BACKGROUND Vaginal fistula (VF) is one of the most severe maternal morbidities with the immediate consequence of chronic urinary and/or fecal incontinence. The epidemiological evidence regarding risk factors for VF is dominated by facility-based studies. Our aim is to estimate the effect size of selected risk factors for VF using population-based survey data. METHODS We pooled all available D...

BACKGROUND Collecting adequate information on key epidemiological indicators is a prerequisite to informing a public health response to reduce the impact of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection in Malaysia. Our goal was to overcome the acute data shortage typical of low/middle income countries using statistical modelling to estimate the national HCV prevalence and the distribution over transmissio...

Using murine monoclonal antibodies (MoAbs) specific for immunoglobulin (Ig) cross-reactive idiotypes (CRI), we performed immunohistochemical analyses on frozen tissue sections and cytocentrifuge preparations of Ig-expressing malignant cells from patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and B-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphomas (NHL) of follicular center cell origin. Twenty percent (4/20) of th...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to compare the safety and efficacy of biodegradable-polymer (BP) drug-eluting stents (DES), bare metal stents (BMS), and durable-polymer DES in patients undergoing coronary revascularization, we performed a systematic review and network meta-analysis using a Bayesian framework. METHODS AND RESULTS Study stents included BMS, paclitaxel-eluting (PES), siroli...

Regulation of immune responsiveness has been attributed theoretically (1, 2) and experimentally (3, 4) to interactions between idiotypic and anti-idiotypic structures. Constituents of this idiotype network can be induced and triggered without the intervention of external antigens (5-10). For instance, anti-idiotypic antibodies can mimic specific antigen to promote the induction (9, 10) or suppr...

Estimates of foodborne illness can be used to direct food safety policy and interventions. We used data from active and passive surveillance and other sources to estimate that each year 31 major pathogens acquired in the United States caused 9.4 million episodes of foodborne illness (90% credible interval [CrI] 6.6-12.7 million), 55,961 hospitalizations (90% CrI 39,534-75,741), and 1,351 deaths...

People who are overweight or obese are frequently stigmatized because of their weight, but there has been limited exploration of how people cope with these experiences. The Coping Responses Inventory (CRI) assesses a wide range of coping strategies in response to weight stigma; however, its length (99 items) may have prevented it from being widely used. The aim of the current research (four stu...

Clinical Research Informatics (CRI) is a rapidly developing sub-domain of Biomedical Informatics that has seen considerable growth in recent years. While there are numerous activities and initiatives ongoing in this domain, systematic consideration and analysis of the challenges and opportunities that exist in this area are lacking. To begin to address this gap in knowledge and inform next step...

Cloud Computing is transfiguring development of information technology industry by providing scalable services on a pay per use basis. Cloud hosts and consumers are tied with service level agreement (SLA). SLA provides description of services provided by the cloud host. A cloud host can serve to multiple consumers and this is called cloud computing multi tenant model. Though, cloud shows infini...

OBJECTIVE To examine associations between disease-related, individual, and contextual risk factors and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in a sample of youth with inflammatory bowel disease using a cumulative risk model framework. METHODS Participants were 50 youth (58% male; M age = 15 years). Youth and parents completed measures of HRQoL, psychological functioning, and family functioni...