1,721,084 research outputs found
Lupus, vaccinations and COVID-19: what we know now
No full textSevere acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus causing Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), has had a huge impact on health services, with a high mortality associated with complications including pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome. Patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) are at increased risk of viral infections, and recent data suggests they may be at an increased risk of poor outcomes with COVID-19. This may be particularly true for those on rituximab or high dose steroids. A huge international effort from the scientific community has so far resulted in the temporary authorisation of three vaccines which offer protection against SARS-CoV-2, with over 30 other vaccines being evaluated in ongoing trials. Although there has historically been concern that vaccines may trigger disease flares of SLE, there is little convincing evidence to show this. In general lupus patients appear to gain good protection from vaccination, although there may be reduced efficacy in those with high disease activity or those on immunosuppressive therapies, such as rituximab or high dose steroids. Recent concerns have been raised regarding rare clotting events with the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine and it is currently unknown whether this risk is higher for those patients with secondary antiphospholipid syndrome. With the possibility of annual COVID vaccination programmes in the future, prospective data collection and registries looking at the effect of vaccination on SLE disease control, the incidence of COVID-19 in SLE patients and severity of COVID-19 disease course would all be useful. As mass vaccination programmes begin to roll out across the world, we assess the evidence of the use of vaccines in SLE patients and in particular vaccines targeting SARS-CoV-2.</p
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
P117 Machine-learning derived characteristics associated with tapering TNF inhibitors in individuals with rheumatoid arthritis
No full textBackground/AimsTapering of TNF inhibitor (TNFi) drugs may be considered in some patients to reduce risks and costs. Selecting appropriate patients is not always straightforward and may be influenced by age, sex, comorbidity and disease activity state. We sought to identify predictors for dose tapering in a real-world clinical setting. Algorithmic extraction, selection and analysis of relevant patient sub-cohorts could enable identification of relevant predictors associated with TNFi dose tapering.MethodsOur institution has a Rheumatology Biologics database running prospectively for over 15 years. Our approach for patients with RA receiving TNFi has been to dose-taper by one third and then 50% if remission achieved (defined as DAS28<2.6 on two occasions more than 6 months apart with no corticosteroid use). Prescribing, disease activity scores and demographics were extracted using SQL along with comorbidity coding, pathology results and anthropometric data. Data were anonymised and analysed in Python 3.8 within our institutions’ Trusted Research Environment (TRE). Pandas, NumPy and StatsModels python packages were used for the analysis in Jupyter notebooks. 49 covariates were considered clinically relevant and included in the regression analysis. Recursive feature elimination (RFE) was performed using logistic regression (LR) with threshold p-value of 0.05. The primary outcome was tapering of TNFi, algorithmically identified by a temporal increase in dosing interval or decrease in dosage. To avoid multiple-drug confounding, only the most recent TNFi data was included for each patient.Results663 patients with RA were initiated on TNFi between 5th November 2001 and March 2nd 2020. 491 (74.1%) were female with a mean age of 65.5 (SD ± 14.2) years. 261 (39.4%) received adalimumab, 209 (31.5%) etanercept, 74 (11.2%) infliximab, 82 (12.4%) certolizumab and 37 (5.6%) golimumab. Concurrent methotrexate (MTX) was seen in 34.5% (n = 22), either oral or subcutaneous. There was no change in the likelihood of tapering associated with depression, hypothyroidism, obesity, smoking or seropositivity for RF or anti-CCP. Those taking MTX were more likely to taper their biologics (OR 3.33, 95%CI 1.83-6.09, p = <.000), as were patients who were coded as having type 1 or 2 diabetes (7.4% n = 49, OR 3.23, 95%CI 1.32-8.25, p = 0.011), Higher DAS28 CRP score (OR 0.548, 95%CI 0.38-0.78, p = 0.001), and DAS 28 ESR score (OR 0.71, 95%CI 0.53-0.95, p = 0.021) significantly decreased chance of tapering.ConclusionConcurrent methotrexate use increases likelihood of subsequent tapering in patients with RA receiving TNFi. Unexpectedly, patients with diabetes were also more likely to taper, however due to low numbers of patients in this group and the width of confidence intervals this should be interpreted cautiously. As expected, patients with high disease activity scores were less likely to taper. This algorithm driven approach produced results largely in keeping with clinical intuition, however these methods may aid in future selection of tapering cohorts.</p
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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