Plos One
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Main contributors to adverse outcomes in severely burned pediatric patients are profound and complex metabolic changes in response to the initial injury. It is currently unknown how long these conditions persist beyond the acute phase post-injury. The aim of the present study was to examine the persistence of abnormalities of various clinical parameters commonly utilized to assess the degree hypermetabolic and inflammatory alterations in severely burned children for up to three years post-burn to identify patient specific therapeutic needs and interventions. ⋯ Severe burn injury leads to a much more profound and prolonged hypermetabolic and hyperinflammatory response than previously shown. Given the tremendous adverse events associated with the hypermetabolic and hyperinflamamtory responses, we now identified treatment needs for severely burned patients for a much more prolonged time.
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Recent studies have shown that apoptosis plays a critical role in the pathogenesis of sepsis. High plasma cell free DNA (cf-DNA) concentrations have been shown to be associated with sepsis outcome. The origin of cf-DNA is unclear. ⋯ Plasma cf-DNA concentration proved to be a specific independent prognostic biomarker in bacteremia. cf-DNA displayed a predominating low-molecular-weight cf-DNA band in nonsurvivors corresponding to the size of apoptotic nucleosomal DNA.
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Comparative Study
The tuberculin skin test versus QuantiFERON TB Gold® in predicting tuberculosis disease in an adolescent cohort study in South Africa.
This study was conducted in a high tuberculosis (TB) burden area in Worcester, South Africa, with a notified all TB incidence rate of 1,400/100,000. ⋯ Positive TST and QFT tests were moderately sensitive predictors of progression to microbiologically confirmed TB disease. There was no significant difference in the predictive ability of these tests for TB disease amongst adolescents in this high burden setting. Therefore, these findings do not support use of QFT in preference to TST to predict the risk of TB disease in this study population.
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As a population, non-medical prescription opioid users are not well-defined. We aimed to derive and describe typologies of prescription opioid use and nonmedical use using latent class analysis in an adult population being assessed for substance abuse treatment. ⋯ Multiple and distinct profiles of prescription opioid use were detected, suggesting a range of use typologies at differing risk for adverse events. Results may help clinicians and policy makers better focus overdose and blood-borne infection prevention efforts and intervention strategies for prescription opioid abuse reduction.
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In randomized controlled trials (RCTs), the odds ratio (OR) can substantially overestimate the risk ratio (RR) if the incidence of the outcome is over 10%. This study determined the frequency of use of ORs, the frequency of overestimation of the OR as compared with its accompanying RR in published RCTs, and we assessed how often regression models that calculate RRs were used. ⋯ ORs and logistic regression are often used in RCTs and in many articles the OR did not approximate the RR. Although the authors did not explicitly misinterpret these ORs as RRs, misinterpretation by readers can seriously affect treatment decisions and policy making.