bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Evaluation of atherosclerosis‐associated factors and pulse wave velocity for predicting cerebral infarction: a hospital‐based, case–control study in Japan
Authors: Yokokawa H. , Goto A. , Watanabe K. , Yasumura S. 
Published: February 2007

AbstractBackground: The mortality rate for cerebrovascular diseases is much higher in Japan than in North American and West European countries. The primary aim of this study was to elucidate from an epidemiological perspective, the associations between cerebral infarction and demographic factors, medical history and other clinical measurements including pulse wave velocity, a newly introduced non‐invasive measurement procedure used to assess aortic stiffness.Methods: This was a hospital‐based, matched case–control study in northern Japan where there is a high incidence of cerebrovascular disease. The study group consisted of 92 matched pairs of cerebral infarction patients (cases) and healthy individuals admitted for a thorough health check‐up (controls) at the Southern Tohoku General Hospital in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. A conditional logistic regression model was used in the statistical analysis.Results: In univariate analyses, 14 variables were significantly associated with cerebral infarction, of which four remained significant in the final multivariate model. These were family history of hypertension (odds ratio (OR) = 8.61), cerebrovascular diseases (OR = 13.70), high‐density lipoprotein cholesterol of 40 mg/dL or higher (OR = 0.08), and pulse wave velocity over 1600 cm/s (OR = 2.92).Conclusion: Findings from the study indicate that a high pulse wave velocity, in addition to other traditional risk factors, may be associated with a higher risk of cerebral infarction. Further prospective studies are necessary to evaluate the use of this measure as a predictor of the disease.
Radiotherapy for low‐grade gastric marginal zone lymphoma: a retrospective study
Authors: Lin M.‐L. , Wirth A. , Chao M. , Milner A. D. , DiIulio J. , MacManus M. , Seymour J. F. 
Published: February 2007

AbstractBackground: We evaluated the efficacy and toxicity of radiotherapy (RT) in patients with low‐grade gastric marginal zone lymphoma.Methods: A retrospective review of consecutive cases of gastric marginal zone lymphoma treated by radical RT at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and Radiation Oncology Victoria between January 1980 and September 2003 was carried out.Results: Eighteen patients (11 men and 7 women) were identified. The median age at commencement of RT was 65 years (range 42–84 years). Prior treatment included Helicobacter pylori eradication in 12 patients, chemotherapy in 7 and surgery in 2, whereas 2 patients had no prior therapy. The median time to progression after commencement of last treatment before RT was 4.8 months (range 0–129.4 months). The radiation fields included the stomach plus perigastric and coeliac nodes in 15 patients (83%), stomach plus spleen in 2 patients (11%) and stomach plus para‐aortic nodes in 1 patient (6%). The median RT dose was 30 Gy (range 30–36 Gy) in a median 20 fractions (range 17–24 fractions). One patient required treatment interruption for acute toxicity. A complete response on post‐RT biopsies was achieved in 17 of 18 patients (94%). With a median follow up of 4.5 years after RT, 3 of these 17 patients (18%) have had a recurrence. At the last follow up, 11 patients were alive in continuous complete histological remission. No late renal toxicity was identified.Conclusion: Radiotherapy is an effective, well‐tolerated treatment for patients with low‐grade gastric marginal zone lymphoma, including those who have had prior therapy.
Risk factors for symptomatic hyponatraemia: the role of pre‐existing asymptomatic hyponatraemia
Authors: Bissram M. , Scott F. D. , Liu L. , Rosner M. H. 
Published: February 2007

AbstractBackground: Hyponatraemia is associated with substantial morbidity and mortality. Identification of the risk factors associated with the development of symptomatic hyponatraemia is important in determining preventive strategies.Methods: A retrospective analysis of the risks factors associated with the development of severe, symptomatic hyponatraemia requiring hospital admission over the past 3 years at our institution was carried out.Results: Forty‐seven patients (26 women, 21 men) with a hospital admission serum sodium <134 mmol/L were identified. Of these patients, 31 (65.9%) had associated changes in the mental status that improved with the treatment of the hyponatraemia suggesting causality. The average admission sodium level of this cohort was 118.8 mmol/L. Symptomatic hyponatraemia was associated with volume depletion (32.6%), congestive heart failure (26%), syndrome of inappropriate antidiuretic hormone (26%), thiazide diuretic use (26%) and selective serotonin re‐uptake inhibitor use (26%). In 21.7% of cases, the cause was multifactorial (congestive heart failure, syndrome of inappropriate antidiuretic hormone or medication use with volume depletion). In 11% of cases, patients were taking both thiazide diuretics and serotonin re‐uptake inhibitors. Most importantly, 70.9% of all patients admitted with symptomatic hyponatraemia had pre‐existing hyponatraemia that was untreated and believed to be asymptomatic (P < 0.05). This was the most common risk factor identified. We next investigated the prevalence of presumed asymptomatic hyponatraemia in the outpatient setting. Out of 27 496 patients analysed, 14% had serum sodium levels less than or equal to 134 mEq/L and 4% had values less than 130 mEq/L.Conclusion: Pre‐existing asymptomatic hyponatraemia is a common finding and is associated with a high risk for the development of worsening hyponatraemia with altered mental status.
Prognostic value of B‐type natriuretic peptide in patients with chronic and advanced heart failure
Authors: Sun T. , Wang L. , Zhang Y. 
Published: February 2007

AbstractBackground:  An increase in circulating B‐type natriuretic peptide (BNP) is associated with a poor outcome in patients with acute heart failure. The primary aim of this study was to investigate the prognostic value of BNP levels in patients with chronic and advanced heart failure.Methods:  Fifty patients with New York Heart Association functional classes III and IV were enrolled in the study. Their blood BNP levels at admission were measured and patients were on follow up for 12 ± 2 months.Results:  There was no significant correlation between BNP levels on admission and left ventricular ejection fraction (r = 0.12, P > 0.05). Twelve patients (24%) died during the follow up. BNP levels were lower in patients who died (501 ± 72 vs 877 ± 89 ng/L, P < 0.01). The logistic stepwise regression analysis showed that lower BNP level (<520 ng/L) on admission was an independent predictor of cardiovascular mortality in these patients (odds ratio 1.21, 95% confidence interval 1.06–2.32, P < 0.01).Conclusion:  We conclude that patients with chronic and advanced heart failure have a lower circulating BNP level than those who survive. The paradoxically low BNP level is an adverse prognostic marker in advanced heart failure.
Critical review of the management of early‐stage breast cancer in elderly women
Authors: Passage K. J. , McCarthy N. J. 
Published: February 2007

AbstractThe treatment of elderly women (≥70 years) with early‐stage breast cancer is an emerging clinical problem in the setting of an ageing population. There is a lack of clinical trial evidence to formulate clinical guidelines for management because of the small number of elderly women included in previous clinical trials of adjuvant therapy. This often results in elderly patients being denied standard management based on age alone. The often‐complex interaction between age, comorbid conditions and function complicate the planning and outcomes of surgery and can have an effect on the delivery of postoperative adjuvant therapy. A comprehensive assessment of the elderly patient is essential to determine overall prognosis and morbidity risk from treatments; however, a simple comorbidity scale for use in routine clinical practice remains elusive. Thus, treatment decisions should be tailored to the individual to ensure that therapies are not unduly withheld and are appropriate for the patient’s overall condition. The assessment of the elderly patient with breast cancer requires the involvement of a multidisciplinary team. The evidence for efficacy, safety and potential risks of surgery and adjuvant therapies (including radiotherapy, hormone therapy and chemotherapy) in the elderly population is discussed in this review and the role of comprehensive geriatric assessment is outlined.
THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY AND THE RHETORIC OF EXCESS
Authors: Stout Jeffrey 
Published: February 2007

ABSTRACTIf militarism violates the ideals of liberty and justice in one way, and rapidly increasing social stratification violates them in another, then American democracy is in crisis. A culture of democratic accountability will survive only if citizens revive the concerns that animated the great reform movements of the past, from abolitionism to civil rights. It is crucial, when reasoning about practical matters, not only to admit how grave one's situation is, but also to resist despair. Therefore, the fate of democracy depends, to some significant degree, on how we choose to describe the crisis. Saying that we have already entered the new dark ages or a post‐democratic era may prove to be a self‐fulfilling prophecy, because anyone who accepts this message is apt to give up on the hard work of organizing and contestation that is needed to hold political representatives accountable to the people. This paper asks how one might strike the right balance between accuracy and hope in describing the democracy's current troubles. After saying what I mean by democracy and what I think the current threats to it are, I respond to Romand Coles's criticisms of reservations I have expressed before about rhetorical excess in the works of Stanley Hauerwas, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Richard Rorty. This leads to a discussion of several points raised against me by Hauerwas. A digression offers some of my reasons for doubting that John Howard Yoder's biblical scholarship vindicates Hauerwas's version of pacifism. The paper concludes by arguing that Sheldon Wolin's work on the evisceration of democracy, though admirably accurate in its treatment of the dangers posed by empire and capital, abandons the project of democratic accountability too quickly in favor of the romance of the fugitive.
TRANSCENDENTAL GUILT: On an Emotional Condition of Moral Experience
Authors: Pihlström Sami 
Published: February 2007

ABSTRACTThis article considers a central ethically relevant interpersonal emotion, guilt. It is argued that guilt, as an irreducible moral category, has a constitutive role to play in our ways of conceptualizing our relations to other people. Without experiencing guilt, or being able to do so, we would not be capable of employing the moral concepts and judgments we do employ. Elaborating on this argument, the paper deals with what may be described as the “metaphysics of guilt.” More generally, it is suggested, through a case study on the concept of guilt, that a moral theory avoiding naïve emotivism yet emphasizing the role of emotions in morality can and should pay attention to the transcendental status of emotions such as guilt—emotions constitutive of our concept of moral seriousness. Instead of psychologizing moral emotions, the paper employs Raimond Gaita's Wittgenstein‐inspired way of examining the place of the concepts of guilt and remorse in our ethical language‐use. Finally, some methodological remarks on the possibility of transcendental reflection in moral philosophy are presented. While it is not necessary to commit oneself to any specific religious tradition in order to emphasize the constitutive role of guilt in the way suggested in the paper, it turns out that the moral depth of this concept requires that one is at least open to religiously relevant ways of using moral language. In the fundamental metaphysical sense examined in the paper, guilt is a concept whose home language‐game is religious rather than secular ethics.
AQUINAS'S ARGUMENT AGAINST SELF‐HATRED
Authors: Green Keith 
Published: February 2007

ABSTRACTAquinas's argument against the possibility of genuine self‐hatred runs counter to modern intuitions about self‐hatred as an explanatorily central notion in psychology, and as an effect of alienation. Aquinas's argument does not deny that persons experience hatred for themselves. It can be read either as the claim that the self‐hater mistakes what she feels toward herself as hatred, or that, though she hates what she believes is her “self,” she actually hates only traits of herself. I argue that the argument fails on both readings. The first reading entails that all passions are really self‐love, and so is incompatible with Aquinas's own “cognitivist” view of what it is that distinguishes specific passions in experience. The second reading entails that persons have no phenomenal access to “self,” rendering self‐reference—how it is that the self can be an intentional object of conscious mental states—a mystery. Augustine's claim, which Aquinas accepts on authority, that all sin originates in inordinate self‐love seems to entail the impossibility of genuine self‐hatred because both thinkers fail to distinguish between two distinct forms of self‐love: amor concupiscentiae and amor benevolentiae.
AUGUSTINE AND THE LIMITS OF PREEMPTIVE AND PREVENTIVE WAR
Authors: Smith J. Warren 
Published: February 2007

ABSTRACTWhile Michael Walzer's distinction between preemptive and preventive wars offers important categories for current reflection upon the Bush Doctrine and the invasion of Iraq, it is often treated as a modern distinction without antecedent in the classical Christian just war tradition. This paper argues to the contrary that within Augustine's corpus there are passages in which he speaks about the use of violence in situations that we would classify today as preemptive and preventive military action. While I do not claim that Augustine makes an explicit distinction between the two types of war (such would be anachronistic), I will argue that based on examinations of De libero arbitrio I.v.11–12 and De civitate Dei I.30 Augustine's discussions of hypothetical cases or actual wars in history provide insights helpful for contemporary reflection on preemptive and preventive wars.
The relationship between attention, executive functions and reading domain abilities in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and reading disorder: a comparative study
Authors: Bental Barbara , Tirosh Emanuel 
Published: February 2007

Background:  Co‐morbidity of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and reading disorder (RD) is frequent. The objective of this investigation was to assess the potential uniqueness of co‐morbid ADHD + RD and extend existing findings to the Hebrew language.Method:  A parallel group design with post‐hoc analysis of group differences was employed comparing four groups of children (19 ADHD, 17 RD, 27 ADHD + RD, and 23 controls) on reading measures, attention and executive functions (EF) as well as functions of phonemic awareness and rapid naming. Forward stepwise regressions were run in order to delineate significant relationships between phonemic awareness, rapid naming, attention and EF with outcome variables of reading.Results:  The co‐morbid group shared the basic characteristic impairments in attention and executive functions with the pure ADHD group and in reading domain functions with the pure RD group. In addition, this group showed unique deficits in rapid naming and a more severe impairment in working memory. Forward stepwise regression pointed to associations between executive functions and word reading accuracy in children with ADHD, in contrast to associations between linguistic functions and word accuracy in non‐ADHD.Conclusion:  The combination of cognitive deficits in the subgroup of children with both ADHD and RD and the relationship between accuracy in word decoding and executive functions shown for the ADHD groups point to a distinct clinical profile of the co‐morbid condition. Attention and EF should be considered in the diagnosis of RD and in the remediation protocol.
Which better predicts conduct problems? The relationship of trajectories of conduct problems with ODD and ADHD symptoms from childhood into adolescence
Authors: Van Lier Pol A.C. , Der Ende Jan van , Koot Hans M. , Verhulst Frank C. 
Published: February 2007

Background:  To assess the co‐occurrence in deviant trajectories of parent‐rated symptoms of conduct disorder (CD), oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) and attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) from age 4 to 18 years old in a general population sample of Dutch children.Methods:  Developmental trajectories of CD, ODD, and ADHD were estimated in a sample of 1,016 males and 1,060 females. Children's disruptive problem behaviors were rated at 5 time‐points. The co‐occurrence patterns between the deviant CD trajectory, and the high ODD and high ADHD trajectory were studied for males and females separately.Results:  Four percent of males and 2% of females followed a deviant CD trajectory. Six percent of the sample followed a high ODD trajectory, and 5% a high ADHD trajectory. Engagement in the deviant CD trajectory was predicted by ODD and ADHD in females, but only by ODD in males.Conclusions:  Although ADHD co‐occurs with CD, the association between ADHD and CD is largely accounted for by accompanying ODD. Gender differences should be taken into account in understanding the onset of CD.
Children at family risk of dyslexia: a follow‐up in early adolescence
Authors: Snowling Margaret J. , Muter Valerie , Carroll Julia 
Published: February 2007

Background:  This study is the follow‐up in early adolescence of children born to families with a history of dyslexia (Gallagher, Frith, & Snowling, 2000).Methods:  Fifty young people with a family history of dyslexia and 20 young people from control families were assessed at 12–13 years on a battery of tests of literacy and language skills, and they completed questionnaires tapping self‐perception and print exposure. One parent from each family participated in an interview documenting family circumstances (including family literacy) and a range of environmental variables considered likely correlates of reading disability. They also rated their child's behavioural and emotional adjustment and their own health and well‐being. Parental literacy levels were also measured.Results:  Forty‐two per cent of the ‘at‐risk’ sample had reading and spelling impairments. A significant proportion of the literacy‐impaired group were affected by behavioural and emotional difficulties, although they were not low in terms of global self‐esteem. The children in the at‐risk subgroup who did not fulfil criteria for literacy impairment showed weak orthographic skills in adolescence and their reading was not fluent. There were no differences in the literacy levels or activities of the parents of impaired and unimpaired at‐risk children, and no significant correlation between parent and child reading levels in the at‐risk group. The impaired group read less than the other groups, their reading difficulties impacted learning at school and there was evidence that they also had an impact on family life and maternal well‐being.Conclusions:  The literacy difficulties of children at family‐risk of dyslexia were longstanding and there was no evidence of catch‐up in these skills between 8 and 13 years. The findings point to the role of gene–environment correlation in the determination of dyslexia.
Depressive symptoms in adolescents: associations with white matter volume and marijuana use
Authors: Medina Krista Lisdahl , Nagel Bonnie J. , Park Ann , McQueeny Tim , Tapert Susan F. 
Published: February 2007

Background:  Depressed mood has been associated with decreased white matter and reduced hippocampal volumes. However, the relationship between brain structure and mood may be unique among adolescents who use marijuana heavily. The goal of this study was to examine the relationship between white matter and hippocampal volumes and depressive symptoms among adolescent marijuana users and controls.Methods:  Data were collected from marijuana users (n = 16) and demographically similar controls (n = 16) aged 16–18. Extensive exclusionary criteria included psychiatric and neurologic disorders, including major depression. Substance use, mood, and anatomical measures were collected after 28 days of monitored abstinence.Results:  Marijuana (MJ) users demonstrated more depressive symptoms than controls (p < .05). MJ use (β = .42, p < .005) and smaller white matter volume (β = −.34, p < .03) each predicted higher levels of depressive symptoms on the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale. MJ use interacted with white matter volume (β = −.55, p < .03) in predicting depression scores on the Beck Depression Inventory: among MJ users, but not controls, white matter volume was negatively associated with depressive symptoms.Conclusions:  Marijuana use and white matter volume were additive and interactive in predicting depressive symptoms among adolescents. Subtle neurodevelopmental white matter abnormalities may disrupt the connections between areas involved in mood regulation.
Youth with psychopathy features are not a discrete class: a taxometric analysis
Authors: Murrie Daniel C. , Marcus David K. , Douglas Kevin S. , Lee Zina , Salekin Randall T. , Vincent Gina 
Published: February 2007

Background:  Recently, researchers have sought to measure psychopathy‐like features among youth in hopes of identifying children who may be progressing toward a particularly destructive form of adult pathology. However, it remains unclear whether psychopathy‐like personality features among youth are best conceptualized as dimensional (distributed along a continuum) or taxonic (such that youth with psychopathic personality characteristics are qualitatively distinct from non‐psychopathic youth).Methods:  This study applied taxometric analyses (MAMBAC, MAXEIG, and L‐Mode) to scores from two primary measures of youth psychopathy features: the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (N = 757) and the self‐report Antisocial Process Screening Device (N = 489) among delinquent boys.Results:  All analyses supported a dimensional structure, indicating that psychopathy features among youth are best understood as existing along a continuum.Conclusions:  Although youth clearly vary in the degree to which they manifest psychopathy‐like personality traits, there is no natural, discrete class of young ‘psychopaths.’ This finding has implications for developmental theory, treatment, assessment strategies, research, and clinical/forensic practice.