Plos One
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The 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak is the largest and most widespread to date. In order to estimate ongoing transmission in the affected countries, we estimated the weekly average number of secondary cases caused by one individual infected with Ebola throughout the infectious period for each affected West African country using a stochastic hidden Markov model fitted to case data from the World Health Organization. ⋯ The epidemics in Liberia and Sierra Leone have approached subcriticality at some point during the epidemic; the epidemic in Guinea is ongoing with no evidence that it is subcritical. Response efforts to control the epidemic should continue in order to eliminate Ebola cases in West Africa.
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Blood cultures are often recommended for the evaluation of community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). However, institutions vary in their use of blood cultures, and blood cultures have unclear utility in CAP management in hospitalized children. ⋯ Obtaining blood cultures in children hospitalized with CAP rarely identifies a causative pathogen and is associated with increased LOS. Our results highlight the need to refine the role of obtaining blood cultures in children hospitalized with CAP.
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Comparative Study
Cortical Thickness in Dementia with Lewy Bodies and Alzheimer's Disease: A Comparison of Prodromal and Dementia Stages.
To assess and compare cortical thickness (CTh) of patients with prodromal Dementia with Lewy bodies (pro-DLB), prodromal Alzheimer's disease (pro-AD), DLB dementia (DLB-d), AD dementia (AD-d) and normal ageing. ⋯ Cortical thickness is a sensitive measure for characterising patterns of grey matter atrophy in early stages of DLB distinct from AD. Right anterior insula involvement may be a key region at the prodromal stage of DLB and needs further investigation.
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Clinical Trial
Inverted Perceptual Judgment of Nociceptive Stimuli at Threshold Level following Inconsistent Cues.
The perception of pain is susceptible to modulation by psychological and contextual factors. It has been shown that subjects judge noxious stimuli as more painful in a respective suggestive context, which disappears when the modifying context is resolved. However, a context in which subjects judge the painfulness of a nociceptive stimulus in exactly the opposite direction to that of the cues has never been shown so far. ⋯ The present study revealed the induction of associations incongruent with a given message in the perception of pain. We created a context of unreliable cues whereby subjects perceived the stimulus opposite to that suggested by a prior cue, i.e., potentially nociceptive stimuli at pain threshold level that were announced as painful were judged as non-painful and vice versa. These findings are consistent with reported data on the effects of distrust on non-painful cognitive responses.
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To examine the associations of near work related parameters with spherical equivalent refraction and axial length in Chinese children. ⋯ Continuous reading, close distances of reading, television viewing and nib-to-fingertip, head tilt when writing, reading more books for pleasure and use of fluorescent desk light were significantly associated with myopia in 12-year-old Chinese children, which indicates that visual behaviors and environments may be important factors mediating the effects of near work on myopia.