1,720,967 research outputs found
Analysis of the effect of memantine in reducing the worsening of clinical symptoms in patients with moderate to severe Alzheimer's disease
No full textBackground: Alzheimer's disease ( AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder and delaying disease worsening is a relevant treatment outcome. Methods: Data from 6 randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, 6-month studies were pooled and a subgroup of patients ( 867 on placebo, 959 on memantine) with moderate to severe AD ( MiniMental State Examination < 20) was analyzed. 'Any clinical worsening' was defined as a decline on the Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale - Cognitive Subscale (ADAS-cog) or the Severe Impairment Battery ( SIB) and on the Clinician's Interview-Based Impression of Change Plus Caregiver In put (CIBIC-plus) and the Alzheimer's Disease Cooperative Study - Activities of Daily Living Inventory (ADCS-ADL), and 'marked clinical worsening' as 6 4 points decline on the ADAS-cog or 6 5 points on the SIB and decline on the CIBIC-plus and the ADCS-ADL. Results: More placebo-treated than memantine-treated patients showed any clinical worsening ( 28 vs. 18%; p < 0.001), and 21% placebo-treated patients compared to 11% memantine-treated patients had marked clinical worsening ( p < 0.001). Conclusion: In this population of moderate and severe AD patients, treatment with memantine was associated with reducing worsening of clinical symptoms in AD during the 6-month study period. Copyright (c) 2007 S. Karger AG, Base
Comparison of the standard scales and CGI scores in major depressive disorder, panic disorder, social anxiety disorder and generalized anxiety disorder
No full text
Anxiety symptom severity and functional recovery or relapse.
No full textBackground: Anxiety disorders are associated with significant disability. There is growing interest in the question of whether pharmacotherapy that effectively reduces symptoms can also restore function. Recovery could potentially be defined as a lack of disability, with an associated reduction in symptom severity. Conversely, relapse could potentially be defined in terms of either increased disability or increased symptoms.Methods: We analyzed a database of randomized controlled trials of escitalopram in generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and social anxiety disorder (SAD), focusing on the relationship between disorder-specific severity scales, and the Sheehan Disability Scale (SDS). In short-term studies, cut-points on symptom scales were derived for recovered function. In relapse prevention studies, the effects of defining relapse in terms of increased disability scores were examined.Results: In GAD and SAD, there is a close correlation between primary symptom severity scales and the SDS, both in the short term and during relapse prevention. Thus, functional recovery is associated with relatively low symptom severity scores, and rates of relapse—defined in terms of increased disability—are significantly lower on escitalopram than on placebo.Conclusions: These data indicate that recovery and relapse can potentially be defined either in terms of symptom severity or functioning. Thus, the concept of functional recovery and relapse may be useful in defining treatment outcomes. Longer-term treatment of anxiety disorders is needed to ensure functional recovery.<br/
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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