Leiden University Scholary Publications
Not a member yet
131438 research outputs found
Sort by
Biological DMARD survival in rheumatoid arthritis patients in clinical practice: a METEOR registry data analysis
No full textTo assess treatment survival of all available biologic disease modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (bDMARD) in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in a clinical practice scenario. Data were selected from the METEOR registry, an international registry capturing daily practice data of patients with a clinical diagnosis of RA. We selected patients >= 16 years old on bDMARDs, with complete data on start/stop date of medication and available data on disease activity measures. Time on treatment was calculated for the first treatment course of each bDMARD (infliximab, certolizumab, adalimumab, golimumab, etanercept, rituximab, tocilizumab and abatacept). Cox proportional hazards regression analysis was used to compare time to stop treatment between the different bDMARDs. For the current analysis, 9516 patients were available of which 49% used etanercept, 34% used adalimumab, 18% used infliximab, 14% used tocilizumab, 9% used abatacept, 8% used rituximab and 1% used golimumab. Median treatment duration per bDMARD was longest for infliximab (median 24.5 months), adalimumab (22.7 months) and etanercept (22.0 months). Fully adjusted Cox regression analyses showed that compared to infliximab, patients using abatacept, certolizumab, rituximab or tocilizumab had a significantly higher hazard to stop treatment, and thus had a shorter bDMARD treatment survival. Adalimumab, etanercept and golimumab had a similar hazard to stop treatment as infliximab. In this analysis of daily practice data, most TNF inhibitors (infliximab, adalimumab, etanercept and golimumab) had similar treatment survival in fully adjusted models. Patients using abatacept, certolizumab, rituximab or tocilizumab had a lower treatment survival compared to infliximab.Pathophysiology and treatment of rheumatic disease
A healthful plant-based diet is associated with higher health-related quality of life among older adults independent of circulating CRP: a cross-sectional analysis from the Lifelines Cohort Study
Get PDFPlant-based diets (PBD) have been found to be environmentally sustainable and beneficial for health. Observational research showed that higher plant-based diet quality improves health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in adult women, however this is unclear for older adults. This association may be due to anti-inflammatory properties of PBD. Older adults, prone to chronic inflammation, may therefore profit from PBD. We investigated the relation between PBD and HRQoL in older adults of both sexes and tested whether the effects are associated with circulating high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) levels. We used data of the population-based Lifelines Cohort Study (n = 6,635, mean age = 65.2 years) and a subsample in which hsCRP was measured (n = 2,251, mean age = 65.2 years). We applied a plant-based diet index measuring adherence to a healthful (hPDI) and an unhealthful (uPDI) plant-based diet based on food frequency questionnaires. The RAND-36 questionnaire was applied as measure of HRQoL, from which we derived physical and mental HRQoL. Older adults with the highest adherence to a hPDI had respectively 15% and 12% greater odds for high physical quality of life and mental quality of life. Meanwhile, higher adherence to uPDI was associated with respectively 16% and 13% lower odds for high physical and mental quality of life. An additive but no interactive effect of hsCRP on the association between PBD and HRQoL has been observed. Adherence to a healthful plant-based diet and circulating levels of inflammation are independently associated with physical and mental HRQoL. Mechanisms other than inflammation through which PBD could influence HRQoL may be explored in further research.Molecular Epidemiolog
Joint models reveal human subcortical underpinnings of choice and learning behaviour
Get PDFAdvanced Behavioural Research MethodsSocial, Cognitive, and Affective Decision MakingDevelopment and Learnin
Presence of a biofilm beneficiary alters the evolutionary trajectory of a biofilm former
Get PDFMicrobial Biotechnolog
Mild psoriasis as a suitable model for proof-of-mechanism in a phase 1B setting: results from a double-blind placebo-controlled trial with guselkumab
Get PDFAIMS\nMETHODS\nRESULTS\nCONCLUSION\nEarly clinical development of novel psoriasis therapies is hampered by a decreasing number of moderate-to-severe psoriasis patients eligible for participation in trials since efficacious treatments, such as biologics, have become widely available. The aim of this study was to establish mild psoriasis patients as a suitable alternative trial population since these patients are generally not eligible for these treatments.\nA randomized double-blind controlled trial was performed in 20 mild psoriasis patients (psoriasis area and severity index ≤5), randomized 3:1 to guselkumab 100 mg or placebo, and 5 moderate-to-severe psoriasis patients (psoriasis area and severity index ≥10) on guselkumab 100 mg. Clinical scoring was performed over 24 weeks and substantiated with multimodal imaging comprising multispectral imaging, optical coherence tomography and laser speckle contrast imaging.\nClinician-reported outcomes demonstrated significant treatment effects compared to placebo in mild patients. Focusing on a target plaque, severity scores significantly decreased during treatment with guselkumab only. Imaging demonstrated significant decreases in erythema, maximal height within-lesion and cutaneous perfusion compared to placebo. Plaques of mild and moderate-to-severe patients did not differ at baseline and showed similar treatment responses.\nClinical scoring and multimodal lesion monitoring enabled the detection of a clear treatment effect of guselkumab in mild psoriasis patients. Although this trial was not powered to demonstrate equivalence between the severity groups, our results indicate that the treatment responses follow the same trend in mild and moderate-to-severe patients with a high degree of similarity. Therefore, mild patients can be considered a suitable study population for early phase proof-of-concept trials.Drug Delivery Technolog
Relating and differentiating: navigating worlds and negotiating positionality in research on Chinese agribusinesses in rural Tajikistan
No full textEthnographic research on the Chinese presence in Tajikistan presents a range of challenges. Apart from the bureaucratic hurdles of securing research permission, one must carefully navigate across social and cultural worlds when engaging with both Chinese and Tajik interlocutors. This involves continuously negotiating positionality, shaped by factors such as class, gender, age, and nationality. In a context in which China’s presence is politicised and often contested, reflexivity is vital. In this contribution, I share fieldwork experiences in rural Tajikistan in various periods between 2012 and 2021. Reflecting on positionality, I offer an analytical lens to illuminate the power configurations among the diverse actors involved in China’s presence in Tajikistan.Asian Studie
Of skills and tools: skateboarding as city craft
No full textThis paper seeks to understand the sports- and crafts-like skills skaters acquire and maintain to navigate the built environment. Building upon the anthropology of the senses and the praxis of enskilment, we argue that skaters engage in a plurality of complementary learning strategies, from institutionalized sport-based regimes to in situ city play. Our contribution to recent ethnographic scholarship on skateboarding is that we position its enskiled practice as a city craft. This emphasis on craft reveals meaningful facets of skateboarding as structured around an entanglement of emplaced knowledge and material apprenticeship. Associating skateboarding with craft, we conclude, broadens and deepens our understanding of how skaters come to know.Global Challenges (FSW
Militarised punishment: the Trump administration’s escalation of the U.S. war on drugs
Get PDFHow did the United States (U.S.) under President Donald Trump (2017–2021) justify and escalate the militarization of U.S. drug policy? Focusing on Trump’s first term as President, this article argues that Trump’s war on drugs reinforced punitive approaches by fusing narcotics enforcement with racialized governance, border securitization and geopolitical coercion. By framing drug-related crime as an existential threat, his administration scapegoated marginalized communities while expanding policing, incarceration, and militarized counternarcotics operations. Building on existing scholarship, this study examines three key dimensions of Trump’s drug war: (1) ideational – how dehumanizing rhetoric legitimized punitive measures; (2) material – how law enforcement incentives and private interests entrenched state violence; and (3) international – how U.S. counternarcotics policy exported militarized governance to the Global South. Tracing the historical trajectory of U.S. drug enforcement, this article reveals how Trump’s policies deepened the war on drugs as a tool of state violence and global hegemonic control. It advances debates by foregrounding the material and ideological foundations of state violence in drug enforcement, challenging the focus on institutional structures. It highlights the agency of Global South leaders in sustaining militarized drug policies and demonstrates how Trump’s war on drugs functioned as a domestic tool of racialized control and an instrument of U.S. imperial power through transnational counternarcotics operations.History and International Studies 1900-presen
Preferences for risk conversations in everyday life: a conjoint analysis
No full textRisk talk has recently received increased attention as a predictor of risk perception. If social interactions strongly influence how people think about risks, we first need to know how and why individuals engage in conversations on risk. Many factors may play a role in the decision to engage in a conversation. To untangle precisely which factors influence the decision to enter a risk conversation—and to what extent—we use a pre-registered conjoint survey experiment—suitable for investigating multidimensional preferences—based on seven key attributes of risk-related conversations. The results indicate the relative weight of conversation attributes that make people engage in risk conversations. The attributes that drive risk talk are—in order of importance—the interlocutor’s propensity to exchange information and relieve anxiety, the interlocutor’s proficiency on the topic, the closeness of the respondent to the interlocutor and the type of relationship, e.g. whether they are a relative or friend of the respondent. Respondents also preferred female over male conversation partners, with moderate, rather than high, levels of concern. We also found that different groups of respondents have different preferences regarding risk talk. This study increases scientific understanding of how risk perceptions, through risk talk, may be amplified, attenuated, and malleated socially, informing the work of risk communicators.Security and Global Affair
TeVAE: a variational autoencoder aproach for discrete online anomaly detection in variable-state multivariate time-series data
No full textAs attention to recorded data grows in the realm of automotive testing and manual evaluation reaches its limits, there is a growing need for automatic online anomaly detection. This real-world data is complex in many ways and requires the modelling of testee behaviour. To address this, we propose a temporal variational autoencoder (TeVAE) that can detect anomalies with minimal false positives when trained on unlabelled data. Our approach also avoids the bypass phenomenon and introduces a new method to remap individual windows to a continuous time series. Furthermore, we propose metrics to evaluate the detection delay and root-cause capability of our approach and present results from experiments on a real-world industrial data set. When properly configured, TeVAE flags anomalies only 6% of the time wrongly and detects 65% of anomalies present. It also has the potential to perform well with a smaller training and validation subset but requires a more sophisticated threshold estimation method.Algorithms and the Foundations of Software technologyComputer Systems, Imagery and Medi