1,720,967 research outputs found
A coffee with your brandy, Sir?
No full textCoffee, cirrhosis and Transaminase enzymes, Klatsky AL, Morton C, Udaltsova N, Friedman GD. Background/Aims: A minority of persons at risk develop liver cirrhosis, but knowledge of risk modulators is sparse. Several reports suggest that coffee drinking is associated with lower cirrhosis risk. Methods: We studied 125,580 multiethnic members of a comprehensive prepaid health care plan without known liver disease who supplied baseline data at voluntary health examinations from 1978 to 1985. Subsequently, through 2001, 330 of them were diagnosed with liver cirrhosis. Review of medical records confirmed the diagnosis of cirrhosis and ascertained probable etiology. The association of coffee drinking with cirrhosis was estimated by Cox proportional hazards models with seven covariates. We also did a cross-sectional analysis of baseline aspartate aminotransferase and alanine aminotransferase levels, studied by logistic regression. Results: In the cohort study, relative risks of alcoholic cirrhosis (199 subjects) for coffee drinking (vs none) were less than 1 cup per day, 0.7 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.4-1.1); 1-3 cups, 0.6 (95% CI, 0.4-0.8; P < .001); and 4 or more cups, 0.2 (95% CI, 0.1-0.4; P < .001). For 131 subjects with nonalcoholic cirrhosis, relative risks were less than 1 cup, 1.2 (95% CI, 0.6-2.2); 1-3 cups, 1.3 (95% CI, 0.8-2.1); and 4 or more cups, 0.7 (95% CI, 0.4-1.3). These relative risks for coffee drinking were consistent in subsets. Tea drinking was unrelated to alcoholic or nonalcoholic cirrhosis. In the cross-sectional analyses, coffee drinking was related to lower prevalence of high aspartate aminotransferase and alanine aminotransferase levels; for example, the odds ratio of 4 or more cups per day (vs none) for a high aspartate aminotransferase level was 0.5 (95% CI, 0.4-0.6; P < .001) and for a high alanine aminotransferase level, 0.6 (95% CI, 0.6-0.7; P < .001), with stronger inverse relations in those who drink large quantities of alcohol. Conclusions: These data support the hypothesis that there is an ingredient in coffee that protects against cirrhosis, especially alcoholic cirrhosis. [Abstract reproduced by permission of Arch Intern Med 2006;166:1190-1195]. \ua9 2007 European Association for the Study of the Liver
Mechanisms of Innate Immunity in Sepsis
No full textThe pathogenesis of the sepsis syndrome is critically dependent upon activation of the innate immune response. Innate immunity plays a direct role in the development of sepsis and is also crucial for the activation and modulation of later antigen-specific adaptive immune responses. Nearly all the clinical manifestations of sepsis and the systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) can be attributed to components of the innate immune response. However, this review will focus on the new and expanding field of innate immune activation by pathogen-responsive receptors, most importantly the toll-like receptors (TLRs)
Getting it right: improving end of life care for people living with liver disease
Get PDFLiver disease is a significant public health issue, and in 2010 it represented the fifth biggest cause of death after cancer, circulatory disease, respiratory disease and dementiaOf particular concern is that whilst the mortality for cancer, circulatory and respiratory disease is falling, deaths due to liver disease are relentlessly rising. It is therefore a significant issue for health care providers across all settings and also for commissioners of health care. The fluctuating course of liver disease makes identification and management of the end of life period challenging. Patients may benefit from both active medical management and palliative and supportive care. Integration of these processes allows active treatment of medical crises whilst preparing the patients, those close to them and the clinical team for the possibility of death. This will require a change in culture amongst some healthcare professionals and the ability to share acknowledgement that recovery is uncertain. The Department of Health’s End of Life Care Strategy described an end of life care pathway in six steps, to help provide excellent end of life care. This includes: 1. Discussions as end of life approaches – some prognostic indicators or clinical triggers for liver disease have been identified. 2. Assessment, care planning and review – there is a need to identify healthcare professionals who, with appropriate training, could discuss prognosis and future care preferences with patients who have advanced liver disease. 3. Co-ordination of care – an identified healthcare professional needs to coordinate care to minimise duplication and ensure information is shared promptly between healthcare providers. 4. High quality care in different settings – each patient will need identified contacts for palliative care advice and liver advice both in and out of hours. 5. Care in the last days of life – patients with advanced liver disease can have complex medical needs and may require frequent medical attention as death approaches, highlighting the need for care planning and review of preferred place of death as illness progresses. 6. Care after death – bereaved relatives of liver disease patients can have complex psycho-social needs both before and after the patient’s death needing support. The pathway also includes carer support, social care, spiritual care and access to end of life information as overarching considerations. This document takes the end of life care pathway as described in the End of Life Care Strategy and considers how it can be applied for patients with advanced liver disease
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe 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
Get PDF“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
Get PDFWe 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
Get PDFWe 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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