1,721,034 research outputs found
Autoimmunity in intervertebral disc herniation: from bench to bedside
No full textntroduction: The cause of low back pain and the pathophysiology of lumbar pain and sciatica have recently been reconsidered basing on current knowledge on cellular and molecular mediators of inflammation. Several cytokines have been considered as potential therapeutic targets to contrast sciatica in patients with disc herniation, and supportive studies suggest a leading role of TNF-α in this contest: therefore, clinical trials have tested TNF-α inhibitors in the clinical setting of the patient with radicular pain secondary to an herniated disc.
Areas covered: The current review deals with the autoimmune theory of disc herniation and its role in determining radiculopathy and neuropathic pain. It also reports the recent evidences that led to the introduction of anti-TNF-α drugs into the clinical setting as a biological therapy for radiculopathy and disc herniation.
Expert opinion: Targeting the TNF-α pathway has demonstrated controversial effects in the tested study population and available results only report a short-term follow-up. More confirmatory studies in terms of long-term clinical results, complications, more effective route of administration and cost-effective analysis are required to establish the real role of this biological therapy in the treatment of patients with disc herniation and neuropathy
Quadriceps muscle strength in Duchenne muscular dystrophy and effect of corticosteroid treatment
Full text linkObjectives. In Duchenne muscular dystrophy, quadriceps weakness is recognized
as a key factor in gait deterioration. The objective of this work was three-fold:
first, to document the strength of the quadriceps in corticosteroid-naïve DMD
boys; second, to measure the effect of corticosteroids on quadriceps strength; and
third, to evaluate the correlation between baseline quadriceps strength and the age
when starting corticosteroids with the loss of ambulation.
Methods. Quadriceps muscle strength using hand-held dynamometry was measured
in 12 ambulant DMD boys who had never taken corticosteroids and during
corticosteroid treatment until the loss of ambulation.
Results. Baseline quadriceps muscle strength at 6 years of age was 28% that of
normal children of the same age; it decreased to 15% at 8 years and to 6% at 10
years. The increase in quadriceps muscle strength obtained after 1 year of corticosteroid
treatment had a strong direct correlation with the baseline strength
(R = 0.96). With corticosteroid treatment, the age of ambulation loss showed a very
strong direct relationship (R = 0.92) with baseline quadriceps muscle strength but
only a very weak inverse relationship (R = -0.73) with the age of starting treatment.
Age of loss of ambulation was 10.3 ± 0.5 vs 19.1 ± 4.7 (P < 0.05) in children with
baseline quadriceps muscle strength less than or greater than 40 N, respectively.
Conclusions. Corticosteroid-naïve DMD boys have a quantifiable severe progressive
quadriceps weakness. This long-term study, for the first time, shows that
both of the positive effects obtained with CS treatment, i.e. increasing quadriceps
strength and delaying the loss of ambulation, have a strong and direct correlation
with baseline quadriceps muscle strength. As such, hand-held dynamometry may
be a useful tool in the routine physical examination and during clinical trial assessment
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
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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