bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Increased Risk of Osteoarthritis After Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction
Authors: Barenius Björn , Ponzer Sari , Shalabi Adel , Bujak Robert , Norlén Louise , Eriksson Karl 
Published: March 2014

Background: The reported prevalence of radiological osteoarthritis (OA) after anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction varies from 10% to 90%. Purpose/Hypothesis: To report the prevalence of OA after ACL reconstruction and to compare the OA prevalence between quadrupled semitendinosus tendon (ST) and bone–patellar tendon–bone (BPTB) grafts. The hypothesis was that there would be no difference in OA prevalence between the graft types. The secondary aim was to study whether patient characteristics and additional injuries were associated with long-term outcomes. Study Design: Randomized controlled trial; Level of evidence, 1. Methods: Radiological examination results, Tegner activity levels, and Knee injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score (KOOS) values were determined in 135 (82%) of 164 patients at a mean of 14 years after ACL reconstruction randomized to an ST or a BPTB graft. Osteoarthritis was defined according to a consensus by at least 2 of 3 radiologists of Kellgren-Lawrence grade ≥2. Using regression analysis, graft type, sex, age, overweight, time between injury and reconstruction, additional meniscus injury, and a number of other variables were assessed as risk factors for OA 14 years after ACL reconstruction. Results: Osteoarthritis of the medial compartment was most frequent, with 57% of OA cases in the ACL-reconstructed knee and 18% of OA cases in the contralateral knee ( P < .001). There was no difference between the graft types: 49% of OA of the medial compartment for BPTB grafts and 65% for ST grafts ( P = .073). The KOOS results were lower for patients with OA in all subscales, indicating that OA was symptomatic. No difference in the KOOS between the graft types was found. Meniscus resection was a strong risk factor for OA of the medial compartment (odds ratio, 3.6; 95% CI, 1.4-9.3) in the multivariable logistic regression analysis. Conclusion: A 3-fold increased prevalence of OA was found after an ACL injury treated with reconstruction compared with the contralateral healthy knee. No differences in the prevalence of OA between the BPTB and quadrupled ST reconstructions were found. An initial meniscus resection was a strong risk factor for OA; the time between injury and reconstruction was not.
Incidence of and risk factors for non-vertebral and vertebral fracture in female Chinese patients with systemic lupus erythematosus: a five-year cohort study
Authors: Zhu TY , Griffith JF , Au S-K , Tang X-L , Kwok AW , Leung P-C , Li EK , Tam L-S 
Published: March 2014

Objective The objective of this paper is to investigate the incidence of both non-vertebral and vertebral fracture in female patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and to identify risk factors for incident fracture. Methods In a five-year prospective study of 127 female Chinese SLE patients with an average age of 46.9 years (SD: 10.1 years), information on potential risk factors, including demographics, clinical data and bone mineral density (BMD) at lumbar spine and hip by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry was collected at baseline. At follow-up, participants reported incident non-vertebral fracture during the study period. Semi-quantitative analysis was used to determine incident vertebral fracture on lateral thoracic and lumbar radiographs, defined as any vertebral body graded normal at baseline and at least mildly deformed (20%–25% reduction or more in any vertebral height) at follow-up. Results Nine incident non-vertebral fractures occurred in eight patients during the study period. Six patients had one or more incident vertebral fractures. The incidence of non-vertebral and vertebral fracture was 1.26 and 0.94 per 100 patient-years, respectively. In multivariate logistic analyses, independent variables associated with incident non-vertebral fracture were duration of glucocorticoid use and prevalent lumbar spine osteoporosis, while risk factors associated with incident vertebral fracture were higher organ damage and prevalent lumbar spine osteoporosis. Conclusions The incidence of fracture in SLE patients is lower than the prevalence reported in cross-sectional studies. Lumbar spine BMD appears to have a stronger relationship with incident fracture than hip BMD. This warrants further investigation regarding the optimal site of BMD measurement when predicting fracture risk in SLE patients.
The efficacy of integrating spirituality into undergraduate nursing curricula
Authors: Yilmaz Meryem , Gurler Hesna 
Published: March 2014

Background: Attention to patients’ spirituality, as a moral obligation of care, is now widely accepted in nursing practice. However, until recently, many nursing programs have paid little attention to spirituality. Objective: The objective of this study was to identify the impact of two different curricula, used to teach undergraduate nursing students, on increasing nursing student awareness of spirituality in the care of patients. Research design: A quasi-experimental post-intervention two-group design was conducted in 2009–2010 and 2010–2011 academic years. Participants and research context: The study included a total of 130 volunteer senior-year students. The students were assigned as “the intervention group/integrated system” that were informed about spirituality or as “the control group/traditional system” that received no information on spirituality. Data were collected via a personal information form and the Spirituality and Spiritual Care Rating Scale was used to assess responses. The study was conducted at the Department of Nursing of the Faculty of Health Sciences, Cumhuriyet University, in Central Anatolia/Turkey. Ethical considerations: Permission to conduct the study at the nursing school was obtained from the schools’ management teams. The rights of the participants were protected in this study by obtaining informed consent. Findings: The results revealed that the intervention group had a higher mean score on the Spirituality and Spiritual Care Rating Scale than did the control group. The students in the intervention group defined the terms of spirituality and spiritual care more accurately than did the control group students. Discussion: Nurses are professionally and ethically responsible for providing spiritual care. Nurses’ competence in meeting the spiritual needs of their patients should be improved by undergraduate education on spiritual care. Nursing scholars reported a significant difference in the knowledge and attitudes toward spirituality of nursing students as a result of the integration of spirituality into the undergraduate nursing curriculum. Conclusion: Spirituality should be more widely included in nursing education.
Inculcation of Values for Best Practices in Student Support Services in Open and Distance Learning—The IGNOU Experience
Authors: Agrawal Sampat Ray , Ghosh Chinmoy Kumar 
Published: March 2014

Student support services are the cardinal features of the Open and Distance Learning (ODL) System. In India, the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), 13 state open universities and over 200 Distance Education Institutes (DEIs) attached to conventional universities and private/autonomous institutes offering programmes through the distance mode ( MHRD, 2013 ) have all created adequate provisions for learner support services and the systems, rules, regulations and norms have been put in place. However, it is significant that a learner in the ODL system remains away from the teacher and the peer group. Thus, the learner feels isolated ( Das & Ghosh, 2011a ) and needs the empathy of all the functionaries concerned. It has been our experience at IGNOU that more often than not the functionaries fail to realize the value of a learner and the learner fails to understand the value attributed to him by the ODL system. Without such realization the rules and regulations lose their significance. Hence, inculcation of values is of paramount importance in the functioning of the ODL system. In this article we have discussed about ‘inculcation of values’ among the ‘learners’ as well as the ‘functionaries’ for developing ‘best practices’ in learner support services in the ODL system. The inputs are based primarily on direct experiences of the authors.
Women Empowerment as a Tool for Enhancement of Values in Education: An Historical Analysis
Authors: Rao D. Pulla 
Published: March 2014

Education is a part and parcel of human life itself irrespective of the field of activity. Every field of human activity has developed its own value systems. Education has also accumulated its own value systems over a period of time. In order to make value education a powerful tool, education should be made more open, more reflective and more vocal with greater participation of teachers, students, parents and the society in deciding all major aspects of education. So far, the education system in India is a closed one with outdated teacher training programmes and syllabi, heavy and mind bogging exercises with lots of paper work. There is little that a student can look into the society and learn and much less the relevance of his learning to the society. For most of the times, parents look at their children like scapegoats, since they cannot participate in their children’s education. Thus, in our country education itself has became a blunt and invalid tool. Therefore, education has lost its relevance to the social, economic, political, ethical, cultural and spiritual values of our country. Under such circumstances one cannot expect education to play the role of a most effective powerful tool that can influence human life. Therefore, there is a need to examine which type of value systems we have to develop in our educational institutions in India, that are most suitable in our socio-religious, philosophical and historical background.
Handwriting in early childhood education: Current research and future implications
Authors: Dinehart Laura H 
Published: March 2014

Early fine motor writing skills are quickly becoming recognized as an important school readiness skill associated with later academic success ( Dinehart and Manfra, 2013 ; Grissmer et al., 2010 ; Son and Meisels, 2006 ). Yet, little is known about the development of handwriting, the extent to which it is of value in the early childhood classroom and the best means by which to teach handwriting, or at least handwriting readiness, to young children. The current work reviews the literature on handwriting and its place in early childhood education. Overall, this article serves as a call for (a) researchers to continue examining the role of handwriting in the early education and development of young children and (b) practitioners to develop and implement programmes they know to be best practice in teaching early handwriting or handwriting ‘readiness’ skills.
The effects of sildenafil and n-acetylcysteine on ischemia and reperfusion injury in gastrocnemius muscle and femoral artery endothelium
Authors: Aksu Volkan , Yüksel Volkan , Chousein Serchat , Taştekin Ebru , İşcan Şahin , Sağiroğlu Gönül , Canbaz Suat , Sunar Hasan 
Published: March 2014

Purpose We aimed to examine the effects of sildenafil and n-acetylcystein on ischemia/reperfusion injury in femoral artery endothelium and gastrocnemius muscle. Basic methods 32 rats of Sprague-Dawley breed were randomly divided into four groups (n = 8). Median laparotomy was performed, then a 120-minute ischemia was created by microvascular clamping of infrarenal aorta, followed by the release of clamping. In sildenafil group, 1 mg/kg of sildenafil infusion and in the n-acetylcystein group, 100 mg/kg of n-acetylcystein infusion was administered after release of clamps. Blood samples and tissue samples of femoral artery and gastrocnemius muscle were extracted for a histopathological evaluation. Principal findings Serum levels of malondialdehyde in ischemia/reperfusion group (6.16 ± 0.79) were higher compared to the control group (4.69 ± 0.33), whereas a significant decrease was detected in sildenafil (5.17 ± 0.50) and n-acetylcystein (4.96 ± 0.49) groups. Femoral artery tissue sections of the control group, mean tumor necrosis factor alpha and hypoxy-induced factor-1 alpha immunoreactivity were found to be negative. In the ischemia/reperfusion group, mean tumor necrosis factor α immunoreactivity was intense and mean hypoxy-induced factor-1 alpha immunoreactivity was 51–75%. In the ischemia/reperfusion + Sildenafil and ischemia/reperfusion + NAS groups, mean tumor necrosis factor α immunoreactivity was slight and mean hypoxy-induced factor-1 alpha immunoreactivity was 26–50%. Conclusions In conclusion, sildenafil and n-acetylcystein may reduce femoral artery endothelium and gastrocnemius muscle injury following lower extremity ischemia/reperfusion.
Metavir 2: new tools for viral metagenome comparison and assembled virome analysis
Authors: Roux Simon , Tournayre Jeremy , Mahul Antoine , Debroas Didier , Enault François 
Published: March 2014

Abstract

Background
Metagenomics, based on culture-independent sequencing, is a well-fitted approach to provide insights into the composition, structure and dynamics of environmental viral communities. Following recent advances in sequencing technologies, new challenges arise for existing bioinformatic tools dedicated to viral metagenome (i.e. virome) analysis as (i) the number of viromes is rapidly growing and (ii) large genomic fragments can now be obtained by assembling the huge amount of sequence data generated for each metagenome.

Results
To face these challenges, a new version of Metavir was developed. First, all Metavir tools have been adapted to support comparative analysis of viromes in order to improve the analysis of multiple datasets. In addition to the sequence comparison previously provided, viromes can now be compared through their k-mer frequencies, their taxonomic compositions, recruitment plots and phylogenetic trees containing sequences from different datasets. Second, a new section has been specifically designed to handle assembled viromes made of thousands of large genomic fragments (i.e. contigs). This section includes an annotation pipeline for uploaded viral contigs (gene prediction, similarity search against reference viral genomes and protein domains) and an extensive comparison between contigs and reference genomes. Contigs and their annotations can be explored on the website through specifically developed dynamic genomic maps and interactive networks.

Conclusions
The new features of Metavir 2 allow users to explore and analyze viromes composed of raw reads or assembled fragments through a set of adapted tools and a user-friendly interface.
Cross-sectional study of the relationship of peripheral blood cell profiles with severity of infection by adenovirus type 55
Authors: Chen Wei-Wei , Nie Wei-Min , Xu Wen , Xie Yang-Xin , Tu Bo , Zhao Peng , Qin En-Qiang , Zhang Yun-Hui , Zhang Xiu , Li Wen-Gang , Zhou Zhi-Ping , Lv Ji-Yun , Zhao Min 
Published: March 2014

Abstract

Background
The immunologic profiles of patients with human adenovirus serotype 55 (HAdV-55) infections were characterized in subjects diagnosed with silent infections (n = 30), minor infections (n = 27), severe infections (n = 34), and healthy controls (n = 30) during a recent outbreak among Chinese military trainees.

Methods
Blood was sampled at the disease peak and four weeks later, and samples were analyzed to measure changes in leukocyte and platelet profiles in patients with different severities of disease. Differential lymphocyte subsets and cytokine profiles were measured by flow cytometry and Luminex xMAP®, and serum antibodies were analyzed by ELISA and immunofluorescence staining.

Results
Patients with severe HAdV infections had higher proportions of neutrophils and reduced levels of lymphocytes (p < 0.005 for both). Patients with minor and severe infections had significantly lower platelet counts (p < 0.005 for both) than those with silent infections. The silent and minor infection groups had higher levels of dendritic cells than the severe infection group. Relative to patients with silent infections, patients with severe infections had significantly higher levels of IL-17+CD4+ cells, decreased levels of IL-17+CD8+ cells, and higher levels of IFN-γ, IL-4, IL-10, and IFN-α2 (p < 0.001 for all comparisons).

Conclusions
Patients with different severities of disease due to HAdV-55 infection had significantly different immune responses. These data provide an initial step toward the identification of patients at risk for more severe disease and the development of treatments against HAdV-55 infection.
DNA damage response and DNA repair – dog as a model?
Authors: Grosse Nicole , van Loon Barbara , Rohrer Bley Carla 
Published: March 2014

AbstractBackgroundCompanion animals like dogs frequently develop tumors with age and similarly to human malignancies, display interpatient tumoral heterogeneity. Tumors are frequently characterized with regard to their mutation spectra, changes in gene expression or protein levels. Among others, these changes affect proteins involved in the DNA damage response (DDR), which served as a basis for the development of numerous clinically relevant cancer therapies. Even though the effects of different DNA damaging agents, as well as DDR kinetics, have been well characterized in mammalian cellsin vitro, very little is so far known about the kinetics of DDR in tumor and normal tissuesin vivo.DiscussionDue to (i) the similarities between human and canine genomes, (ii) the course of spontaneous tumor development, as well as (iii) common exposure to environmental agents, canine tumors are potentially an excellent model to study DDRin vivo. This is further supported by the fact that dogs show approximately the same rate of tumor development with age as humans. Though similarities between human and dog osteosarcoma, as well as mammary tumors have been well established, only few studies using canine tumor samples addressed the importance of affected DDR pathways in tumor progression, thus leaving many questions unanswered.SummaryStudies in humans showed that misregulated DDR pathways play an important role during tumor development, as well as in treatment response. Since dogs are proposed to be a good tumor model in many aspects of cancer research, we herein critically investigate the current knowledge of canine DDR and discuss (i) its future potential for studies on thein vivolevel, as well as (ii) its possible translation to veterinary and human medicine.
Extreme sensitivity of gene expression in human SH-SY5Y neurocytes to ultra-low doses of Gelsemium sempervirens
Authors: Marzotto Marta , Olioso Debora , Brizzi Maurizio , Tononi Paola , Cristofoletti Mirco , Bellavite Paolo 
Published: March 2014

AbstractBackgroundGelsemium sempervirensL. (Gelsemium s.) is a traditional medicinal plant, employed as an anxiolytic at ultra-low doses and animal models recently confirmed this activity. However the mechanisms by which it might operate on the nervous system are largely unknown. This work investigates the gene expression of a human neurocyte cell line treated with increasing dilutions ofGelsemium s.extract.MethodsStarting from the crude extract, six 100 × (centesimal, c) dilutions ofGelsemium s.(2c, 3c, 4c, 5c, 9c and 30c) were prepared according to the French homeopathic pharmacopoeia. Human SH-SY5Y neuroblastoma cells were exposed for 24 h to test dilutions, and their transcriptome compared by microarray to that of cells treated with control vehicle solutions.ResultsExposure to theGelsemium s.2c dilution (the highest dose employed, corresponding to a gelsemine concentration of 6.5 × 10-9 M) significantly changed the expression of 56 genes, of which 49 were down-regulated and 7 were overexpressed. Several of the down-regulated genes belonged to G-protein coupled receptor signaling pathways, calcium homeostasis, inflammatory response and neuropeptide receptors. Fisher exact test, applied to the group of 49 genes down-regulated byGelsemium s.2c, showed that the direction of effects was significantly maintained across the treatment with high homeopathic dilutions, even though the size of the differences was distributed in a small range.ConclusionsThe study shows thatGelsemium s., a medicinal plant used in traditional remedies and homeopathy, modulates a series of genes involved in neuronal function. A small, but statistically significant, response was detected even to very low doses/high dilutions (up to 30c), indicating that the human neurocyte genome is extremely sensitive to this regulation.
Cutting costs of multiple mini-interviews – changes in reliability and efficiency of the Hamburg medical school admission test between two applications
Authors: Hissbach Johanna C , Sehner Susanne , Harendza Sigrid , Hampe Wolfgang 
Published: March 2014

Abstract

Background
Multiple mini-interviews (MMIs) are a valuable tool in medical school selection due to their broad acceptance and promising psychometric properties. With respect to the high expenses associated with this procedure, the discussion about its feasibility should be extended to cost-effectiveness issues.

Methods
Following a pilot test of MMIs for medical school admission at Hamburg University in 2009 (HAM-Int), we took several actions to improve reliability and to reduce costs of the subsequent procedure in 2010. For both years, we assessed overall and inter-rater reliabilities based on multilevel analyses. Moreover, we provide a detailed specification of costs, as well as an extrapolation of the interrelation of costs, reliability, and the setup of the procedure.

Results
The overall reliability of the initial 2009 HAM-Int procedure with twelve stations and an average of 2.33 raters per station was ICC=0.75. Following the improvement actions, in 2010 the ICC remained stable at 0.76, despite the reduction of the process to nine stations and 2.17 raters per station. Moreover, costs were cut down from $915 to $495 per candidate. With the 2010 modalities, we could have reached an ICC of 0.80 with 16 single rater stations ($570 per candidate).

Conclusions
With respect to reliability and cost-efficiency, it is generally worthwhile to invest in scoring, rater training and scenario development. Moreover, it is more beneficial to increase the number of stations instead of raters within stations. However, if we want to achieve more than 80 % reliability, a minor improvement is paid with skyrocketing costs.