105,303 research outputs found
Letter by Lippi and Cervellin Regarding Article, "High-sensitivity Cardiac Troponin in the Distinction of Acute Myocardial Infarction From Acute Cardiac Noncoronary Artery Disease".
No full textHigh-sensitivity Cardiac Troponin in the Distinction of Acute Myocardial Infarction From Acute Cardiac Noncoronary Artery Disease
Letter by Lippi and Cervellin regarding article, "High-sensitivity troponin T concentrations in acute chest pain patients evaluated with cardiac computed tomography".
No full textHigh-sensitivity troponin T concentrations in acute chest pain patients evaluated with cardiac computed tomography
A dynamic factor analysis of the response of U. S. interest rates to news
No full textThis paper uses a dynamic factor model recently studied by Forni, Hallin, Lippi and Reichlin (2000) and Forni, Giannone, Lippi and Reichlin (2004) to analyze the response of 21 U.S. interest rates to news. Using daily data, we find that the news that affects interest rates daily can be summarized by two common factors. This finding is robust to both the sample period and time aggregation. Each rate has an important idiosyncratic component; however, the relative importance of the idiosyncratic component declines as the frequency of the observations is reduced, and nearly vanishes when rates are observed at the monthly frequency. Using an identification scheme that allows for the fact that when policy actions are unknown to the market the funds rate should respond first to policy actions, we are unable to identify a unique effect of monetary policy in the funds rate at the daily frequency.Interest rates
Preanalytical variability: the dark side of the moon in blood doping screening.
No full textPreanalytical variability: the dark side of the moon in blood doping screening
Predictable impact of the routine implementation of the CKD-EPI equation for estimating the glomerular filtration rate by a simulation study
No full textBackground: Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a major public health problem worldwide. According to available guidelines, the estimated glomerular filtration rate (GFR) should be reported by hospital and commercial laboratories preferentially using the Modification of Diet in Renal Disease (MDRD) study equation. Although the clinical performance of the newer Chronic Kidney Disease Epidemiology Collaboration (CKD-EPI) equation has been assessed against directly measured GFR, the correlation between this new equation and the MDRD equation and the Cockcroft-Gault (C-G) equation, which is largely used for estimating GFR by general practitioners and hospital physicians, has not been fully evaluated.
Methods:We automatically generated 14 classes of serum creatinine values (from 0.7 to 2.0 mg/dl in increments of 0.1 mg/dl) each containing 68 classes of age (from 18 to 85 years in increments of 1 year) and 46 classes of body weight (from 40 to kg in increments of 1 kg), for both genders. In each case, GFR was estimated with the C-G, MDRD and CKD-EPI equations.
Results: The data generation procedure resulted in 87,584 different virtual cases representing Caucasians. The median estimated GFR values generated with each of the three equations were 56.4, 56.8 and 60.7 ml/min/1.73 m2 for the C-G, MDRD and CKD-EPI equations, respectively, in men (all p<0.001), and 47.9, 42.2 and 45.8 ml/min/1.73 m2 for the C-G, MDRD and CKD-EPI equations, respectively, in women (all p<0.001). The overall correlation between the CKD-EPI and C-G equations was marginally better than that between the MDRD and C-G equations (i.e. 0.844 versus 0.811 in men and 0.842 versus 0.811 in women), and the overall diagnostic performance (AUC 0.91 versus 0.89 in men and 0.93 versus 0.91 in women; both p<0.001) were also in favour of the CKD-EPI. The good agreement with the data obtained with the previous MDRD equation (i.e. kappa 0.89 in men and 0.86 in women) also confirms that replacing one equation with another would not generate a substantial change in laboratory-related risk assessment or patient classification according to the GFR values.
Conclusions: With careful consideration of the inherent drawbacks of serum creatinine for assessing GFR, but due to a good correlation with the reference method and a better correlation with the C-G equation than with the former MDRD equation, we suggest that the novel CKD-EPI equation might be appropriate to use in laboratory reports for reporting the estimated GFR
Qui gouverne les services publics locaux ?. Des configurations variables entre secteurs public et privé dans le cas du service public de l'eau en Italie
No full textCet article a pour objet un cas de reconfiguration de la gouvernance entre secteur public et secteur privé dans le cas des services publics locaux en Italie, ici retenus comme unité d'analyse, et, en particulier, le cas du service d'adduction, de fourniture, de distribution et de dépuration de l'eau à usage civil. Il s'agit d'une étude de cas d'un très grand intérêt car elle embrasse un arc temporel relativement long, de 1994 à nos jours, et concerne un pays entier confronté à un nouveau modèle de gestion industrielle fondé sur la séparation des rôles de programmation d'un côté et de contrôle et de gestion de l'autre. En partant des éléments empiriques recueillis lors d'une recherche sur la mise en œuvre de la réforme au niveau national et d'un cas régional spécifique pertinent, cette étude soumet à l'attention du lecteur une interrogation bien connue des politologues, déjà soulevée par Robert Dahl en 1961 et qui se représente aujourd'hui dans des contextes différents et novateurs : qui gouverne ?Citroni Giulio, Giannelli Nicola, Lippi Andréa, Profeti Stefania. Qui gouverne les services publics locaux ?. Des configurations variables entre secteurs public et privé dans le cas du service public de l'eau en Italie. In: Politiques et management public, vol. 25, n° 3, 2007. Public : nouvelles figures ? Nouvelles frontières ? Actes du seizième Colloque international Florence, 15 et 16 mars 2007 organisé en collaboration avec l'Université Paris X (Laboratoires CEROS et CRDP) - Tome 1. pp. 151-167
Doping and thrombosis in sports
No full textHistorically, humans have long sought to enhance their "athletic" performance to increase body weight, aggressiveness, mental concentration and physical strength, contextually reducing fatigue, pain, and improving recovery. Although regular training is the mainstay for achieving these targets, the ancillary use of ergogenic aids has become commonplace in all sports. The demarcation between ergogenic aids and doping substances or practices is continuously challenging and mostly based on perceptions regarding the corruption of the fairness of competition and the potential side effects or adverse events arising from the use of otherwise unnecessary ergogenic substances. A kaleidoscope of side effects has been associated with the use of doping agents, including behavioral, skeletal, endocrinologic, metabolic, hemodynamic, and cardiovascular imbalances. Among the various doping substances, the most striking association with thrombotic complications has been reported for androgenic anabolic steroids (i.e., cardiomyopathy, fatal and nonfatal arrhythmias, myocardial infarction [MI], intracardiac thrombosis, stroke, venous thromboembolism [VTE], limb arterial thrombosis, branch retinal vein occlusion, cerebral venous sinus thrombosis) and blood boosting (i.e., VTE and MI, especially for epoetin and analogs). The potential thrombotic complication arising from misuse of other doping agents such as the administration of cortisol, growth hormone, prolactin, cocaine, and platelet-derived preparations is instead speculative or anecdotal at best. The present article provides an overview on the epidemiological association as well as the underlying biochemical and biological mechanisms linking the practice of doping in sports with the development of thrombosis
Exercise-related increase of cardiac troponin release in sports: An apparent paradox finally elucidated?
No full textExercise-related increase of cardiac troponin release in sports: An apparent paradox finally elucidated
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