Activity

The generation of large metabolomic data sets has created a high demand for software that can fit statistical models to one-metabolite-at-a-time on hundreds of metabolites. We provide the %polynova_2way macro in SAS to identify metabolites differentially expressed in study designs with a two-way factorial treatment and hierarchical design structure. For each metabolite, the macro calculates the least squares means using a linear mixed model with fixed and random effects, runs a 2-way ANOVA, corrects the P-values for the number of metabolites using the false discovery rate or Bonferroni procedure, and calculate the P-value for the least squares mean differences for each metabolite. Finally, the %polynova_2way macro outputs a table in excel format that combines all the results to facilitate the identification of significant metabolites for each factor. The macro code is freely available in the Supporting Information.

We examined the association between meat intake and mortality due to all-cause and major causes of death using a population-based cohort study in Japan.

87,507 Japanese aged between 45 and 74 years old at 5-year follow-up study were followed for 14.0 years on average. Associations between meat intake and mortality risk were assessed using a Cox proportional hazards model.

A heavy intake of total meat was associated with a higher risk of all-cause mortality relative to the lowest quartile intake in men (Q4 HR,1.18; 95%CIs, 1.06-1.31). A higher intake of total meat was associated with a lower risk of stroke mortality in women (Q2 HR, 0.70; 95%CIs, 0.51-0.94, Q3 HR, 0.68; 95%CIs, 0.50-0.95, Q4 HR, 0.66; 95%CIs, 0.44-0.99). A heavy intake of red meat was also associated with all-cause mortality (Q4 HR, 1.13; 95%CIs, 1.02-1.26) and heart disease mortality (Q4 HR, 1.51; 95%CIs, 1.11-2.06) in men but not in women. Heavy intake of chicken was inversely associated with cancer mortality in men.

Heavy intakes of total and red meat were associated with an increase in all-cause and heart disease mortality in men, while total meat intake was associated with a lower risk of stroke mortality in women.

Heavy intakes of total and red meat were associated with an increase in all-cause and heart disease mortality in men, while total meat intake was associated with a lower risk of stroke mortality in women.

Ethiopia reported a high rate of extra-pulmonary tuberculosis (EPTB) and the cases are increasing since the last three decades. However, diagnostic evidence to initiate TB treatment among EPTB cases is not well known. Therefore, we described the epidemiology and assessed how EPTB is diagnosed in a teaching hospital in Ethiopia.

We conducted a retrospective review among all adult EPTB cases diagnosed in Yekatit 12 Hospital Medical College from 2015 to 2019. Using a standardized data abstraction sheet, we collected data from patients’ medical records on sociodemographic, sites, and laboratory diagnosis of EPTB cases.

Of the 965 total TB cases, 49.8%(481) had a recorded diagnosis of EPTB during the study period. The mean age of EPTB patients was 32.9 years (SD±13.9) and 50.7% were males. Tubercular lymphadenitis (40.3%), abdominal (23.4%), and pleural TB(13.5%) were the most common sites of EPTB involvement, followed in descending order by the genitourinary, skeletal, central nervous system, abscess, breast, and laryngeal TB. We found a histopathology finding consistent with EPTB in 59.1% of cases, Acid-fast bacilli positive in 1.5%, and the rest diagnosed on radiological grounds. In the majority of cases, more than one diagnostic method was used to diagnose EPTB cases.

Nearly half of TB patients had a recorded diagnosis of EPTB that comprise heterogeneous anatomical sites. All EPTB patients were started anti-TB therapy without definitive microbiology results. This indicates the diagnostic challenge of EPTB faced in our setting and proves to be significant for TB control in Ethiopia.

Nearly half of TB patients had a recorded diagnosis of EPTB that comprise heterogeneous anatomical sites. All EPTB patients were started anti-TB therapy without definitive microbiology results. This indicates the diagnostic challenge of EPTB faced in our setting and proves to be significant for TB control in Ethiopia.Many applications have been developed for electronic data collection. However, offline field navigation tools incorporating secure electronic data capture and field visit tracking are currently scarce. We created an R-Shiny application, HTrack (Household Tracking), for use on encrypted Android devices in the field. The application was implemented in the Communities Organized to Prevent Arboviruses (COPA) project, a study beginning in 2018 to better understand arboviral disease incidence in 38 communities in Puerto Rico. The application was used to navigate to randomly selected structures and capture visit outcomes after conducting multiple visits for participant recruitment. It also served as a bridge to an alternate software, Epi Info, to collect participant-level questionnaire data. see more This application successfully captured each visit outcome and improved the logistics of field level activities for the COPA project, eliminating the use of paper maps for navigation. We show the development of HTrack and comment on the limitations and strengths of this application and further improvements.When the population risk factors and reporting systems are similar, the assessment of the case-fatality (or lethality) rate (ratio of cases to deaths) represents a perfect tool for analyzing, understanding and improving the overall efficiency of the health system. The objective of this article is to estimate the influence of the hospital care system on lethality in metropolitan France during the inception of the COVID-19 epidemic, by analyzing the spatial variability of the hospital case-fatality rate (CFR) between French districts. In theory, the hospital age-standardized CFR should not display significant differences between districts, since hospital lethality depends on the virulence of the pathogen (the SARS-CoV-2 virus), the vulnerability of the population (mainly age-related), the healthcare system quality, and cases and deaths definition and the recording accuracy. We analyzed hospital data on COVID-19 hospitalizations, severity (admission to intensive care units for reanimation or endotracheal intubation) and mortality, from March 19 to May 8 corresponding to the first French lockdown.