nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
Acceptability of a reformulated renal-specific micronutrient supplement

Sirs, There is no approved micronutrient supplement specifically formulated for children with chronic renal failure (CRF). Size, palatability, and format of any supplement may impact upon compliance with long-term treatment [1, 2]. We previously reported the use of a renal-specific micronutrient supplement (RSM) formulated by Vitaline Pharmaceuticals UK, which provided the recommended dietary reference intakes for vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B12 as well as vitamins C, E, K, copper, zinc, and folic acid. The RSM was tested against our previous standard of Ketovite tablets and found to be preferable in terms of smell and taste but not size . The results of the initial study encouraged us to reduce the size and shape of the RSM and produce it in a scored caplet form with half a caplet daily for children under 5 years of age and one caplet daily for children over 5 years. In addition, the folic acid was increased from 200 g to 1,000 g/caplet in an attempt to further reduce plasma homocysteine levels (Table 1) . We recruited 25 children (16 male) from four regional paediatric nephrology units with a mean age of 11.6 years (range 1.8–17 years); 8 had CRF, 6 were on haemodialysis, and 11 on automated peritoneal dialysis. Patients had been on Ketovite tablets for a minimum of 3 months and the patient and/or parent completed a questionnaire before and after switching to the RSM for 2 weeks. Research ethics approval was obtained. There was a significant reduction (P<0.001) in the number of RSM caplets taken daily, with 92% of patients taking only one RSM caplet compared with 52% consuming three Ketovite tablets. The majority of patients swallowed the Ketovite or RSM whole, but the RSM did allow a number of children to chew the caplet (6 patients compared with 2 on Ketovite). There were 3 children that received the RSM either crushed or dissolved in water and administered via gastrostomy button or nasogastric tube. The results of the questionnaire showed that the smell and taste of the RSM was superior to that of Ketovite (P<0.001) with maintained ease of administration despite the larger caplet size of the RSM. Of the children, 60% favoured the RSM and a similar percentage wished to continue it after the study period. One child commented
Efficacy of inhaled metaproterenol and orally-administered theophylline in patients with chronic airflow obstruction.

To evaluate comparative bronchodilator efficacy with chronic airflow obstruction (CAO), we randomly administered to ten patients week-long treatments consisting of: inhaled metaproterenol from a metered dose canister (1.30 mg six times a day) and doses of a sustained-release theophylline formulation sufficient to achieve plasma levels of 10-15 micrograms/ml; metaproterenol-placebo; theophylline-placebo; or placebo-placebo. At the end of each period, treatment responses were evaluated by spirometric tests, by exercise tolerance (12 minute walk and progressive cycle ergometry) and by subjective perception of dyspnea (oxygen cost diagram and breathlessness rating). Metaproterenol as a single treatment caused statistically significant improvements in spirometric variables and in the breathlessness rating. Theophylline as a single treatment caused significant changes in none of the test variables, though favorable trends were observed. Combined drug therapy was significantly better than metaproterenol only in the case of the breathlessness rating. We conclude that in the treatment of patients with CAO, inhaled metaproterenol is superior to oral theophylline. Our results permit no definite conclusion concerning added benefits of combined drug therapy.
Prognostic value of histopathological regression in 850 neoadjuvantly treated oesophagogastric adenocarcinomas

Recently, histopathological tumour regression, prevalence of signet ring cells, and localisation were reported as prognostic factors in neoadjuvantly treated oesophagogastric (junctional and gastric) cancer. This exploratory retrospective study analyses independent prognostic factors within a large patient cohort after preoperative chemotherapy including clinical and histopathological factors.In all, 850 patients presenting with oesophagogastric cancer staged cT3/4 Nany cM0/x were treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy followed by resection in two academic centres. Patient data were documented in a prospective database and retrospectively analysed.Of all factors prognostic on univariate analysis, only clinical response, complications, ypTNM stage, and R category were independently prognostic (P<0.01) on multivariate analysis. Tumour localisation and signet ring cells were independently prognostic only when investigator-dependent clinical response evaluation was excluded from the multivariate model. Histopathological tumour regression correlates with tumour grading, Laurén classification, clinical response, ypT, ypN, and R categories but was not identified as an independent prognostic factor. Within R0-resected patients only surgical complications and ypTNM stage were independent prognostic factors.Only established prognostic factors like ypTNM stage, R category, and complications were identified as independent prognostic factors in resected patients after neoadjuvant chemotherapy. In contrast, histopathological tumour regression was not found as an independent prognostic marker.
Glycaemic Control and Associated Self-Management Behaviours in Diabetic Outpatients: A Hospital Based Observation Study in Lusaka, Zambia

The control of diabetes mellitus depends on several factors that also include individual lifestyles. We assessed glycaemic control status and self-management behaviours that may influence glycaemic control among diabetic outpatients.



This cross-sectional study among 198 consenting randomly selected patients was conducted at the University Teaching Hospital diabetic clinic between September and December 2013 in Lusaka, Zambia. A structured interview schedule was used to collect data on demographic characteristics, self-management behaviours, and laboratory measurements. Binary logistic regression analysis using IBM SPSS for Windows version 20.0 was carried out to predict behaviours that were associated with glycaemic control status.



The proportion of patients that had good glycaemic control status (HbA1c≤ 48 mmol/mol) was 38.7% compared to 61.3% that had poor glycaemic control status (HbA1c≥ 49 mmol/mol). Adherence to antidiabetic treatment and fasting plasma glucose predicted glycaemic control status of the patients. However, self-blood glucose monitoring, self-blood glucose monitoring means and exercise did not predict glycaemic control status of the patients.



We find evidence of poor glycaemic control status among most diabetic patients suggesting that health promotion messages need to take into account both individual and community factors to promote behaviours likely to reduce nonadherence.
An EEMD-ICA Approach to Enhancing Artifact Rejection for Noisy Multivariate Neural Data

As neural data are generally noisy, artifact rejection is crucial for data preprocessing. It has long been a grand research challenge for an approach which is able: 1) to remove the artifacts and 2) to avoid loss or disruption of the structural information at the same time, thus the risk of introducing bias to data interpretation may be minimized. In this study, an approach (namely EEMD-ICA) was proposed to first decompose multivariate neural data that are possibly noisy into intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) using ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD). Independent component analysis (ICA) was then applied to the IMFs to separate the artifactual components. The approach was tested against the classical ICA and the automatic wavelet ICA (AWICA) methods, which were dominant methods for artifact rejection. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in handling neural data possibly with intensive noises, experiments on artifact removal were performed using semi-simulated data mixed with a variety of noises. Experimental results indicate that the proposed approach continuously outperforms the counterparts in terms of both normalized mean square error (NMSE) and Structure SIMilarity (SSIM). The superiority becomes even greater with the decrease of SNR in all cases, e.g., SSIM of the EEMD-ICA can almost double that of AWICA and triple that of ICA. To further examine the potentials of the approach in sophisticated applications, the approach together with the counterparts were used to preprocess a real-life epileptic EEG with absence seizure. Experiments were carried out with the focus on characterizing the dynamics of the data after artifact rejection, i.e., distinguishing seizure-free, pre-seizure and seizure states. Using multi-scale permutation entropy to extract feature and linear discriminant analysis for classification, the EEMD-ICA performed the best for classifying the states (87.4%, about 4.1% and 8.7% higher than that of AWICA and ICA respectively), which was closest to the results of the manually selected dataset (89.7%).
Effects of Dynamic Extension Exercise and Mulligan Stretching on Hamstring Flexibility

This open-access article is published and distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial No Derivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/), which permits the noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction of the article in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. You may not alter, transform, or build upon this article without the permission of the Author(s). For reprints and permission queries, please visit SAGE’s Web site at http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav. Effects of Dynamic Extension Exercise and Mulligan Stretching on Hamstring Flexibility
Salvage assessment with cardiac MRI following acute myocardial infarction underestimates potential for recovery of systolic strain

Our aim was to evaluate the relationship between the degree of salvage following acute ST elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) and subsequent reversible contractile dysfunction using cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging. Thirty-four patients underwent CMR examination 1–7 days after primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PPCI) for acute STEMI with follow-up at 1 year. The ischaemic area-at-risk (AAR) was assessed with T2-weighted imaging and myocardial necrosis with late gadolinium enhancement. Myocardial strain was quantified with complementary spatial modulation of magnetisation (CSPAMM) tagging. Ischaemic segments with poor (<25 %) or intermediate (26–50 %) salvage index were associated with worse Eulerian circumferential (Ecc) strain immediately post-PPCI (−9.1 % ± 0.6, P = 0.033 and −11.8 % ± 1.3, P = 0.003, respectively) than those with a high (51–100 %) salvage index (−14.4 % ± 1.3). Mean strain in ischaemic myocardium improved between baseline and follow-up (−10.1 % ± 0.5 vs. −16.2 % ± 0.5 %, P < 0.0001). Segments with poor salvage also showed an improvement in strain by 1 year (−9.1 % ± 0.6 vs. −15.3 % ± 0.6, P = 0.033) although they remained the most functionally impaired. Partial recovery of peak systolic strain following PPCI is observed even when apparent salvage is less than 25 %. Late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) may not equate to irreversibly injured myocardium and salvage assessment performed within the first week of revascularisation may underestimate the potential for functional recovery. • MRI can measure how much myocardium is damaged after a heart attack. • Heart muscle that appears initially non-viable may sometimes partially recover. • Enhancement around the edges of infarcts may resolve over time. • Evaluating new cardio-protective treatments with MRI requires appreciation of its limitations.
Insole plantar pressure measurement during quiet stance post stroke.

Reliable and clinically relevant measures of change in the postural control of people post stroke are important for evaluating clinical interventions. This study investigated the reliability and usefulness of the F-Scan insole plantar pressure system in measuring possible postural control variables in a sample of 15 people post stroke.



A test-retest design was employed to measure contact pressure (CP), contact area (CA), center of force (COF) and its motion characteristics in four different stance positions. The data collection was repeated 30 minutes later to replicate the timing of a standard therapy period.



Good to excellent intertrial reliability was demonstrated (r = 0.704-0.986). The CP and CA data demonstrated relatively equal values between the hemi- and non-hemiparetic foot for the easier tasks (mean 3.6 to 3.7 KPa), and the asymmetry increased towards the non-hemiparetic foot as the tasks became harder (4 KPa vs. 3.3KPa on the hemiparetic). There were unexpected areas of high peak contact pressure on the more affected foot for several participants, whilst CA data quantified the expected redistribution of contact/weight toward the lateral border of the more affected foot in most, but not all, subjects. COF motion was markedly reduced on the more affected lower limb with a mean of 0.3 cm versus 0.5-3.8 cm for the other lower limb.



The main findings were that the F-Scan generates reliable data and produces variables that are clinically useful for measuring asymmetry parameters of postural control post stroke.
Individualized electronic decision support and reminders to improve diabetes care in the community: COMPETE II randomized trial.

Diabetes mellitus is a complex disease with serious complications. Electronic decision support, providing information that is shared and discussed by both patient and physician, encourages timely interventions and may improve the management of this chronic disease. However, it has rarely been tested in community-based primary care.



In this pragmatic randomized trial, we randomly assigned adult primary care patients with type 2 diabetes to receive the intervention or usual care. The intervention involved shared access by the primary care provider and the patient to a Web-based, colour-coded diabetes tracker, which provided sequential monitoring values for 13 diabetes risk factors, their respective targets and brief, prioritized messages of advice. The primary outcome measure was a process composite score. Secondary outcomes included clinical composite scores, quality of life, continuity of care and usability. The outcome assessors were blinded to each patient's intervention status.



We recruited sequentially 46 primary care providers and then 511 of their patients (mean age 60.7 [standard deviation 12.5] years). Mean follow-up was 5.9 months. The process composite score was significantly better for patients in the intervention group than for control patients (difference 1.27, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.79-1.75, p < 0.001); 61.7% (156/253) of patients in the intervention group, compared with 42.6% (110/258) of control patients, showed improvement (difference 19.1%, p < 0.001). The clinical composite score also had significantly more variables with improvement for the intervention group (0.59, 95% CI 0.09-1.10, p = 0.02), including significantly greater declines in blood pressure (-3.95 mm Hg systolic and -2.38 mm Hg diastolic) and glycated hemoglobin (-0.2%). Patients in the intervention group reported greater satisfaction with their diabetes care.



A shared electronic decision-support system to support the primary care of diabetes improved the process of care and some clinical markers of the quality of diabetes care. (ClinicalTrials.gov trial register no. NCT00813085.).
A practical review of magnetic resonance imaging for the evaluation and management of cervical cancer

Cervical cancer is a leading cause of mortality in women worldwide. Staging and management of cervical cancer has for many years been based on clinical exam and basic imaging such as intravenous pyelogram and x-ray. Unfortunately, despite advances in radiotherapy and the inclusion of chemotherapy in the standard plan for locally advanced disease, local control has been unsatisfactory. This situation has changed only recently with the increasing implementation of magnetic resonance image (MRI)-guided brachytherapy. The purpose of this article is therefore to provide an overview of the benefits of MRI in the evaluation and management of cervical cancer for both external beam radiotherapy and brachytherapy and to provide a practical approach if access to MRI is limited.
Pain Paroxysms With Coronal Radiation: Case Series and Proposal of a New Variant of Epicrania Fugax.

We aim to report 4 patients with brief pain paroxysms whose clinical features remind of typical epicrania fugax (EF), except for the direction along a transverse trajectory.



EF has been defined as a brief paroxysmal head pain, with stabbing quality, describing a linear or zig-zag trajectory across the surface of one hemicranium.



We considered all patients attending the headache outpatient office at 3 tertiary hospitals from March 2008 to December 2015. We identified a total of 4 cases with dynamic pain paroxysms moving in coronal direction.



The mean age at onset was 49 years (range 34-75). All the patients suffered a dynamic pain from parietal or temporal areas to the contralateral ones, crossing the midline in a linear or zig zag trajectory, the entire sequence lasting 2-3 seconds. No triggers were identified. One patient noticed mild interictal tenderness at the stemming point. The frequency of the attacks varied from 2 per week to 1 every 2 months. No underlying disorders were identified by physical and neurological exams and neuroimaging and laboratory tests.



Our patients presented with a paroxysmal head pain that might correspond to a transverse variant of EF. These observations may not only expand the EF phenotype but also reinforce the distinction between EF and pericranial neuralgias.
Dextrose gel treatment does not impair subsequent feeding.

Dextrose gel is increasingly used as first-line treatment for neonatal hypoglycaemia. Treatment with 400 mg/kg previously has been reported to impair subsequent feeding. We sought to determine if the recommended dose of 200 mg/kg altered feeding.



Hypoglycaemic babies were randomised to 200 mg/kg dextrose gel or placebo and fed. Prefeed alertness, quality and duration of breast feeding, and the volume of formula taken were assessed on the next feeding.



Prefeed alertness scores were similar in babies (n=211) treated with dextrose or placebo gel (124 episodes, OR=1.30 (95% CI 0.62 to 2.77), p=0.49). Breastfed babies were more likely to have good feeding scores after dextrose gel (160 episodes, OR=3.54 (95% CI 1.30 to 9.67), p=0.01) but similar breastfeeding duration (57 episodes, median (range) 20 (3-90) vs 25 (2-80) min, p=0.62). Formula volumes taken were also similar (24 episodes, median (range) 4.6 (2.2-11.3) vs 6.4 (2.0-8.9) mL/kg, p=0.30).



Treating hypoglycaemic babies with dextrose gel 200 mg/kg does not depress subsequent feeding and may improve breastfeeding quality.
Endoscopic ultrasound elastography for evaluation of lymph nodes and pancreatic masses: a multicenter study.

To evaluate the ability of endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) elastography to distinguish benign from malignant pancreatic masses and lymph nodes.



A multicenter study was conducted and included 222 patients who underwent EUS examination with assessment of a pancreatic mass (n = 121) or lymph node (n = 101). The classification as benign or malignant, based on the real time elastography pattern, was compared with the classification based on the B-mode EUS images and with the final diagnosis obtained by EUS-guided fine needle aspiration (EUS-FNA) and/or by surgical pathology. An interobserver study was performed.



The sensitivity and specificity of EUS elastography to differentiate benign from malignant pancreatic lesions are 92.3% and 80.0%, respectively, compared to 92.3% and 68.9%, respectively, for the conventional B-mode images. The sensitivity and specificity of EUS elastography to differentiate benign from malignant lymph nodes was 91.8% and 82.5%, respectively, compared to 78.6% and 50.0%, respectively, for the B-mode images. The kappa coefficient was 0.785 for the pancreatic masses and 0.657 for the lymph nodes.



EUS elastography is superior compared to conventional B-mode imaging and appears to be able to distinguish benign from malignant pancreatic masses and lymph nodes with a high sensitivity, specificity and accuracy. It might be reserved as a second line examination to help characterise pancreatic masses after negative EUS-FNA and might increase the yield of EUS-FNA for lymph nodes.
Recreational physical activity and the risk of breast cancer in postmenopausal women: the Women's Health Initiative Cohort Study.

Women who are physically active have a decreased risk for breast cancer, but the types, amounts, and timing of activity needed are unknown.



To prospectively examine the association between current and past recreational physical activity and incidence of breast cancer in postmenopausal women.



Prospective cohort study in 74 171 women aged 50 to 79 years who were recruited by 40 US clinical centers from 1993 through 1998.



Incident invasive and in situ breast cancer.



We documented 1780 newly diagnosed cases of breast cancer over a mean follow-up of 4.7 years. Compared with less active women, women who engaged in regular strenuous physical activity at age 35 years had a 14% decreased risk of breast cancer (relative risk [RR], 0.86; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.78-0.95). Similar but attenuated findings were observed for strenuous physical activity at ages 18 years and 50 years. An increasing total current physical activity score was associated with a reduced risk for breast cancer (P =.03 for trend). Women who engaged in the equivalent of 1.25 to 2.5 hours per week of brisk walking had an 18% decreased risk of breast cancer (RR, 0.82; 95% CI, 0.68-0.97) compared with inactive women. Slightly greater reduction in risk was observed for women who engaged in the equivalent of 10 hours or more per week of brisk walking. The effect of exercise was most pronounced in women in the lowest tertile of body mass index (BMI) (<24.1), but also was observed for women in the middle tertile of BMI (24.1-28.4).



These data suggest that increased physical activity is associated with reduced risk for breast cancer in postmenopausal women, longer duration provides most benefit, and that such activity need not be strenuous.
A MOSAIC-BASED VISUAL MEMORY WITH APPLICATIONS TO ACTIVE SCENE EXPLORATION

Processing visual data is an important ability of interactive systems to act in dynamically changing environments. Looking at the human visual and cognitive system this requires efficient mechanisms for data processing and storage as well as intelligent strategies for data acquisition. In this paper we present a visual memory supporting efficient representation of image sequences of active cameras in an online fashion. The memory is based on mosaic images extending the field of view of a camera in space and time. As one prototypical field of application for the memory active scene exploration is discussed. The temporally and spatially integrated data of the memory combined with additional feature maps serves as an ideal starting point for the selection of focus points. Hence the memory demonstrates the combination of efficient acquisition and storage of visual data and helps to provide interactive systems with high flexibility to operate in dynamically changing environments.