bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Exploiting mutual information for the imputation of static and dynamic mixed-type clinical data with an adaptive k-nearest neighbours approach
Authors: Tavazzi Erica , Daberdaku Sebastian , Vasta Rosario , Calvo Andrea , Chiò Adriano , Di Camillo Barbara 
Published: August 2020

Abstract
Background
Clinical registers constitute an invaluable resource in the medical data-driven decision making context. Accurate machine learning and data mining approaches on these data can lead to faster diagnosis, definition of tailored interventions, and improved outcome prediction. A typical issue when implementing such approaches is the almost unavoidable presence of missing values in the collected data. In this work, we propose an imputation algorithm based on a mutual information-weighted k-nearest neighbours approach, able to handle the simultaneous presence of missing information in different types of variables. We developed and validated the method on a clinical register, constituted by the information collected over subsequent screening visits of a cohort of patients affected by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Methods
For each subject with missing data to be imputed, we create a feature vector constituted by the information collected over his/her first three months of visits. This vector is used as sample in a k-nearest neighbours procedure, in order to select, among the other patients, the ones with the most similar temporal evolution of the disease over time. An ad hoc similarity metric was implemented for the sample comparison, capable of handling the different nature of the data, the presence of multiple missing values and include the cross-information among features captured by the mutual information statistic.

Results
We validated the proposed imputation method on an independent test set, comparing its performance with those of three state-of-the-art competitors, resulting in better performance. We further assessed the validity of our algorithm by comparing the performance of a survival classifier built on the data imputed with our method versus the one built on the data imputed with the best-performing competitor.

Conclusions
Imputation of missing data is a crucial –and often mandatory– step when working with real-world datasets. The algorithm proposed in this work could effectively impute an amyotrophic lateral sclerosis clinical dataset, by handling the temporal and the mixed-type nature of the data and by exploiting the cross-information among features. We also showed how the imputation quality can affect a machine learning task.
A system for automatically extracting clinical events with temporal information
Authors: Li Zhijing , Li Chen , Long Yu , Wang Xuan 
Published: August 2020

Abstract
Background
The popularization of health and medical informatics yields huge amounts of data. Extracting clinical events on a temporal course is the foundation of enabling advanced applications and research. It is a structure of presenting information in chronological order. Manual extraction would be extremely challenging due to the quantity and complexity of the records.

Methods
We present an recurrent neural network- based architecture, which is able to automatically extract clinical event expressions along with each event’s temporal information. The system is built upon the attention-based and recursive neural networks and introduce a piecewise representation (we divide the input sentences into three pieces to better utilize the information in the sentences), incorporates semantic information by utilizing word representations obtained from BioASQ and Wikipedia.

Results
The system is evaluated on the THYME corpus, a set of manually annotated clinical records from Mayo Clinic. In order to further verify the effectiveness of the system, the system is also evaluated on the TimeBank _Dense corpus. The experiments demonstrate that the system outperforms the current state-of-the-art models. The system also supports domain adaptation, i.e., the system may be used in brain cancer data while its model is trained in colon cancer data.

Conclusion
Our system extracts temporal expressions, event expressions and link them according to actually occurring sequence, which may structure the key information from complicated unstructured clinical records. Furthermore, we demonstrate that combining the piecewise representation method with attention mechanism can capture more complete features. The system is flexible and can be extended to handle other document types.
Mobile X-ray outside the hospital: a scoping review
Authors: Toppenberg Maria Dietz , Christiansen Thomas Erik Møller , Rasmussen Finn , Nielsen Camilla Palmhøj , Damsgaard Else Marie 
Published: August 2020

Abstract
Background
For several years mobile X-ray equipment has been routinely used for imaging in patients too unwell within the hospital, when transportation to the radiology department was inadvisable. Now, mobile X-ray examinations are also used outside the hospital. The literature describes that fragile patients may benefit from mobile X-ray, but we need to provide insights into the breadth, depth and gaps in a body of literature.

Methods
The scoping review was performed by searching PubMed, Cinahl, Embase, EconLit and Health Technology Assessment.
English-, Danish-, Norwegian-, German-, Italian-, French- and Swedish-language studies, published 1.1.2009–1.5.2020 about mobile X-ray outside the hospital were included.
Participants were patients examined using mobile X-ray as the intervention.
PRISMA was used when eligible to build up the review. To extract data from the selected articles, we used a structured summary table.

Results
We included 12 studies in this scoping review. The results were divided into four topics:1. Target population 2. Population health 3. Experience of care and 4. Cost effectiveness.
The main findings are that target population could be larger for instance including hospice patients for palliative care, group dwelling for people with intellectual disabilities, or psychiatric patients, population health may be improved, image quality seems to be good and mobile X-ray may be cost effective.
Limitations of language, databases and grey literature may have resulted in studies being missed.

Conclusions
Mobile X-ray may be used outside hospital. There seems to be potential benefits to both patients and health care staff. Based on the published studies it is not possible to draw a final conclusion if mobile X-ray examination is a relevant diagnostic offer and for whom. Further studies are needed to assess the feasibility of use in fragile patients, also regarding staff, relatives and societal consequences and therefore the topic mobile X-ray needs more research.
Examining healthcare professionals’ beliefs and actions regarding the physical health of people with schizophrenia
Authors: Berry Alexandra , Drake Richard J. , Yung Alison R. 
Published: August 2020

Abstract
Background
People with schizophrenia have a higher premature mortality risk compared with the general population mainly due to cardiovascular disease (CVD). Despite this, people with schizophrenia are less likely to access physical health services or have their physical health investigated and monitored.

Aims
To examine the beliefs and actions of mental health professionals regarding the physical health of people with schizophrenia.

Method
Two hundred and fifty-five healthcare professionals who support people with schizophrenia within Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust (GMMH), United Kingdom and Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust (PCFT), United Kingdom took part. Beliefs and actions were assessed using a self-administered questionnaire, which was constructed around two primary domains (1) CVD risk factors; and (2) physical health interventions. Descriptive statistics were reported and responses between different healthcare professional groups were compared.

Results
The overwhelming majority of participants were aware of established CVD risk factors with 98% identifying family history of CVD, 98% for smoking and 96% for high blood pressure. Most participants believed nearly all healthcare professionals were responsible for monitoring the physical health of people with schizophrenia, regardless of job speciality. There were 67% of participants who reported delivering an intervention to improve sedentary behaviour for people with schizophrenia. However, awareness of government and NHS recommended lifestyle interventions were low.

Conclusions
This study found good knowledge regarding many established CVD risk factors but little clarity regarding who is responsible for monitoring the physical health of people with schizophrenia and how often brief lifestyle interventions are being implemented.
Postbiotics-parabiotics: the new horizons in microbial biotherapy and functional foods
Authors: Nataraj Basavaprabhu H. , Ali Syed Azmal , Behare Pradip V. , Yadav Hariom 
Published: August 2020

AbstractProbiotics have several health benefits by modulating gut microbiome; however, techno-functional limitations such as viability controls have hampered their full potential applications in the food and pharmaceutical sectors. Therefore, the focus is gradually shifting from viable probiotic bacteria towards non-viable paraprobiotics and/or probiotics derived biomolecules, so-called postbiotics. Paraprobiotics and postbiotics are the emerging concepts in the functional foods field because they impart an array of health-promoting properties. Although, these terms are not well defined, however, for time being these terms have been defined as here. The postbiotics are the complex mixture of metabolic products secreted by probiotics in cell-free supernatants such as enzymes, secreted proteins, short chain fatty acids, vitamins, secreted biosurfactants, amino acids, peptides, organic acids, etc. While, the paraprobiotics are the inactivated microbial cells of probiotics (intact or ruptured containing cell components such as peptidoglycans, teichoic acids, surface proteins, etc.) or crude cell extracts (i.e. with complex chemical composition)”. However, in many instances postbiotics have been used for whole category of postbiotics and parabiotics. These elicit several advantages over probiotics like; (i) availability in their pure form, (ii) ease in production and storage, (iii) availability of production process for industrial-scale-up, (iv) specific mechanism of action, (v) better accessibility of Microbes Associated Molecular Pattern (MAMP) during recognition and interaction with Pattern Recognition Receptors (PRR) and (vi) more likely to trigger only the targeted responses by specific ligand-receptor interactions. The current review comprehensively summarizes and discussed various methodologies implied to extract, purify, and identification of paraprobiotic and postbiotic compounds and their potential health benefits.
Consumption of ultra-processed foods and health outcomes: a systematic review of epidemiological studies
Authors: Chen Xiaojia , Zhang Zhang , Yang Huijie , Qiu Peishan , Wang Haizhou , Wang Fan , Zhao Qiu , Fang Jun , Nie Jiayan 
Published: August 2020

AbstractBackgroundConsumption of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) plays a potential role in the development of obesity and other diet-related noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), but no studies have systematically focused on this. This study aimed to summarize the evidence for the association between UPFs consumption and health outcomes.MethodsA comprehensive search was conducted in PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science to identify all relevant studies. Epidemiological studies were included, and identified studies were evaluated for risk of bias.A narrative review of the synthesized findings was provided to assess the association between UPFs consumption and health outcomes.Results20 studies (12 cohort and 8 cross-sectional studies) were included in the analysis, with a total of 334,114 participants and 10 health outcomes. In a narrative review, high UPFs consumption was obviously associated with an increased risk of all-cause mortality, overall cardiovascular diseases, coronary heart diseases, cerebrovascular diseases, hypertension, metabolic syndrome, overweight and obesity, depression, irritable bowel syndrome, overall cancer, postmenopausal breast cancer, gestational obesity, adolescent asthma and wheezing, and frailty. It showed no significant association with cardiovascular disease mortality, prostate and colorectal cancers, gestational diabetes mellitus and gestational overweight.ConclusionsThis study indicated a positive association between UPFs consumption and risk of several health outcomes. Large-scale prospective designed studies are needed to confirm our findings.
Comparing perceived psychosocial working conditions of nurses and physicians in two university hospitals in Germany with other German professionals - feasibility of scale conversion between two versions of the German Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ)
Authors: Wagner Anke , Nübling Matthias , Hammer Antje , Manser Tanja , Rieger Monika A. ,   on behalf of the WorkSafeMed Consortium, Luntz E. , Rieger M. A. , Sturm H. , Wagner A. , Hammer A. , Manser T. , Martus P. , Holderried M. 
Published: August 2020

Abstract
Background
In 2015, the WorkSafeMed study assessed, amongst others, perceived psychosocial working conditions in nurses (n = 567) and physicians (n = 381) from two German university hospitals using scales from the German standard version of the COPSOQ (Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire). This standard version is based on the international COPSOQ I and II. Since 2017, a further developed version of the German COPSOQ (G-COPSOQ III) has been available and data from this version are stored in the German COPSOQ database. The aim of the present study was to compare scales depicting perceived psychosocial workloads and strain in hospital staff from the WorkSafeMed study with reference data (hospital care nurses, general hospital physicians, reference values across all occupations) from the German COPSOQ database (2012–2017). As preliminary work, we explored whether a conversion of COPSOQ scales based on data from the WorkSafeMed study to the G-COPSOQ III scales was possible.

Methods
We applied a multistep approach for conversion. First, we compared 17 COPSOQ scales used in the WorkSafeMed study with the corresponding scales from the G-COPSOQ III according to content and then decided if a conversion was appropriate. If possible, we converted WorkSafeMed scales - the converted scales comprised the same content and number of items as in G-COPSOQ III. An explorative statistical analysis for each original and converted WorkSafeMed scale followed detecting possible statistical and relevant differences between the scales. We then compared converted WorkSafeMed scales with reference data from the German COPSOQ database.

Results
Based on the comparison undertaken according to content, a conversion was possible for 16 scales. Using the data from the WorkSafeMed study, the statistical analysis showed only differences between original and converted COPSOQ scales “control over working time” (mean 40.2 vs. 51.8, dCohen = 0.56) and “social relations” (mean 55.6 vs. 41.8, dCohen = − 0.55). Comparing converted WorkSafeMed scales with reference data revealed higher values for “quantitative demands”, “work-privacy-conflict”, and “job satisfaction” in the WorkSafeMed sample.

Conclusions
The conversion of WorkSafeMed scales was appropriate, allowed a comparison with three reference values in the German COPSOQ database and revealed some implications for improving psychosocial working conditions of nurses and physicians in university hospitals in Germany.
Towards a taxonomy of behavior change techniques for promoting shared decision making
Authors: Agbadjé Titilayo Tatiana , Elidor Hélène , Perin Milena Sia , Adekpedjou Rhéda , Légaré France 
Published: August 2020

Abstract
Background
There is little information about the functions and behavior change techniques (BCTs) needed to implement shared decision making (SDM) in clinical practice. To guide future implementation initiatives, we sought to develop a BCT taxonomy for SDM implementation interventions.

Methods
This study is a secondary analysis of a 2018 Cochrane review on interventions for increasing the use of shared decision making by healthcare professionals. We examined all 87 studies included in the review. We extracted relevant information on each study intervention into a spreadsheet. Coders had undergone a training workshop on intervention functions and online training on BCT Taxonomy version 1 (BCTTv1). We performed functions and BCTs coding trials, and identified coding rules. We used Michie’s guide for designing behavior change interventions to code the functions and BCTs used in the interventions. Coders met to compare coding and discrepancies were discussed until consensus was reached. Data was analyzed using simple descriptive statistics.

Results
Overall, 7 functions, 24 combinations of functions and 32 BCTs were used in the 87 SDM implementation interventions. The mean of functions per intervention was 2.5 and the mean of BCTs per intervention was 3.7. The functions Coercion and Restriction were not found. The most common function was Education (73 studies). Three combinations of functions were most common (e.g: Education + Persuasion, used in 10 studies). The functions associated with more effective SDM implementation interventions were Modeling and Training. The most effective combination of functions was Education + Training + Modeling + Enablement. The most commonly used BCT was Instruction on how to perform the behavior (43 studies). BCTs associated with more effective SDM implementation interventions were: Instruction on how to perform the behavior, Demonstration of the behavior, Feedback on behavior, Pharmacological support, Material reward, and Biofeedback. Twenty-five BCTs were associated with less effective SDM implementation interventions. Four new BCTs were identified: General information to support the behavior, Tailoring, Exercises to conceptually prepare for the behavior, and Experience sharing and learning.

Conclusions
We established a BCT taxonomy specific to the field of SDM to guide future SDM implementation interventions. Four new BCTs should be added to BCTTv1.
The β-catenin/TCF-4 pathway regulates the expression of OPN in human osteoarthritic chondrocytes
Authors: Tian Jian , Gao Shu-Guang , Li Yu-Sheng , Cheng Chao , Deng Zhen-Han , Luo Wei , Zhang Fang-Jie 
Published: August 2020

Abstract
Background
Cartilage destruction is the main characteristic of osteoarthritis (OA), and osteopontin (OPN) is elevated in OA articular cartilage; however, the reason for the increased OPN level is not determined. In addition, Wnt/β-catenin signaling participates in the progression of OA. The aim of the present study was to evaluate whether canonical Wnt signaling could regulate the expression of OPN in human chondrocytes in vitro.

Methods
Human chondrocytes were cultured in vitro, and we first assayed the mRNA levels of OPN and β-catenin in chondrocytes. Next, we performed transient transfection of TCF 4 shRNA into chondrocytes to inhibit TCF 4 expression and explore changes in the OPN level. Then, the Wnt/β-catenin signaling inhibitor Dickkopf-1 (Dkk-1) was incubated with chondrocytes, and we assayed the changes in β-catenin and OPN.

Results
Our results showed that the expression of both β-catenin and OPN was increased in OA chondrocytes, but there were no correlations between β-catenin and OPN expression. TCF4 shRNA downregulated the expression of TCF 4 and OPN in chondrocytes, while after treatment with rDKK-1 at a concentration of 400 ng/ml for 24 h, the mRNA and protein expression of both β-catenin and OPN was significantly decreased in chondrocytes.

Conclusions
Elevated OPN expression might be regulated by the β-catenin/TCF-4 pathway, and the Wnt/β-catenin inhibitor DKK1 could inhibit the expression of β-catenin and OPN in OA chondrocytes.
In vitro evaluation of the tension band suture method for proximal humerus fracture treatment
Authors: Ishii Hideaki , Shintaku Takanori , Yoshizawa Shu , Sakamoto Misato , Kaneko Takao , Musha Yoshiro , Ikegami Hiroyasu 
Published: August 2020

Abstract
Background
Proximal humeral fractures are common, and more than half occur in patients over 65 years of age. Operative treatment may be recommended for displaced, complicated fractures; however, surgery may lead to displacement of the greater tuberosity or humeral head. Supplemental tension band sutures have been recommended to prevent such a complication. In this study, we investigate the best combination of suture, washer, and threading angle for proximal humeral fractures from a mechanical view.

Methods
The mechanical durability of 18 combinations of suture materials (Fiberwire, Ethibond, and Surgilon), threading washers (ring washer, disc washer), and threading angles (15 or 45°) were examined via a cyclic loading test.

Results
The most durable combination in the cyclic loading test consisted of threading the Fiber Wire to the washer ring using only one hole (ring washer-1) at 45°. In contrast, the most vulnerable combination was threading Ethibond to the washer disc at 15°. Breakage of all suture materials occurred at the suture-washer interface, and no failure or loosening of the knots was observed. FiberWire gradually eroded until the loss of equilibrium; whereas the rupture of Ethibond and Surgilon occurred suddenly.

Conclusions
From a mechanical viewpoint, we demonstrated that applying a supplemental tension band suture using FiberWire with a single-hole ring washer threaded at a wider angle is recommended.
The scientific elucidation of daodi medicinal materials
Authors: Liu Xindan , Zhang Ying , Wu Menghua , Ma Zhiguo , Huang Zihan , Tian Fang , Dong Sihan , Luo Simin , Zhou Yu , Zhang Jinju , Li Nanxin , He Xiaofang , Cao Hui 
Published: August 2020

AbstractDaodi medicinal materials (DMMs), with unique characteristics and specific ecological growing environments, are recognized as high-quality medicinal products of Chinese medicinal materials (CMMs). The quality evaluation of CMMs is fundamental for standardization. The concept and application of DMMs have a long history as described in records in ancient books and rooted in practice and experience over generations. DMM is the specific term for pure, superior medicinal herbs with the following characteristics: optimum harvest season (reflecting the appropriate developmental stage of the plant), scrupulous processing, traditional preparation technology, etc. As DMM and high-quality medicinal products are traditionally thought to be closely related, modern scientific studies that confirm the association of these products are described. This article aims to clarify the scientific elucidation of DMMs.
Perception of medical students about courses based on peer-assisted learning in five Peruvian universities
Authors: Soriano-Moreno Anderson N. , Delgado-Raygada Jose E. , Peralta C. Ichiro , Serrano-Díaz Estefania S. , Canaza-Apaza Jaquelin M. , Toro-Huamanchumo Carlos J. 
Published: August 2020

Abstract
Objectives
Peer-assisted learning (PAL) is a supportive strategy in medical education. In Peru, this method has been implemented by few universities. However, there are no consistent studies evaluating their acceptability by medical students. The objective of this study was to evaluate the perception of medical students about PAL in five Peruvian universities.

Results
A total of 79 medical students were included in the study. The mean age was 20.1 ± 1.9 years, 54% were female, and 87% were in the first 4 years of study. Most of the students were satisfied with classes and peer teachers. Similarly, most of the students agreed with the interest in developing teaching skills. It was also observed that 97% of students approved to implement PAL in medical education programs.