Plasma concentrations of some micronutrients are altered in the setting of acute infectious or inflammatory stress. Previous studies have provided conflicting evidence concerning the extent and direction of changes in plasma zinc concentrations during the acute phase response. We carried out an observational cohort study in 689 children enrolled in a randomized trial of zinc supplementation dur...

AIM To investigate the factors associated with the functional progress of hospitalized patients following an intensive care admission. METHODS Retrospective study including data from a cohort of 198 hospitalized patients following an intensive care admission and not requiring mechanical ventilation in a single tertiary referral hospital. A generalized linear model was used to identify the mai...

BACKGROUND Post-stroke immune depression contributes to the development of infections which are major complications after stroke. Previous experimental and clinical studies suggested that humoral stress mediators induce immune dysfunction. However, prospective clinical studies testing this concept are missing and no data exists for other cerebrovascular diseases including intracerebral hemorrha...

OBJECTIVE To explore predictors of the 6-month clinical outcome of thalamic hemorrhage, and evaluate if minimally invasive thalamic hematoma drainage (THD) could improve its prognosis. METHODS A total of 54 patients with spontaneous thalamic hemorrhage were evaluated retrospectively. Clinical data, including demographics, stroke risk factors, neuroimaging variables, Glasgow Coma Score (GCS) o...

Objective: To identify predictors of cesarean section in a term nulliparous women presented in labour. So that we can avoid unnecessary primary cesarean section and in the same time avoid, as much as we can, obstructed labour. Methods: This was a cohort study of 216 nulliparous patients presenting in labour at term with singleton vertex fetuses who were followed till delivery either vaginally (...

Background There is limited evidence on the course of health service costs before and after psychiatric inpatient treatment, which might also be affected by source of cost data. Thus, this study examines: i) differences in health care costs before and after psychiatric inpatient treatment, ii) whether these differences vary by source of cost-data (self-report vs. administrative), and iii) predi...