1,720,968 research outputs found
Herbal medicines for urinary stone treatment. A systematic review
No full textTo analyze the clinical evidence on the efficacy of phytotherapy in the treatment of calculi in the urinary tract
Efficacy of second line agents for the treatment of metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer progressing after docetaxel: Systematic review and meta-analysis.
No full textEfficacy and safety of second-line agents for treatment of metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer progressing after docetaxel. A systematic review and meta-analysis
No full textObjective: We performed a systematic review of the literature to assess the efficacy and the safety of second-line agents targeting metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) that has progressed after docetaxel. Pooled-analysis was also performed, to assess the effectiveness of agents targeting the androgen axis via identical mechanisms of action (abiraterone acetate, orteronel). Materials and Methods: We included phase III randomized controlled trials that enrolled patients with mCRPC progressing during or after first-line docetaxel treatment. Trials were identified by electronic database searching. The primary outcome of the review was overall survival. Secondary outcomes were radiographic progression-free survival (rPFS) and severe adverse effects (grade 3 or higher). Results: Ten articles met the inclusion criteria for the review. These articles reported the results of five clinical trials, enrolling in total 5047 patients. The experimental interventions tested in these studies were enzalutamide, ipilimumab, abiraterone acetate, orteronel and cabazitaxel. Compared to control cohorts (active drug-treated or placebotreated), the significant overall survival advantages achieved were 4.8 months for enzalutamide (hazard ratio for death vs. placebo: 0.63; 95% CI 0.53 to 0.75, P < 0.0001), 4.6 months for abiraterone (hazard ratio for death vs. placebo: 0.66, 95% CI 0.58 to 0.75, P < 0.0001) and 2.4 months for cabazitaxel (hazard ratio for death vs. mitoxantrone-prednisone: 0.70, 95% CI 0.59 to 0.83, p < 0.0001). Pooled analysis of androgen synthesis inhibitors orteronel and abiraterone resulted in significantly increased overall and progression-free survival for anti-androgen agents, compared to placebo (hazard ratio for death: 0.76, 95% CI 0.67 to 0.87, P < 0.0001; hazard ratio for radiographic progression: 0.7, 95% CI 0.63 to 0.77, P < 0.00001). Androgen synthesis inhibitors induced significant increases in risk ratios for adverse effects linked to elevated mineralocorticoid secretion, compared to placebo (risk ratio for hypokalemia: 5.75, 95% CI 2.08 to 15.90; P = 0.0008; risk-ratio for hypertension: 2.29, 95% CI 1.02 to 5.17; P = 0.05). Conclusions: In docetaxel-pretreated patients enzalutamide, abiraterone-prednisone and cabazitaxel-prednisone can improve overall survival of patients, compared to placebo or to best of care at the time of study (mitoxantrone-prednisone). Agents targeting the androgen axis (enzalutamide, abiraterone, orteronel) significantly prolonged rPFS, compared to placebo. Further investigation is warranted to evaluate the benefit of combination or sequential administration of these agents. Large-scale studies are also necessary to evaluate the impact of relevant toxic effects observed in a limited number of patients (e.g., enzalutamide-induced seizures, orteronel-induced pancreatitis, and others)
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe 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
No full text“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
No full textWe 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
The association between prostatitis and prostate cancer. Systematic review and meta-analysis
No full textObjective: The main outcome of this review was the association between a history of clinical chronic prostatitis (NIH category II or III) and a histologically confirmed diagnosis of prostate cancer.Materials and methods: Crude odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated to analyze dichotomous data. For analysis of pooled data we adopted a random-effects model and the inverse variance weighing method. Heterogeneity was assessed by calculating the I-2 value.Results: Out of 2794 screened records, we retrieved 16 full-text articles written in English, reporting the data of 15 case-control studies, involving 422.943 patients. Pooled analysis resulted in a significant crude odds ratio of 1.83 (95% CI: 1.43 to 2.35; P < 0.00001). The total set of data showed considerable heterogeneity (I-2 = 91%). Both the Egger's test and the Begg's test for funnel plot asymmetry did not reach statistical significance. The 'trim and fill' method applied to the funnel plot imputed 3 missing studies and the resulting adjusted estimate of the odds ratio was 2.12 (95% CI: 1.38 to 3.22). According to GRADE criteria, the overall quality of the meta-analysis data is low, mainly due to the presence of bias, confounders and extreme effect size outliers. Five among the included studies reported data assessed in 8015 African-American subjects. Pooled analysis resulted in a non-significant crude odds ratio of 1.59 (95% CI: 0.71 to 3.57; P = 0.26), and considerable heterogeneity (I-2 = 90%).Conclusions: Meta-analysis of 15 case-control studies shows that a history of clinical chronic prostatitis can significantly increase the odds for prostate cancer in the general population, whereas such association in African-American individuals remains uncertain
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
No full textWe 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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