1,721,039 research outputs found
LATE-ONSET ULCERATIVE COLITIS: THE IG-IBD 'AGED STUDY'
Full text linkBACKGROUND & AIMS: With increasing incidence, late-onset UC represents an important
issue for the near future, but its outcome and relative therapeutic strategies are yet poorly addressed.
This study has been undertaken to better define the natural history of late-onset ulcerative colitis.
METHODS: In a multicenter retrospective study, disease presentation and course in the first 3
years after diagnosis were investigated in 1,091 UC patients divided into three age groups
(diagnosis ≥65 years, 40-64 years, and <40 years). Disease patterns, medical and surgical therapy
and relative risk factors for outcomes were analyzed.
RESULTS: Chronic active or relapsing disease accounts for 44% of patients with late onset UC. In
all groups, these disease patterns require 3 to 7-fold more steroids than remitting disease, but
immunomodulators and, to a lesser extent, biologics are less frequently prescribed to the elderly.
Advanced age, concomitant diseases and related therapies were found to be inversely associated
with the use of immunomodulators or biologics, but not with surgery.
CONCLUSIONS: Disease onset followed by a mild course was more frequent in patients
diagnosed with UC ≥65 years, but a generalized assumption that late-onset UC follows a mild
course may apply only to a subset of patients. A sizeable number of elderly patients present with
more aggressive disease. Since steroid use and surgery rates did not differ in this subgroup, lower
use of immunosuppressive therapy and biologics may reflect concerns in prescribing such therapies
in the elderly
Enabling OLAP in Mobile Environments via Intelligent Data Cube Compression Techniques
No full textThe main drawbacks of handheld devices (small storage space, small size of the display screen, discontinuance of the connection to the WLAN etc) are often incompatible with the need of querying and browsing information extracted from enormous amounts of data which are accessible through the network. In this application scenario, data compression and summarization have a leading role: data in a lossy compressed format can be transmitted more efficiently than the original ones, and can be effectively stored in handheld devices (setting the compression ratio accordingly). In this paper, we introduce a very effective compression technique for multidimensional data cubes, and the system Hand-OLAP, which exploits this technique to allow handheld devices to extract and browse compressed two-dimensional OLAP views coming from multidimensional data cubes stored on a remote OLAP server localized on the wired network. Hand-OLAP effectively and efficiently enables OLAP in mobile environments, and also enlarges the potentialities of Decision Support Systems by taking advantage from the “naturally” decentralized nature of such environments. The idea which the system is based on is: rather than querying the original multidimensional data cubes, it may be more convenient to generate a compressed OLAP view of them, store such view into the handheld device, and query it locally (off-line), thus obtaining approximate answers that are suitable for OLAP applications
Protein-losing enteropathy in inflammatory bowel diseases
No full textProtein-loosing enteropathy in patients with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs) is an uncommon complication, but should be considered in any patient with hypoproteinemia in whom other causes have been excluded such as concomitant hepatic disease, severe malnutrition or proteinuria. The diagnosis is based on determination of fecal alpha-1 antitripsin clearance and stool analysis. Prognosis depends upon the patient and the disease location, severity and complication. Treatment is directed at control of the underlying IBDs but also includes albumin infusion in the most severe cases of hypoalbuminemia and fluid retention, dietary modifications for recovery and maintenance of nutritional status and supportive care to prevent further complication like deep venous thrombosis. Surgery is not curative in Crohn's disease patients, but in severe protein-loosing enteropathy with severe disease, not responding to conventional therapy, it may be the best choice
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
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