1,720,955 research outputs found
Forecasting model for drug utilization and expenditure in support of clinical governance in the Veneto Region. The example of drugs for chronic lymphocytic leukemia
No full textBACKGROUND - New onco-hematology drugs exert a high pressure on the Regional Health System, due to high costs and the possibility to offer additional drug lines to patients. Acalabrutinib and venetoclax+obinutuzumab are the most recent new therapies for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). Definition of place in therapy of such drugs and assessment of their impact on pharmaceutical expenditure is necessary to plan resource allocation.
METHODS - HTA Unit of Azienda Zero supported the Working Group on onco-hematology drugs in critically evaluating new therapies and defining place in therapy in accordance with reimbursement criteria, if already available. A forecasting model was developed assuming that each new drug will be used according to place in therapy criteria.
RESULTS. Acalabrutinib is a Bruton Tyrosine Kinase inhibitor (BTKi), as well as ibrutinib, and is reimbursed as monotherapy in first line and relapsed-refractory setting. Venetoclax+obinutuzumab is a new first line therapy (reimbursed criteria not yet available at the time of the analysis). Incremental impact of new therapies was estimated for three years, as follow: (i) first year: low impact (below €1 million), due to acalabrutinib market entry, which, at the time of the analysis, had the
same cost as ibrutinib, with a broader reimbursed indication (all ages for acalabrutinib vs reimbursement age restrictions for ibrutinib); (ii) second year: about €1,6 million, due to venetoclax+obinutuzumab market entry and to acalabrutinib (new patients and patients continuing therapy from previous year); (iii) third year: impact below €1 million, due to competition between BTKi and venetoclax+obinutuzumab; the latter is a fixed-duration therapy lasting for a maximum of one year, differently from BTKi, that are chronic therapies given for years until disease progression. The usage of venetoclax+obinutuzumab will decrease the number of patients treated for more than one year.
CONCLUSIONS - Place in therapy definition optimizes drug utilization, permits to define target population of new therapies, taking into account their competitors already on the market, and leads to pharmaceutical expenditure forecast supporting resource allocation. Forecasting models need to be updated over the time with new reimbursed drugs and/or new reimbursement criteria of therapies already on the market. Prescrition and expenditure monitoring will permit to verify forecast accuracy. Audit could be organized if anomalies will be detected
Magnolol and Luteolin Inhibition of α-Glucosidase Activity: Kinetics and Type of Interaction Detected by In Vitro and In Silico Studies
Full text linkMagnolol and luteolin are two natural compounds recognized in several medicinal plants widely used in traditional medicine, including type 2 diabetes mellitus. This research aimed to determine the inhibitory activity of magnolol and luteolin on α-glucosidase activity. Their biological profile was studied by multispectroscopic methods along with inhibitory kinetic analysis and computational experiments. Magnolol and luteolin decreased the enzymatic activity in a concentration-dependent manner. With 0.075 μM α-glucosidase, the IC50 values were similar for both compounds (~ 32 μM) and significantly lower than for acarbose (815 μM). Magnolol showed a mixed-type antagonism, while luteolin showed a non-competitive inhibition mechanism. Thermodynamic parameters suggested that the binding of magnolol was predominantly sustained by hydrophobic interactions, while luteolin mainly exploited van der Waals contacts and hydrogen bonds. Synchronous fluorescence revealed that magnolol interacted with the target, influencing the microenvironment around tyrosine residues, and circular dichroism explained a rearrangement of the secondary structure of α-glucosidase from the initial α-helix to the final conformation enriched with β-sheet and random coil. Docking studies provided support for the experimental results. Altogether, the data propose magnolol, for the first time, as a potential α-glucosidase inhibitor and add further evidence to the inhibitory role of luteolin
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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