BACKGROUND The capacity of multiple comparisons to produce false positive findings in genetic association studies is abundantly clear. To address this issue, the concept of false positive report probability (FPRP) measures "the probability of no true association between a genetic variant and disease given a statistically significant finding". This concept involves the notion of prior probabilit...

The "dementia profile" is used to reduce false positives on the Word Memory Test (WMT). Provided that this profile reflects genuine memory impairment, corresponding cognitive deficits should be found in neuropsychological testing. We examined whether a WMT dementia profile is a significant indicator of cognitive impairment and/or decline. In addition, we evaluated the classification accuracy fo...

PURPOSE To estimate the sensitivities, specificities, and predictive values of exercise challenge and questionnaire, when these tests are used to diagnose asthma in children. METHODS Participants were children, predominantly aged 6 to 12 years, selected from three primary school grades among 18 different schools in Montreal. Of 1111 participants, 989 successfully completed a six-minute free r...

BACKGROUND The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) is frequently used as a performance measure for medical tests. It is a threshold-free measure that is independent of the disease prevalence rate. We evaluate the utility of the AUC against an alternate measure called the average positive predictive value (AP), in the setting of many medical screening programs where the ...

PURPOSE To construct reference centile curves of refraction based on population-based data as an age-specific severity scale to evaluate their efficacy as a tool for identifying children at risk of developing high myopia in a longitudinal study. METHODS Data of 4218 children aged 5-15 years from the Guangzhou Refractive Error Study in Children (RESC) study, and 354 first-born twins from the G...

Introduction: Early diagnosis of biliary atresia is very important for better outcome of treatment. Ultrasonography is one of the diagnostic tools for early differentiation of  biliary atresia from other causes of neonatal cholestasis. It has been reported that triangular cord sign  (TACS) in sonography is a reliable sign for diagnosis of biliary atresia. The aim of this study was to re-assess ...

BACKGROUND Helicobacter pylori infection is likely acquired in childhood. Helicobacter pylori is recognized as a cause of gastritis and peptic ulcer. OBJECTIVE To investigate some noninvasive tests, particularly H pylori fecal antigen, for the diagnosis of H pylori infection in comparison with the gold-standard invasive test, esophagogastroduodenoscopy with biopsy. METHODS We studied 250 pa...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE A screening test is required to improve the diagnosis of poststroke cognitive impairment. The Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), a newly designed screening test, has been found to be more sensitive than Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), but its clinical value has not been established by means of a comprehensive neuropsychological battery. This study was designed to...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE One of the routinely used intraoperative tests for diagnosis of periprosthetic infection (PPI) is the Gram stain. It is not known if the result of this test can vary according to the type of joint affected or the number of specimen samples collected. We examined the role of this diagnostic test in a large cohort of patients from a single institution. MATERIALS AND METHO...