American journal of respiratory and critical care medicine
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Am. J. Respir. Crit. Care Med. · Dec 2013
Intracerebral Hemorrhage and Delirium Symptoms: Length of Stay, Function and Quality of Life in a 114-patient Cohort.
The prognostic significance of delirium symptoms in intensive care unit (ICU) patients with focal neurologic injury is unclear. ⋯ After focal neurologic injury, delirium symptoms were common despite low rates of infection and sedation exposure, and were predictive of subsequent worse functional outcomes and lower QOL.
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Am. J. Respir. Crit. Care Med. · Dec 2013
HRV-C Infection in Young Children with Acute Wheeze is Associated with Increased Acute Respiratory Hospital Admissions.
Human rhinovirus species C (HRV-C) is the most common cause of acute wheezing exacerbations in young children presenting to hospital, but its impact on subsequent respiratory illnesses has not been defined. ⋯ HRV-C-related wheezing illnesses were associated with an increased risk of prior and subsequent hospital respiratory admissions. These associations are consistent with HRV-C causing recurrent severe wheezing illnesses in children who are more susceptible to ARIs.
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Am. J. Respir. Crit. Care Med. · Dec 2013
Challenges in Identifying Asthma Subgroups Using Unsupervised Statistical Learning Techniques.
Unsupervised statistical learning techniques, such as exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and hierarchical clustering (HC), have been used to identify asthma phenotypes, with partly consistent results. Some of the inconsistency is caused by the variable selection and demographic and clinical differences among study populations. ⋯ The use of different unsupervised statistical learning methods and different variable sets and encodings can lead to multiple and inconsistent subgroupings of asthma, not necessarily correlated with severity. The search for asthma phenotypes needs more careful selection of markers, consistent across different study populations, and more cautious interpretation of results from unsupervised learning.
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Recently there was yet another clinical trial using antioxidants that failed in patients with critical illness. In this perspective, we suggest that antioxidants likely interfere with the normal immune response, thus contributing to the lack of efficacy in patients with critical illness.
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Locomotor muscle atrophy develops in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) partly because of increased protein degradation by the ubiquitin-proteasome system. It is not known if autophagy also contributes to protein degradation. ⋯ Autophagy is significantly enhanced in locomotor muscles of stable patients with COPD. The degree of autophagy correlates with severity of muscle atrophy and lung function impairment.