1,720,963 research outputs found
Salivary Gland Disease in IgG4-Related Disease is Associated with Allergic Conditions
No full textBackground/Purpose: The etiology of IgG4-related disease (IgG4-RD) remains unknown. The role of T-helper type 2 (Th2) cells in the pathogenesis of IgG4-RD is controversial. Given Th2 cells’ involvement in allergic responses and prior IgG4-RD studies suggesting their importance in the pathogenesis, it has been hypothesized that allergic mechanisms contribute to the development of IgG4-RD. We investigated the association between allergies and IgG4-RD.
Methods: The Center for IgG4-RD at Massachusetts General Hospital maintains a database of all IgG4-RD patients, including details of demographics and disease history. Allergy histories were obtained from patients via a 34-question allergist-developed survey administered at their baseline visit. Patients were considered to have a history of allergies if they reported prior symptoms or diagnosis. We included all patients who completed the allergy survey; for certain analyses, some patients were excluded because of missing data. Statistical significance was determined by Fisher’s exact test or unpaired t-test, as appropriate. P values < 0.05 were considered significant.
Results: Our study included 185 IgG4-RD patients from a database of 289 patients. Of the 185 patients, 140 (76%) reported any allergic symptom or diagnosis (Table 1). There was no significant difference with regard to age (P=0.1) or sex distribution (P=0.7) between patients with and without allergy symptoms. Respiratory allergies appear more prevalent in this cohort than the general US population: 61% of cohort patients reported a history of respiratory allergies, compared to 30% of Americans who completed a similar survey (Allergy Asthma Proc 2008; 29:600). Skin allergies (41%), food allergies (20%), and anaphylaxis (8%) were less common than respiratory allergies in IgG4-RD. Patients with allergies tended to have any ear, nose, and throat (ENT) manifestations of IgG4-RD more often than those who did not have allergies (55% vs 36%, P=0.058). This trend was largely driven by a significant difference in the proportion of patients with salivary gland IgG4-RD (e.g., sialoadenitis) among those with allergies compared with those without a history of allergies (41% vs 22%, P=0.03). We found a similar difference when comparing salivary gland involvement between those with and without respiratory allergies (72% vs 28%, P=0.039).
Conclusion: In a large IgG4-RD cohort, we found a significant association between IgG4-related salivary gland disease and allergic histories. More generally, we found a trend towards an association between ENT involvement and allergic histories. Of the reported allergies, respiratory allergies were most common. While it is possible that shared pathogenesis is responsible for these observations, a shared upper respiratory exposure may also explain our observations given the associations between head and neck disease with allergic histories
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
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Getting with the program in type 1 diabetes mellitus
No full textTranscriptomic studies reveal defective costimulation via PD-L1 to explain the autoreactive phenotype seen in type 1 diabetes mellitus.</jats:p
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