1,720,972 research outputs found
Pylera and sequential therapy for first-line Helicobacter pylori eradication: A culture-based study in real clinical practice
No full textBackground and aims Italian guideline suggests 10-day sequential or bismuth-based quadruple therapies for first-line Helicobacter pylori treatment. Comparison between these regimens is lacking. We assessed the efficacy of these therapies in clinical practice and evaluated the role of primary bacterial resistance toward clarithromycin and metronidazole. Patients and methods Consecutive patients with H. pylori infection were enrolled. Bacterial culture with antibiotics susceptibility testing was attempted in all cases. Patients received either a sequential therapy with esomeprazole 40 mg for 10 days plus amoxicillin 1000 mg for the first 5 days followed by clarithromycin 500 mg and tinidazole 500 mg (all twice daily) for the remaining 5 days, or bismuth-based therapy with esomeprazole 20 mg twice daily and Pylera 3 tablets four times daily for 10 days. H. pylori eradication was assessed by using13C-urea breath test. Results A total of 495 patients were enrolled. Following sequential (250 patients) and quadruple (245 patients) therapies, the eradication rate were 92 and 91%, respectively, at intention-to-treat analysis and 96 and 97%, respectively, at per protocol analysis. Overall, the pattern of bacterial resistance did not significantly affect the cure rate, but the presence of clarithromycin and metronidazole dual resistance tended to reduce the success rate of both sequential (84.8 vs. 90.1%; P =0.4) and quadruple (85 vs. 94.1%; P= 0.06) therapies. Adverse events occurred more frequently with the quadruple than with sequential therapy (56.9 vs. 25.8%; P <0.001). Conclusion In our country, sequential and bismuth-based quadruple therapy achieved similarly high eradication rates as firstline treatments for H. pylori infection in clinical practice
Trends in Primary Antibiotic Resistance in H. pylori Strains Isolated in Italy between 2009 and 2019
Full text linkBackground and aims: the increasing prevalence of strains resistant to antimicrobial agents is a critical issue for the management of Helicobacter pylori infection. This study aimed to evaluate, in Italian naïve patients, H. pylori antibiotic resistance trends and their potential predictive factors during the last decade. Methods: consecutive Italian naïve H. pylori positive patients, referred from General Practitioners to our Unit from January 2009 to January 2019 to perform an upper gastrointestinal endoscopy (UGIE), were considered. Each patient underwent 13C-urea breath test (13C-UBT) and UGIE with multiple biopsies to perform rapid urease test (RUT), culture/susceptibility test (vs. clarithromycin, metronidazole, levofloxacin), and histopathological examination. H. pylori status was assessed through CRM (composite reference method: at least two tests positive or only culture positive). Results: between 2009 and 2014, 1763 patients were diagnosed as H. pylori positive, 907 were naïve with antibiogram available. Between 2015 and 2019, 1415 patients were diagnosed as H. pylori positive, antibiotic susceptibility test was available in 739 naïve patients. H. pylori primary antibiotic resistance rates in the first and second five-year period were, respectively, clarithromycin 30.2% (95% CI 27.2–33.3), 37.8% (95% CI 34.2–41.4); metronidazole 33.3% (95% CI 30.2–36.5), 33.6% (95% CI 30.2–37.1); levofloxacin 25.6% (95% CI 22.8– 28.5), 33.8% (95% CI 37.4–47.4), double resistance clarithromycin-metronidazole 18.9% (95% CI 16.4– 21.6), 20.7% (95% CI 17.8–23.8). The increase of the resistance rates to clarithromycin and levofloxacin in naïve patients was statistically significant (p < 0.05). Although eradication rates for sequential therapy in the 10 years considered were 93.4% (95% CI 92–94.6) and 87.5% (95% CI 85.7– 89) at per-protocol (PP) and intention-to-treat (ITT) analysis, respectively, they showed a significant decrease in the second five-year period. Conclusions: this data highlights an increase in primary H. pylori antibiotic resistance and strongly suggests the importance of drug susceptibility testing also in naïve patient
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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