BACKGROUND Pregnant women with epilepsy frequently experience seizures related to pregnancy complications and are often prescribed anti-epileptic drugs (AEDs) to manage their symptoms. However, less is known about the comparative safety of AED exposure in utero. We aimed to compare the risk of congenital malformations (CMs) and prenatal outcomes of AEDs in infants/children who were exposed to A...

Central venous catheters (CVCs) nowadays constitute critical devices used in medical care, namely in intensive care units. However, CVCs also represent one of the indwelling medical devices with enhanced risk of nosocomial device-related infection. Catheter-related infections (CRIs) are a major cause of patient morbidity and mortality, often justifying premature catheter removal and an increase...

In this Letter, the main attributes known to affect color quality are treated statistically over a set of 118 spectra representing the current mainstream lighting technology. The color rendering index (CRI) is used to assess color fidelity while colorfulness is used to complement CRI-R(a), supported by the growing evidence that assessment of light spectra cannot overlook color preference inputs...

It has been shown that A/J anti-p-azophenylarsonate antibodies that share a major cross-reactive idiotype (CRI) comprise a family of closely related, but nonidentical, molecules. Our results demonstrate that 12 of 14 monoclonal hybridoma products that express the CRI have in common at least one highly conserved idiotypic determinant. It is proposed that this reflects conservation of a portion o...

Sepsis is the second leading cause of death in patients with end stage renal disease (ESRD) on hemodialysis (HD). The average cost to the healthcare system for catheter-related infections (CRI) ranges from $4000 to $80,235 for each occurrence. CRI is a significant health problem leading to increased hospitalizations, morbidity, mortality, and a financial burden to the healthcare system. The pur...

INTRODUCTION The objective of this study was to estimate the relative efficacy and safety of fixed-dose combination aclidinium/formoterol 400/12 μg twice daily compared to tiotropium 18 μg once daily in adult patients with moderate-to-severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). METHODS A systematic literature review performed in March 2014, using a predefined search strategy in MEDLI...

BACKGROUND Aclidinium bromide is a new long-acting muscarinic antagonist (LAMA) indicated for maintenance bronchodilator treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The efficacy of aclidinium was compared with tiotropium and glycopyrronium, using a network meta-analysis (NMA) of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in moderate-to-severe COPD patients. METHODS A systematic review...

BACKGROUND A Bayesian latent class evaluation was used to estimate the true prevalence of brucellosis in livestock farmers and patients with prolonged pyrexia (PP) and to validate three conditionally dependent serological tests: indirect ELISA (iELISA), Rose Bengal Test (RBT), and standard tube agglutination (STAT). A total of 335 sera from livestock farmers and 300 sera from PP patients were i...

Obtaining a quantitative understanding of the transmission dynamics of influenza A is important for predicting healthcare demand and assessing the likely impact of intervention measures. The pandemic of 2009 provides an ideal platform for developing integrative analyses as it has been studied intensively, and a wealth of data sources is available. Here, we analyse two complementary datasets in ...

BACKGROUND Accurate, rapid detection of tuberculosis (TB) and TB drug resistance is critical for improving patient care and decreasing TB transmission. Xpert® MTB/RIF assay is an automated test that can detect both TB and rifampicin resistance, generally within two hours after starting the test, with minimal hands-on technical time. The World Health Organization (WHO) issued initial recommendat...