1,720,965 research outputs found
Levetiracetam in clinical practice: efficacy and tolerability in epilepsy.
Full text linkBACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to evaluate efficacy and tolerability of levetiracetam (LEV) in patients with different epilepsy syndromes.
METHODS: We evaluated epileptic patients seen in the previous 18 months, including all patients with present or past exposure to LEV. Tolerability of LEV therapy was evaluated in all patients; efficacy was evaluated only in patients who had received LEV for at least six months. Two hundred and two patients were included in the study. Patients were considered responsive when showing a > 50% reduction in seizures frequency and non-responders when seizure frequency was unchanged, worsened or showed a reduction < 50%.
RESULTS: Thirty patients did not complete six months of LEV treatment and dropped out. 57.4% of the patients with uncontrolled seizures treated for at least six months were responders, with 27.7% seizure free. Adverse effects were observed in 46 patients (23%) and were responsible for early drop out in 26. Adverse effects occurred significantly more often in females than in males (30.6% vs 13.2%); moreover, nearly 30% of women with adverse effects complained of more than one adverse effect, while this was never observed in male patients.
CONCLUSIONS: Our study shows LEV as a well tolerated and effective treatment, both in monotherapy and as an add-on. Further investigations on larges samples are needed to investigate the issue of gender-related tolerability
Levetiracetam in patients with epilepsy and chronic liver disease: observations in a case series.
No full textOBJECTIVES: To evaluate levetiracetam (LEV) tolerability in patients with epilepsy and liver disease.
METHODS: Fourteen patients with epilepsy and concomitant liver disease were treated with LEV in an open prospective investigation mimicking the daily clinical practice. All patients were stabilized (ie, for at least 1 year) on traditional antiepileptic drugs with complete or partial control of seizures. In the 6-month pre-LEV baseline period, seizure frequency ranged from 3 to 300. Levetiracetam was added on to the basal treatment at a starting daily dose of 250 mg, and the dose was adjusted according to the tolerability and the therapeutic response. Four patients discontinued the drug within the first 3 months because of intolerable side effects. The remaining 10 continued LEV treatment, and the present follow-up is 12 to 38 months.
RESULTS: In the last 6 months of observation, none of the patients showed worsening of liver function on the basis of blood chemistry, and in 4 patients, a complete normalization or a trend toward physiological values of transaminase and/or gamma-glutamyltransferase activity was observed. A greater than 50% reduction in seizure frequency occurred in all uncontrolled patients, 2 of whom achieved seizure freedom during LEV treatment.
CONCLUSIONS: Based on these observations, LEV seems to be an attractive therapeutic option in epileptic patients with chronic liver diseases
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
Neuroimaging follow-up in a case of Rasmussen's encephalitis with dyskinesias.
No full textWe describe a case of adult-onset biphasic Rasmussen's encephalitis who presented seizures and left dyskinesias at the onset and, after 1 year, language disorder. Serial MRI and [(18)F] FDG-PET scans were performed showing involvement of the right cerebral hemisphere in the first phase and of the contralateral one in the second
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