1,721,021 research outputs found
Incidence, Predictors, and Clinical Implications of Discontinuing Therapy with Inhaled Long-Acting Bronchodilators among Patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
No full textIncidence, predictors and effect of discontinuation of long-acting bronchodilators on the risk of death or hospital admission among adults with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) were assessed in a large population-based prospective study carried out by linking Italian healthcare utilization databases. Specifically, the cohort of 17,490 beneficiaries of the National Health Service in the Italian Region of Lombardy, aged 40 years or older, who started long-acting bronchodilators therapy during 2005-2008 was followed from first dispensation until 2012. During this period, patients who experienced discontinuation of long-acting bronchodilators were identified. Hospitalizations for COPD and deaths for any cause (composite clinical outcome) were also identified during follow-up. A Cox proportional hazards model was fitted to identify predictors of discontinuation. The case-crossover design was used to assess the implications of treatment discontinuation on the clinical outcome risk. Cumulative incidences of discontinuation were, respectively, 67%, 80%, and 92% at 6 months, 1 year, and 5 years since initial treatment. Significant predictors of discontinuation were female gender, younger age, starting treatment with fixed-dose combination of inhaled bronchodilators and corticosteroids, using antibiotics, inhaled long-acting bronchodilators and corticosteroids and not using short-acting bronchodilators, other respiratory drugs and systemic corticosteroids during follow-up. Odds ratios (95% confidence intervals) for the clinical outcome associated with not discontinuing long-acting bronchodilators was 0.64 (0.50 to 0.82). In conclusion, in the real-life setting, discontinuation of inhaled long-acting bronchodilators in adults with COPD is high even after just 6 months, even though persistence to these drugs reduces the risk of severe outcomes
Dietary flavonoids and respiratory diseases: a population-based multi-case-control study in Italian adults
Full text linkOBJECTIVE: To analyse the associations between chronic respiratory diseases and intakes of total flavonoids and their major subclasses (flavanones, anthocyanins, flavan-3-ols, flavonols, flavones, polymers and proanthocyanidins). DESIGN: Multi-case-control study. SETTING: The analysis was conducted in the frame of the Genes Environment Interaction in Respiratory Diseases (GEIRD) study. The European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition FFQ was used to ascertain dietary intake. Multinomial regression models adjusting for age, sex, centre, BMI, smoking habit, alcohol intake, education, total energy intake, vitamin C intake and total fruit intake were used to examine the associations between dietary exposures and the relative risk ratio (RRR) of being a case. PARTICIPANTS: Individuals (n 990) hierarchically defined as follows: cases with asthma (current, n 159; past, n 78), chronic bronchitis (n 47), rhinitis (allergic rhinitis, n 167; non-allergic rhinitis, n 142) and controls (n 97). RESULTS: An increase of 1 sd in flavanones was associated with a reduced risk of non-allergic rhinitis (adjusted RRR = 0·68, 95 % CI 0·47, 0·97); a similar result was found comparing the highest v. lowest quartile of flavanones intake (adjusted RRR = 0·24, 95 % CI 0·10, 0·59). CONCLUSIONS: Flavonoids contained in fruits and vegetables, especially flavanones, might reduce the risk of non-allergic rhinitis. No associations were found between other flavonoids and the considered outcomes
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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