1,720,997 research outputs found
A Systematic Review of Sex-based Differences in Diarrheal Disease and Helminthic Infections
No full textBackground/Objective: Qualitative evidence suggests that inadequate water, sanitation, and hygiene (a risk factor for diarrheal and helminthic pathogens) affect women disproportionately. The main objective of our systematic review is to quantify the burden of helminthic and diarrheal pathogens between sexes. Methods: We systematically searched PubMed in June 2014 and searched the World Health Organization website. Articles dealing with the public health relevance of helminthic and diarrheal diseases, focusing on access to clean water and the primary caretakers role in access to clean water, and highlighting the role of gender in water, hygiene and sanitation were included. Findings: In studies of individuals aged 5 years and above, cholera showed significantly lower prevalence in males (OR 0.56; 95% CI (0.34, 0.94)), while S. mansoni, hookworm and all forms of infectious diarrhea showed a significantly higher prevalence in males (OR 1.50; 95% CI (1.22, 1.84), 1.66; 95% CI (1.19, 2.31), 1.26; 95% CI (1.09, 1.46) respectively). When studies included participants of all ages, only S. mansoni showed a significant association of prevalence with gender (OR 1.55; 95% CI (1.41, 1.70)). Odds ratios of prevalence for Ascaris and Trichiuris showed significant effect modification with the location of study (continent). Significance: Effect modification seen in the case of Ascaris and Trichiuris may be reflective of the difference in social norms and occupational cultures between continents and thereby suggests that policy level changes at the regional level may be effective in ameliorating gender related disparities in prevalence of helminths and infectious diarrheal diseases
A Systematic Review of Diarrheal Disease: Its Differential Burden between Genders and the Role of Women in the Abatement of This Epidemic?
No full textEven though research on diarrheal diseases has been done in the past, some aspects have remained unexplored. One of these aspects is the differential disease burden and vulnerability to disease between males and females in addition to the unique causal/behavioral pathways through which each gender can get infected. We try to shed light on these important issues by performing a systematic review of relevant articles chosen from the literature. We searched PubMed for peer-reviewed articles, and included grey literature from the World Health Organization, Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor and Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council. All articles that deal with the public health relevance of diarrheal diseases, focus on access to clean water and care taker role in access to clean water, role of gender in sanitation, Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) interventions, helminth infections, discrepancies in health care with regard to diarrheal diseases in rural and urban environments and differential gender burden with regard to infectious diarrheal diseases are included in this study. Articles which do not address diarrheal diseases, topics that are not relevant to diarrheal diseases, do not address the role of sanitation, access to clean water or WASH interventions in diarrheal diseases or helminth infections, articles that are not epidemiologically linked or articles that deal with rare pathogens or diseases, pathogens that are mainly prevalent in the immuno-compromised population, therapeutic regimens or diagnostic techniques, molecular genetics, drug resistance or seasonal variations were excluded from the study.
From our systematic review, we concluded that the burden of diarrheal disease falls more on females qualitatively than males. Women empowerment in making household and community level decisions with regard to sanitation may be of greater benefit to the well-being of society in developing countries. This will require strong government support and sustainable policies at the community and state levels.
Some limitations of our study are: The study participants in most of the studies belonged to either the adolescent or the preadolescent age group, which could have resulted in age bias. Secondly, because of the huge amount of articles that were retrieved, there is a small but very unlikely chance that any relevant articles might have been missed. Lastly, we provide qualitative evidence of differential burden of diarrheal disease between genders. A quantitative study will help consolidate our current findings
Application of the MC-simex procedure to log-logistic Accelerated failure time(AFT) models in survival analysis
No full textApplication of the Misclassification Simulation Extrapolation (Mc-Simex) Procedure to Log-Logistic Accelerated Failure Time (Aft) Models In Survival Analysis
Get PDFSurvival analysis is the study of time to event outcomes. Accelerated Failure Time models (AFT) serve as a useful tool in survival analysis to study the time of occurrence of an event and its relation to the covariates of interest. The accuracy of estimation of parameters in a model depends upon the correct measurement of covariates. Considering that perfect measurement of covariates is highly unlikely, it is imperative that the performance of the existing bias-correction methods be analyzed in AFT models. However, certain areas of bias-correction in AFT models still remain unexplored. One of these unexplored areas, is a situation where the survival times follow a log-logistic distribution. In this dissertation, we evaluate the performance of the Misclassification simulation extrapolation (MC-SIMEX) procedure, a well-known procedure for bias-correction due to misclassification, in AFT models where the survival times follow a standard log-logistic distribution. In addition, a modified version of the MC-SIMEX procedure is also proposed, that provides an advantage in situations where the sensitivity and specificity of classification are unknown. Lastly, the performance of the original MC-SIMEX procedure in lung cancer data provided by the North Central Cancer Treatment Group (NCCTG), is also evaluated
Simulation Extrapolation Method for Measurement Error: A Review
No full textMeasurement error is pervasive in statistics due to the non-availability of authentic data. The reasons for measurement error mainly relate to cost, convenience, and human error. Measurement error can result in non-negligible bias due to attenuated estimates, reduced power of statistical tests, and lower coverage probabilities of the coefficient estimators in a regression model. Several methods have been proposed to correct for measurement error, all of which can be grouped into two broad categories based on the underlying model—functional and structural. Functional models provide flexibility and robustness to estimators by placing minimal or no assumptions on the distribution of the mismeasured covariate or by treating them as a fixed entity, as opposed to a structural model which treats the underlying mismeasured covariates as random with a specified structure. The simulation extrapolation method is one method that is used for the partial correction of measurement error in both structural and functional models. Reviews of measurement error correction techniques are available in the literature. However, none of the previously conducted reviews has exclusively focused on simulation extrapolation and its application in continuous measurement error models, despite its widespread use and ease of application. We attempt to close this gap in the literature by highlighting its development over the past two and a half decades
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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