotional intensity at the time of recall and amount of emotion experienced during the memory. Visual perspective is unrelated to memory for words, stories, abstract line drawings or faces.
Carbon and Water in Upper Montane Soils and Their Influences on Vegetation in Southern Brazil

Considering the many environmental functions of the upper montane soils, the aims of this study were (1) to verify if the soils of upper montane forests and grasslands of Caratuva Peak (1850 m a.s.l.) have similar characteristics to those found in other highlands in southern and southeastern Brazil; (2) to reinforce the geomorphological and pedological factors that impose the establishment of each type of vegetation in these highlands; and (3) to estimate potential soil carbon stocks and potential soil water retention. Folic and haplic histosols were found in the grasslands, and dystrophic regosols were found in the forests. The soils were dystrophic, extremely acidic, and saturated with Al and total organic carbon. In contrast to the grasslands, the upper montane forests were prevalent in valleys and subjected to morphogenetic processes resulting in soils that contained thicker mineral horizons. The grasslands occupied ridges and divergent convex ramps, and the pedogenetic processes in these regions promoted thicker histic horizons. The potential water retention capacities were high and strongly related to the high porosities of histic horizons associated with the gleyic horizons. In particularly, the carbon stocks were two- to three-fold higher than those found in soil ecosystems from the same latitude but lower altitude.
Providing Alternative Financing for Assistive Technology

This article presents the findings from data collected between October 1, 2000, and June 12, 2002, through a Web-based outcome data collection and management system designed for use by alternative financing programs (AFPs) for assistive technology that are supported by a grant from the National Institute of Disability and Rehabilitation Research. The findings suggest that funding for mobility equipment (including adapted transportation) is the most sought by applicants to AFPs. Although the majority of the applicants were receiving funding, women, people living in urban areas, and individuals in the lowest income quartile (less than $966/month) were less likely to be approved for a loan. Overall, the findings suggest that the AFPs are providing an avenue for people with disabilities to acquire assistive technology they have been unable to access through other funding sources. Areas for future development of the AFPs are identified, including outreach to minority and non—English-speaking groups.
Value of information analyses of economic randomized controlled trials: the treatment of intermittent claudication.

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study is to design the optimal study comparing endovascular revascularization and supervised exercise training for patients with intermittent claudication and to demonstrate value of information (VOI) analysis of patient-level data from an economic randomized controlled trial to guide future research. METHODS We applied a net benefit framework to patient-level data on costs and quality-of-life of a previous randomized controlled trial. VOI analyses were performed using Monte Carlo simulation. We estimated the total expected value of perfect information (total EVPI), the total expected value of sample information (total EVSI), the partial expected value of perfect information (partial EVPI), and the partial expected value of sample information (partial EVSI). These VOI analyses identified the key parameters and the optimal sample size of future study designs. Sensitivity analyses were performed to explore the robustness of our assumptions about the population to benefit, the willingness-to-pay threshold, and the study costs. The VOI analyses are demonstrated in statistical software (R) and a spreadsheet (Excel) allowing other investigators to apply VOI analysis to their patient-level data. RESULTS The optimal study design for the treatment of intermittent claudication involves a randomized controlled trial collecting data on the quality-adjusted life expectancy and additional admission costs for 525 patients per treatment arm. The optimal sample size remained between 400 and 600 patients for a willingness-to-pay threshold between euro30,000 and euro100,000/quality-adjusted life-years, for even extreme assumptions about the study costs, and for a range of 3 to 7 years that future patients will benefit from the results of the proposed study. CONCLUSIONS 1) The optimal study for patients with intermittent claudication collects data on two key parameters for 525 patients per trial arm; and 2) we have shown that value of information analysis provides an explicit framework to determine the optimal sample size and identify key parameters for the design of future clinical trials.
Trait negative affectivity and responses to a health education intervention for myocardial infarction patients

This study evaluated whether trait negative affectivity (NA) moderates the effects of an illness perceptions-based education programme on worry, disability and health behaviours following a first-time myocardial infarction (MI). The intervention targeted problem-focused regulation with minimal attention to emotion-focused regulation. The hospitalized MI patients (n = 65) completed measures of NA, heart attack worry and exercise, and they were randomized to a three-session intervention condition or standard care condition. Worry was assessed at hospital discharge, and disability, dietary fat intake and exercise were assessed 3 months and 6 months later. Cardiac rehabilitation attendance was recorded by the staff. Regression analyses revealed NA × condition interaction effects indicating that the intervention (relative to standard care) led to: (1) reduced worry only for patients with higher NA levels; (2) higher cardiac rehabilitation attendance and lower disability after three months, but only for patients with lower NA levels; and (3) lower exercise rates and higher dietary fat intake after six months for patients with higher NA levels. This intervention may benefit low NA patients, but it may have negligible or detrimental effects on disability and health behaviours for high NA patients.
Patients' opinions of the care and their own well-being before and after the introduction of pain advisers into the primary health care system

The aim of this study was to investigate the opinions of patients with chronic pain conditions, as regarded the following points: the feeling of having their pain experience unconditionally accepted (confirmed) at the meeting with the district nurse, their opinions regarding the treatment and knowledge of the chronic pain and the wellbeing related to the chronic pain condition, and whether their opinions changed after the introduction of trained district nurses as ‘pain advisers’. A study area (SA) with five primary health care centres (PHCCs), and a control area (CA) with seven were selected. Before and after the introduction of one ‘pain adviser’ at each PHCC within the SA, the district nurses in both areas were asked to register all the patients older than 16 years with chronic pain conditions whom they were in contact with. A total of 84 (34 SA, 50 CA) patients in 1996 (67% of all the patients who received a questionnaire in 1996) and 60 (43 SA, 17 CA) patients in 1998 (77%) answered a questionnaire. The study showed that patients with chronic pain conditions felt confirmed at the meeting with the district nurse. Furthermore, the patients considered that the pain influenced their well-being to a rather great extent. The advice and recommendations and/or information and education received were also found to be valuable to these patients. After the introduction of ‘pain advisers’ into the SA, some improvements were found in both areas. In the SA only, the patients reported less pain and more knowledge with which to understand the pain as a result of the advice and recommendation and/or the information and education.
Oxabact: truly a new treatment option in patients with (primary) hyperoxaluria?

Introduction: Hyperoxaluria is one leading risk factor for recurrent kidney stone disease and progressive nephrocalcinosis. In patients with a primary form (PH, endogenous oxalate overproduction), severe hyperoxaluria often leads to early end-stage renal failure (ESRD). Humans cannot further metabolize oxalate, but Oxalobacter formigenes, an anaerobic microbe normally colonizing the intestinal tract, uses oxalate as its sole source of energy. Orally administered Oxalobacter/ Oxabact ®, hence using Oxalobacter’s oxalate degrading enzymes for oxalate elimination via the intestinal tract is regarded as a new treatment option. Areas covered: This review is an intense overview of animal and human data, both basic research, as well as clinical studies with a focus on human studies in patients with PH type I. A discussion of pitfalls and clues of the recent and future Oxalobacter/Oxabact trials is included. Expert opinion: There is important scientific evidence that Oxalobacter/Oxabact medication is helpful in treating patients with any form of hyperoxaluria. Hence, major socio-economic effects would be achievable, as most of the patients with PH type I are currently untreatable and reach early ESRD and often premature death. The only curative current treatment option in these patients is combined liver-kidney or pre-emptive liver transplantation, both expensive procedures bearing great risk potentials.