tbuckley/cabot-search huggingface dataset:
Health inequalities: new concerns about the children of single mothers.
Authors: K Judge, M Benzeval
Journal: BMJ (1993)

To show that the exclusion from conventional class based analyses of child mortality of children whose parents are classified as "unoccupied" produces a misleading picture of health inequalities.Reanalysis of data published in the childhood supplement of the registrar general's decennial supplement on occupational mortality in England and Wales, which compares numerator data for registrations of deaths in children over the age of 1 but below their 16th birthday in 1979, 1980, 1982, and 1983 with data about children aged 1-15 who were enumerated at the 1981 census.Parents who are classified as "unoccupied" largely consist of economically inactive single mothers. Their children are estimated to represent 89% of the 614,000 aged 1-15 classified as "unoccupied" in the childhood supplement. They have the worst mortality record of all social groups--an age specific death rate of 68.8/100,000 a year, 42% worse than in social class V (48.4/100,000) and worse than that of social class I (22.8) by a factor of 3. At older ages (10-15 years) these children have a relative risk of death of 4.14 relative to classes I and II; the risk is 2.58 in children 0-4 and 2.56 in those 5-9. Relative risks of child mortality in social classes I and II in comparison to classes IV and V suggests a progressive shallowing from 2.08 at ages 1-4 to 1.37 at ages 10-15. When unoccupied parents were combined with classes IV and V and compared with classes I and II, however, inequalities seemed to be pervasive throughout childhood; the relative risks were 2.21 for those aged 1-4 and 1.98 for those aged 10-15.Children classified as unoccupied are almost certainly living in poverty as well as experiencing relatively high risks of mortality. Class based analyses which exclude them therefore produce a misleading picture of inequalities in child health. The implications for health policy are profound. Strategies to promote the nation's health should acknowledge the importance of material and social deprivation more explicitly.
Study of the stability of a paramagnetic label linked to mesoporous silica surface in contact with rat mesothelial cells in culture.
Authors: L Mollo, V Levresse, M F Ottaviani, S Ellouk-Achard, M C Jaurand, B Fubini
Journal: Environmental Health Perspectives (1997)

Stable radicals detectable by electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) may be use in the investigation of early events in cell-particle toxicity. Piperidine-N-oxyl derivatives (nitroxides), covalently linked to the surface of a high surface area silica (used as model solid for the technique), served as probes in the investigation of the effects of incubation of silica particles with mesothelial cells. A mesoporous silica (MCM-41), prepared by precipitation from a micellar solution, was the most appropriate silica-based particle for this purpose, as its channels allow direct contact with small molecules but not with macromolecules. The cytotoxicity of this amorphous silica is very low, allowing relatively high particle loading in the cell cultures. Both the high surface area of the sample and the large amount of inorganic material extracted from the cell culture provide enough material to run reasonably intense EPR spectra. Computer-aided analysis of the EPR spectra of silica-bound nitroxides provided information on the sensitivity of the labeled silica monitoring different environments, e.g., to follow the path of particles in a mammalian cell culture. Upon contact of the particles with mesothelial cells, the mean distance among the labels at the silica surface decreased as a consequence of the release of oxidizing and/or radical moieties from the cells.
Controlling the Hemorrhage of Routine Coagulation Tests
Authors: Gary N. Fox
Journal: JAMA (1990)

<h3>To the Editor.—</h3> The article entitled "Routine Use of the Prothrombin and Partial Thromboplastin Times"1 indicates that "education and other types of feedback have been tried with minimal or no long-term reduction in (inappropriate) laboratory use" by physicians. We contend that the reason for this is simple: hospitals generate profit from this testing. In our institution, Medicare patients represent 34% of the volume on a case basis (50% of the volume on a charge basis because of increased length of stay and complexity of illness). The number of patients eligible for testing is calculated on a case basis. If 50% of patients who undergo prothrombin time and partial thromboplastin time studies were funded on a fee-for-service basis and the markup on these tests were 100%, the hospital would break even. The hospital would have no incentive to intervene at this break-even point because of the cost of instituting educational programs
Exposure chamber for allergen challenge. A placebo-controlled, double-blind trial in house-dust-mite asthma
Authors: S. M. Rønborg, H. Mosbech, L. K. Poulsen
Journal: Allergy (1997)

Exposure chambers have proven to be valuable tools in the study of reactions to aeroallergens, and in monitoring the efficacy of antiallergic therapy. In the present study, 15 house‐dust‐mite‐allergic asthmatics and five nonallergic volunteers were challenged in a recently developed exposure chamber. The trial was performed double‐blinded with house‐dust‐mite allergen or placebo. Patients with allergy to house‐dust mite (Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus) (Der p) were included by positive skin prick test, allergen‐specific IgE, and conventional bronchial allergen challenge, with nebulizer and mouthpiece. In the exposure chamber, a total allergen dose corresponding to 1200 ng Der p 1 was applied. All participants kept diaries, recording peak expiratory flow rates, symptoms, and medication in periods of at least 2 weeks before and after each challenge. Twelve of the 15 asthmatics reacted with asthmatic symptoms with a median change in FEV 1 of −16.4% when exposed to the allergen, but not to placebo, in the exposure chamber. Three patients had only minor symptoms during both chamber exposures and experienced no impairment of pulmonary function. Late‐phase reactions were less frequent (one vs three) after the exposure chamber challenges, as compared to the traditional challenges. None of the healthy subjects reacted to the challenges. In conclusion, our exposure chamber was able to elicit symptoms in allergic subjects, and this ability was obtained with only minor amounts of house‐dust‐mite allergen. The described method could prove to be a more physiologically relevant model to monitor individual responses to aeroallergens.
Thoracoplasty Concomitant with Resection for Pulmonary Tuberculosis
Authors: J. K. B. Waddington
Journal: Thorax (1951)

Resection of the lung has been accepted as a satisfactory method of treating certain types of pulmonary tuberculosis.In assessing large numbers of cases for resection very few are found to be entirely free from healed or quiescent lesions in the parts of the lung which will remain after excision.The space left after the resection of a lobe or lung gives the surgeon anxiety, since it can only be filled by adjustment of the remaining lung tissue and by deviation of the mediastinum to the operated side.This adjustment causes distension of the lung, which, in addition to setting up stresses on quiescent lesions, reduces its efficiency as an aerating organ.In this paper 18 cases of pneumonectomy and 20 of upper lobectomy, in which a modified thoracoplasty was performed concomitantly with the resection in an effort to prevent distension, are reviewed.The cases are from a series of 62 lobes and 20 lungs which were subjected to resection in the Aintree Thoracic Unit between May and December, 1950.In some the decision to carry out thoracoplasty was made before operation, but in the others it was made during the operation.Although difficult to prove conclusively, it is suspected that stretching a quiescent tuberculous lesion may cause reactivation, possibly by breaking down the fibrous tissue boundary laid down during healing.This has been seen where an artificial pneumothorax has been abandoned either deliberately or inadvertently and a previously controlled lesion has become active again.Moreover, cases have been seen where, after a resection has been done, an ipsilateral or contralateral lesion which has been radiologically stable for 12 months has reactivated soon after the operation.In addition to the risk of activation, the physiological effects of removing lung tissue have to be considered.It is still a matter of controversy what degree of compensation can occur in the remaining lung after lobectomy or pneumonectomy.Longacre and Johansmann (1940), Cournand and Berry (1942), and Lester, Cournand, and Riley (1942) studied children and young animals after pneumon- ectomy and decided that the operation had little detrimental effect in the young, but, when carried out in older age groups, emphysema developed which led to respiratory embarrassment.Reinhoff, Reichert, and Heuer (1935) and Reinhoff (1949) did not believe that emphysema occurred after pneumonectomy; they thought that "compensatory on July 22, 2023 by guest.
Korean cloning studies were fakes
Authors: Jane Parry
Journal: BMJ (2006)

The Korean stem cell research team led by Hwang Woo-suk faked the results of two landmark papers published in Science in 2004 and 2005, an investigation committee at Seoul National University has found. However, the committee found that the team did produce the world's first cloned dog, Snuppy.

The committee initially reported on 23 December that the data in Professor Hwang's landmark paper on embryonic stem cell lines derived from somatic cell nuclear transfer ( Science 2005;308: 1777-83) was entirely fabricated, that only …
Radiographers and obstetric ultrasound.
Authors: H B Meire
Journal: BMJ (1986)

Studies suggest that plasticity in the infralimbic prefrontal cortex (IL) in rodents and its homolog in humans is necessary for inhibition of fear during the recall of fear extinction. The recall of extinction is impaired by locally blocking metabotropic glutamate receptor type 5 (mGluR5) activation in IL during extinction training. This finding suggests that mGluR5 stimulation may lead to IL plasticity needed for fear extinction. To test this hypothesis, we recorded AMPA and NMDA currents, AMPA receptor (AMPAR) rectification, and intrinsic excitability in IL pyramidal neurons in slices from trained rats using whole-cell patch-clamp recording. We observed that fear extinction increases the AMPA/NMDA ratio, consistent with insertion of AMPARs into IL synapses. In addition, extinction training increased inward rectification, suggesting that extinction induces the insertion of calcium-permeable (GluA2-lacking) AMPARs into IL synapses. Consistent with this, selectively blocking calcium-permeable AMPARs with Naspm reduced the AMPA EPSCs in IL neurons to a larger degree after extinction. Extinction-induced changes in AMPA/NMDA ratio, rectification, and intrinsic excitability were blocked with an mGluR5 antagonist. These findings suggest that mGluR5 activation leads to consolidation of fear extinction by regulating the intrinsic excitability of IL neurons and modifying the composition of AMPARs in IL synapses. Therefore, impaired mGluR5 activity in IL synapses could be one factor that causes inappropriate modulation of fear expression leading to anxiety disorders.
TCT-555 Release of Bioactive Lipids During Percutaneous Coronary, and Peripheral Arterial Interventions in Humans: Lipidomic analysis of Distal Embolic Protection Devices
Authors: Amir Ravandi, Gregor Leibundgut, Patrick Hu, Anand Prasad, Brian Kolski, Bahram Khadivi, Mitul Patel, Ehtisham Mahmud, Yury Miller, Edward Dennis, Joseph Witztum, Sotirios Tsimikas
Journal: Journal of the American College of Cardiology (2012)
On the Anglicization of English
Authors: James Ransom
Journal: JAMA (1983)

When manned space travel was imminent but not yet achieved, a group of Russian scientists visiting Stanford were asked what language would be spoken on the first venture out of Earth's atmosphere. "Broken English" was the genial answer. Robertson and Robertson<sup>1</sup>explain why and offer a proposal to normalize the English language of science and technology to a common standard with its shaft firmly planted in the soil of southeast England. Efforts to change people's language habits should be undertaken only by those who can handle failure. The rise of the dictionary industry and the drive to literacy quelled most of the chaos in English itself; Berlin dialect as spoken on the stage came to be the standard all Germans strove to emulate; and the encyclopedists and Academies of Italy and France managed for a while to keep an authoritarian grip on the vernacular vocabulary. These can be called
Scale invariant texture descriptors for classifying celiac disease
Authors: Sebastian Hegenbart, Andreas Uhl, Andreas Vécsei, Georg Wimmer
Journal: Medical Image Analysis (2013)

Scale invariant texture recognition methods are applied for the computer assisted diagnosis of celiac disease. In particular, emphasis is given to techniques enhancing the scale invariance of multi-scale and multi-orientation wavelet transforms and methods based on fractal analysis. After fine-tuning to specific properties of our celiac disease imagery database, which consists of endoscopic images of the duodenum, some scale invariant (and often even viewpoint invariant) methods provide classification results improving the current state of the art. However, not each of the investigated scale invariant methods is applicable successfully to our dataset. Therefore, the scale invariance of the employed approaches is explicitly assessed and it is found that many of the analyzed methods are not as scale invariant as they theoretically should be. Results imply that scale invariance is not a key-feature required for successful classification of our celiac disease dataset.
Clustering of AMPA Receptors by the Synaptic PDZ Domain–Containing Protein PICK1
Authors: Jun Xia, Xiaoqun Zhang, Jeff Staudinger, Richard L Huganir
Journal: Neuron (1999)

Synaptic clustering of neurotransmitter receptors is crucial for efficient signal transduction and integration in neurons. PDZ domain–containing proteins such as PSD-95/SAP90 interact with the intracellular C termini of a variety of receptors and are thought to be important in the targeting and anchoring of receptors to specific synapses. Here, we show that PICK1 (protein interacting with C kinase), a PDZ domain–containing protein, interacts with the C termini of α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-isoxazole-4-propionic acid (AMPA) receptors in vitro and in vivo. In neurons, PICK1 specifically colocalizes with AMPA receptors at excitatory synapses. Furthermore, PICK1 induces clustering of AMPA receptors in heterologous expression systems. These results suggest that PICK1 may play an important role in the modulation of synaptic transmission by regulating the synaptic targeting of AMPA receptors.
A CASE OF LARYNGEAL EPILEPSY.
Authors: JOHN KERCHER
Journal: JAMA (1893)

This disease is variously designated as laryngeal vertigo, laryngeal epilepsy, complete glottic spasm in adults, and in an article by W. Peyre Porcher, M.D., inTHE JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION, Vol. xx, March 18, 1893, he refers to it as chorea laryngitis. This disease is of interest because there is very little found in our books on the subject; it is also of special interest to the neurologist and laryngologist; to the first because it is essentially a neurosis (as at present the general accepted view) and to the second because most cases may come under his observation, and because they are most successfully relieved and cured by treatment directed to some part of the respiratory tract, as tonsilitis, pharyngitis, uvelitis, polyps and other abnormalities in the nose, etc. Dr. Lennox Browne, T. R. C. S.E., 1887, on diseases of the throat, under Chapter xxiii, neurosis of the
Cataract Extraction Rates and Insurance Status-Reply
Authors: Caroline Lubick Goldzweig
Journal: JAMA (1997)

In Reply.  —Dr Dahl asserts that the large differences we found in rates of cataract extraction for Medicare patients in FFS and prepaid settings do not result from financial incentives affecting ophthalmologists in the prepaid settings. Dahl refers to the fact that cataract extraction rates in the staff-model and IPA settings were similar even though, as he incorrectly asserts, IPA ophthalmologists were reimbursed  a higher level than traditional Medicare. Our study demonstrated variations in rates between settings with very different financial and organizational incentives, but it cannot discern at which level these incentives are operating. Nevertheless, we believe it is naive to contend that financial incentives are not affecting ophthalmologists. In the IPAs we studied, ophthalmologists were reimbursed on a discounted FFS basis with rates that generally were lower than those paid in traditional FFS Medicare, and their behavior could well have been influenced by this.  As Dahl states, some of
Nuclear receptors, nuclear-receptor factors, and nuclear-receptor-like orphans form a large paralog cluster in Homo sapiens
Authors: S. Garcia-Vallve, J. Palau
Journal: Molecular Biology and Evolution (1998)

We studied a human protein paralog cluster formed by 38 nonredundant sequences taken from the Swiss-Prot database and its supplement, TrEMBL. These sequences include nuclear receptors, nuclear-receptor factors and nuclear-receptor-like orphans. Working separately with both the central cysteine-rich DNA-binding domain and the carboxy-terminal ligand-binding domain, we performed multialignment analyses that included drawings of paralog trees. Our results show that the cluster is highly multibranched, with considerable differences in the amino acid sequence in the ligand-binding domain (LBD), and 17 proximal subbranches which are identifiable and fully coincident when independent trees from both domains are compared. We identified the six recently proposed subfamilies as groups of neighboring clusters in the LBD paralog tree. We found similarities of 80%-100% for the N-terminal transactivation domain among mammalian ortholog receptors, as well as some paralog resemblances within diverse subbranches. Our studies suggest that during the evolutionary process, the three domains were assembled in a modular fashion with a nonshuffled modular fusion of the LBD. We used the EMBL server PredictProtein to make secondary-structure predictions for all 38 LBD subsequences. Amino acid residues in the multialigned homologous domains--taking the beginning of helix H3 of the human retinoic acid receptor-gamma as the initial point of reference--were substituted with H or E, which identify residues predicted to be helical or extended, respectively. The result was a secondary structure multialignment with the surprising feature that the prediction follows a canonical pattern of alignable alpha-helices with some short extended elements in between, despite the fact that a number of subsequences resemble each other by less than 25% in terms of the similarity index. We also identified the presence of a binary patterning in all of the predicted helices that were conserved throughout the 38-sequence sample. Our results fit well with a recently proposed evolutionary model that combines protein secondary structure and amino acid replacement. We propose a new hypothesis for molecular evolution, in which chaperones--acting as an endogenous cellular device for selection--play a crucial role in preserving protein secondary structure.
Plasma neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin predicts recovery from acute kidney injury following community-acquired pneumonia
Authors: Nattachai Srisawat, Raghavan Murugan, Minjae Lee, Lan Kong, Melinda Carter, Derek C. Angus, John A. Kellum
Journal: Kidney International (2011)

Although plasma neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL) is a promising biomarker for early detection of acute kidney injury, its ability to predict recovery is unknown. Using RIFLE criteria to define kidney injury, we tested whether higher plasma NGAL concentrations on the first day of RIFLE-F would predict failure to recover in a post hoc analysis of a multicenter, prospective, cohort study of patients with community-acquired pneumonia. Recovery was defined as alive and not requiring renal replacement therapy during hospitalization or having a persistent RIFLE-F classification at hospital discharge. Median plasma NGAL concentrations were significantly lower among the 93 of 181 patients who recovered. Plasma NGAL alone predicted failure to recover with an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.74. A clinical model using age, serum creatinine, pneumonia severity, and nonrenal organ failure predicted failure to recover with area under the curve of 0.78. Combining this clinical model with plasma NGAL concentrations did not improve prediction. The reclassification of risk of renal recovery, however, significantly improved by 17% when plasma NGAL was combined with the clinical model. Thus, in this cohort of patients with pneumonia-induced severe acute kidney injury, plasma NGAL appears to be a useful biomarker for predicting renal recovery.
The Effects of Patient Volume and Level of Care at the Hospital of Birth on Neonatal Mortality
Authors: Ciaran S. Phibbs
Journal: JAMA (1996)

To examine the effects of neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) patient volume and the level of NICU care available at the hospital of birth on neonatal mortality.Birth certificate data linked to infant death certificates and to infant discharge abstracts were used in a logistic regression model to control for differences in each patient's clinical and demographic risks. Hospitals were classified by the level of NICU care available (no NICU: level I; intermediate NICU: level II; expanded intermediate NICU: level II+: tertiary NICU: level III) and by the average patient census in the NICU.All nonfederal hospitals in California with maternity services.All births in nonfederal hospitals in California in 1990 (N=594104), 473209 (singletons only) of which were successfully linked with discharge abstracts. Of these infants, 53229 were classified as likely NICU admissions.Death within the first 28 days of life, or within the first year of life, if continuously hospitalized.Patient volume and level of NICU care at the hospital of birth both had significant effects on mortality. Compared with hospitals without an NICU, infants born in a hospital with a level III NICU with an average NICU census of at least 15 patients per day had significantly lower risk-adjusted neonatal mortality (odds ratio, 0.62; 95% confidence interval, 0.47-0.82; P=.002). Risk-adjusted neonatal mortality for infants born in smaller level III NICUs, and in level II+ and level II NICUs, regardless of size, was not significantly different from hospitals without an NICU, and was significantly higher than hospitals with large level III NICUS.Risk-adjusted neonatal mortality was significantly lower for births that occurred in hospitals with large (average census, >15 patients per day) level III NICUs. Despite the differences in outcomes, costs for the birth of infants born at hospitals with large level III NICUs were not more than those for infants born at other hospitals with NICUs. Concentration of high-risk deliveries in urban areas in a smaller number of hospitals that could provide level III NICU care has the potential to decrease neonatal mortality without increasing costs.
Lower preprocedural hemoglobin level is associated with increased risk of in-hospital mortality following percutaneous coronary intervention
Authors: Ronald S. McKechnie, Cecelia Montoye, Eva Kline-Rogers, Michael J. O'Donnell, Anthony C. DeFranco, William L. Meengs, Richard McNamara, John G. McGinnity, Kirit Patel, David Share, Arthur Riba, Mauro Moscucci
Journal: Journal of the American College of Cardiology (2003)