1,720,970 research outputs found
Cytotoxic enhancement of hexapeptide-conjugated micelles in EGFR high-expressed cancer cells
No full textObjectives: The aim of this study was to develop the hexapeptide-conjugated active targeting micelles for delivery of doxorubicin (DOX) and paclitaxel (PTX) to EGFR high-expressed cancer cells. ;Methods: A hexapeptide, which mimicked the EGFR, was applied as a targeting ligand. The active targeting micelles were prepared using the synthesized poly(D, L-lactide-co-glycolide)-PEG copolymer conjugated with the hexapeptide. The micelles were used for encapsulating DOX and/or PTX, and the cellular uptake, in vitro drug release and cellular viability of drug-loaded peptide-conjugated and peptide-free micelles were investigated. ;Results: The particle size of drug-loaded peptide-conjugated and peptide-free micelles was < 150 nm with narrow size distribution. The uptake of peptide-conjugated micelles was more efficient in EGFR high-expressed MDA-MB-468 and SKOV3 cells than in EGFR low-expressed HepG2 cells. The in vitro release of DOX and PTX was faster in pH 4.0 (500 U lipase) than in pH 7.4 release medium. The cytotoxicity in terms of IC50 of DOX/PTX-loaded peptide-conjugated micelles was 4.8-folds lower than that of peptide-free micelles and 18.2-folds lower than DOX/PTX drug solution in SOKV3 cells. ;Conclusion: The peptide-conjugated micelles acted as a nanocarrier to increase intracellular accumulation of anticancer drugs in EGFR high-expressed SKOV3 cancer cells to enhance cell cytotoxicity
Weekly and Holiday-Related Patterns of Panic Attacks in Panic Disorder: A Population-Based Study
No full textBackground: While chronobiological studies have reported seasonal variation in panic attacks (PA) episodes, information on the timing of PA by week-days may enable better understanding of the triggers of PA episodes and thereby provide pointers for suitable interventional approaches to minimize PA attacks. This study investigated weekly variation in potential PA admissions including associations with holidays using a population-based longitudinal, administrative claims-based dataset in an Asian population. ;Methods:This study used ambulatory care data from the "Longitudinal Health Insurance Database 2000. We identified 993 patients with panic disorder (PD), and they had 4228 emergency room (ER) admissions for potential PA in a 3-year period between 1 January 2009 and 31 December 2011. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to examine associations between the potential PA admissions and holidays/weekend days/work-days of the week ;Results: The daily mean number of potential PA admissions was 3.96 (standard deviation 2.05). One-way ANOVA showed significant differences in potential PA admissions by holiday and day of the week (p<0.001). Daily frequencies showed a trough on Wednesday-Thursday, followed by a sharp increase on Saturday and a peak on Sunday. Potential PA admissions were higher than the daily mean for the sample patients by 29.4% and 22.1%, respectively on Sundays and holidays. Furthermore, the weekly variations were similar for females and males, although females always had higher potential PA admissions on both weekdays and holidays than the males. ;Conclusions: We found that potential PA admissions among persons with PD varied systematically by day of the week, with a significant peak on weekends and holidays
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
A Population-Based Study on the Association between Benign Prostatic Enlargement and Rheumatoid Arthritis
No full textBenign prostatic hyperplasia is one of the chronic inflammatory conditions in ageing male populations. Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a major autoimmune disease and is also regarded as a chronic inflammatory disorder. Although RA and benign prostatic enlargement (BPE) may share the same underlying etiologies, almost no study has ever attempted to explore the relationship between RA and BPE. The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between RA and BPE using a population-based dataset. This case-control study used data retrieved from the Taiwan Longitudinal Health Insurance Database 2005. This study comprised 18,716 patients with BPE and 18,716 age-matched patients without BPE. Conditional logistic regression analyses were performed to calculate the odds ratio (OR) for having been previously diagnosed with RA between patients with BPE and comparison patients. In total, 485 of the 37,432 sampled patients (1.3%) had received a prior RA diagnosis. There was a significant difference in the prevalence of prior RA between cases and controls (1.6% vs. 1.0%, p<0.001). After adjusting for patient's urbanization level, monthly income, geographic region, and obesity, the adjusted OR was 1.54 (95% CI = 1.28 similar to 1.85) for patients with BPE compared to comparison patients. In addition, the sensitivity analysis showed that BPE was consistently and significantly associated with a prior RA diagnosis even after excluding subjects diagnosed with RA within 1, 2, or 3 years prior to the index date (the adjusted ORs were 1.46, 1.50, and 1.42, respectively). We concluded that there was a significant association between prior RA and BPE. Further large-scale longitudinal studies are suggested to clarify the causal relationship between RA and BPE
Association between Testicular Cancer and Epididymoorchitis: A Population-Based Case-Control Study
No full textEven though epididymoorchitis and testicular cancer (TC) may have similar pathophysiological pathways, no prior study has attempted to determine the association between these two diseases. This case-control study investigated the relationship between TC and prior epididymoorchitis by using a large population-based database. We used the Taiwan Longitudinal Health Insurance Database 2005 to select 372 patients who had received a diagnosis of TC and 3,720 age-matched controls without TC. We found that of the total sample of 4,092 patients, 53 (1.3%) had received a diagnosis of epididymoorchitis prior to the index date. Patients with TC had a higher prevalence of prior epididymoorchitis than that of patients without TC (11.0% vs. 0.3%, p < 0.001). Conditional logistic regression showed that prior epididymoorchitis was significantly associated with TC (crude OR = 38.24, 95% CI = 19.91-73.46). The association remained statistically significant even after adjustment for the other variables (OR = 47.17, 95% CI = 23.83-93.40). This study showed that patients with TC have higher odds of prior epididymoorchitis than do those without TC even after adjustment for potential confounders
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
Poor Clinical Outcomes among Pneumonia Patients with Depressive Disorder
No full textBackground: Some studies suggested that psychological stress may be associated with the severity and duration of infectious diseases. In this population-based study, we investigated associations between depressive disorder (DD) and pneumonia outcomes in Taiwan with a large-scale database from the National Health Insurance. ;Methods: Our study defined 112,198 patients who were hospitalized with a principal diagnosis of pneumonia. We defined their admission date for treatment of pneumonia as the index date. Subsequently, we selected 2,394 patients with DD within 3 years prior to their index date and 11,970 matched patients without DD. We carried out separate conditional logistic regressions to explore the association of clinical pneumonia treatment outcome (ICU admission, use of mechanical ventilation, acute respiratory failure and in-hospital death) with previously diagnosed DD. ;Results: Patients with DD had a significantly higher probability of an intensive care unit admission (18.1% vs. 12.9%; p< 0.001), need for mechanical ventilation (21.9% vs. 18.1%; p< 0.001) and in-hospital death (10.4% vs. 9.0%; p=0.025) than patients without DD. The study showed that pneumonia patients with DD were respectively 1.41- (95% CI: 1.25 similar to 1.59, p< 0.001), 1.28- (95% CI: 1.14 similar to 1.43, p< 0.001), and 1.17- times (95% CI: 1.01 similar to 1.36, p=0.039) greater odds of being admitted to the ICU, need for mechanical ventilation, and in-hospital death than patients without DD after adjusting for monthly income, urbanization level, geographic region and Charlson Comorbidity Index score. ;Conclusions: In conclusion, we found that pneumonia patients with DD were associated with poor treatment outcomes compared to patients without DD
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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