1,720,971 research outputs found
Adsorptive cytapheresis in ulcerative colitis: A non-pharmacological therapeutic approach revisited
Full text linkAdsorptive cytapheresis proves effective in a proportion of patients affected by ulcerative colitis. Relatively high cost and the need for apheresis facilities, prevented the widespread use of this therapeutic approach. More so following the introduction of anti-TNF alpha biosimilars which proved both effective and inexpensive. Anti-TNF alpha agents, however, are burdened by high rate of primary and secondary non-response and prompt switching to new, high-cost biologics, and small molecules. The present review analyzes advantages and disadvantages of adsorptive cytapheresis in the present clinical scenario and suggests its repositioning in the therapeutic workup of selected subgroups of ulcerative colitis patients. The extremely favorable safety profile makes adsorptive cytapheresis a viable therapeutic option in elderly and high-risk UC patients, as well as potential second-line treatment in corticosteroid-dependent patients and poor responders to first-line biologics
Early hydrogen excretion peaks during breath tests. Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth or accelerated transit?
No full textLongterm outcome of acute severe ulcerative colitis in the rescue therapy era: a multicentre cohort study
No full textBackground: Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) has been reported with varying prevalence, de- pending upon the criteria used for diagnosis. Lactulose and glucose breath tests are the most used in clinical settings. Early rises of hydrogen excretion during a lactose breath test suggest SIBO, but the find- ing could result from accelerated mouth-to-caecum transit time. Aims: Defining the prevalence of early hydrogen peaks during lactose breath tests and assessing the proportion of patients affected by SIBO. Methods: An early ( ≤60 ) hydrogen excretion peak was observed in 120/663 patients with positive lac- tose hydrogen breath test. Eighty-one of them underwent a 50 g-9sample-glucose hydrogen breath test to diagnose SIBO. Results: The glucose breath test proved positive in 11/81 (13.6%) patients. The positivity rate was 18.2% (2/11) in those with the first peak detected at 30 and 12.8% (9/70) in those with the peak occurring at 60 . Conclusions: Early hydrogen excretion peaks are rarely associated with SIBO. The low positive predictive value indicates that the finding does not help identifying patients at high risk for this condition. Indi- rectly, the present data support the opinion that the prevalence of SIBO diagnosed by standard lactulose breath tests is much lower than reported, and the reliability of the test is low
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
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