Does the risk of hypersensitivity reactions to iopromide differ by sex, race, or across regions/countries? An analysis of 152 233 patients from 4 observational studies and the company's pharmacovigilance database.

Objective: To analyse the potential impact of patients' sex, race, and region/country on the risk of hypersensitivity reactions after intra-venous or intra-arterial administration of iopromide.

Methods: Two analyses were performed. (1) The "Phase-IV-Analysis" evaluated an integrated pooled database of 4 non-interventional studies.

Vericiguat Use in Patients with Heart Failure in Real-World Settings during the First Year after the Drug Authorization in Japan.

Vericiguat was developed to treat patients with heart failure (HF). Currently, limited data are available to characterize vericiguat-treated patients in real-world clinical settings. This retrospective cohort study was done using a Japanese hospital administrative database to describe the use of vericiguat in patients with HF in real-world settings.

Initiation and continuation of pharmacological therapies in patients hospitalized for heart failure in Japan.

Currently, the utilization patterns of medications for heart failure (HF) after worsening HF events remain unelucidated in Japan. Here, we conducted a retrospective cohort study evaluating the changes in HF drug utilization patterns in 6 months before and after hospitalizations for HF. The adherence to newly initiated HF medications was evaluated based on the proportion of days covered (PDC) and persistence as continuous treatment episodes among new users.

Real-world characteristics and use patterns of patients treated with vericiguat: A nationwide longitudinal cohort study in Germany.

Purpose: Vericiguat reduced clinical endpoints in patients experiencing worsening heart failure in clinical trials, but its implementation outside trials is unclear.

Methods: This retrospective analysis of longitudinally collected data was based on the IQVIA™ LRx database, which includes ~ 80% of the prescriptions of the 73 million people covered by the German statutory health insurance.

Results: Between September 2021 and December 2022, vericiguat was initiated in 2916 adult patients.

Evaluation of Physician Knowledge of Safety and Safe Use Information for Intravitreal Aflibercept Injection in Europe: A Second Survey of Physicians Following Dissemination of Updated Risk-Minimization Materials.

Background: Materials have been distributed in the European Union to inform physicians on the safe use of intravitreal aflibercept (IVT-AFL) as part of the risk-minimization plan for IVT-AFL.

Objective: We aimed to measure physician knowledge and understanding of key safety information for IVT-AFL.

Methods: The current study was a follow-up cross-sectional survey ('wave 2') to an earlier survey ('wave 1') examining the effectiveness of the IVT-AFL educational materials by assessing physician knowledge of the key safety information.

Unsupervised encoding selection through ensemble pruning for biomedical classification.

Background: Owing to the rising levels of multi-resistant pathogens, antimicrobial peptides, an alternative strategy to classic antibiotics, got more attention. A crucial part is thereby the costly identification and validation. With the ever-growing amount of annotated peptides, researchers leverage artificial intelligence to circumvent the cumbersome, wet-lab-based identification and automate the detection of promising candidates.

A Methodology for Optimizing the Calibration and Validation of Reactive Transport Models for Cement-Based Materials.

Reactive transport models are useful tools in the development of cement-based materials. The output of cement-related reactive transport models is primarily regarded as qualitative and not quantitative, mainly due to limited or missing experimental validation. This paper presents an approach to optimize the calibration process of reactive transport models for cement-based materials, using the results of several short-term experiments.

Risk of Hypersensitivity Reactions to Iopromide in Children and Elderly: An Analysis of 132,850 Patients From 4 Observational Studies and Pharmacovigilance Covering >288 Million Administrations.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to analyze the risk of hypersensitivity reactions (HSRs) to iopromide in children and elderly patients in comparison to adults.

Materials And Methods: Four observational studies were pooled and analyzed (analysis I). In addition, spontaneous reports from 1985 to 2020 from the pharmacovigilance database were evaluated (analysis II).

Mechanical Performance of Steel Fibre Reinforced Concrete Exposed to Wet-Dry Cycles of Chlorides and Carbon Dioxide.

This paper presents an experimental study investigating the corrosion damage of carbon-steel fibre reinforced concrete (SFRC) exposed to wet-dry cycles of chlorides and carbon dioxide for two years, and its effects on the mechanical performance of the composite over time. The results presented showed a moderate corrosion damage at fibres crossing cracks, within an approximate depth of up to 40 mm inside the crack after two-years of exposure, for the most aggressive exposure conditions investigated. Corrosion damage did not entail a significant detriment to the mechanical performance of the cracked SFRC over the time-scales investigated.

Risk of Hypersensitivity Reactions to Iopromide After Intra-Arterial Versus Intravenous Administration: A Nested Case-Control Analysis of 133,331 Patients.

Objective: The aim of this study was to compare the risk of hypersensitivity reactions to iopromide after intra-arterial (IA) administration and intravenous (IV) administration.

Materials And Methods: Four observational studies were pooled. Almost half of the study population (48.

Development of hypotension in patients newly diagnosed with heart failure in UK general practice: retrospective cohort and nested case-control analyses.

Objectives: Hypotension is of particular relevance for patients with heart failure (HF), since almost all HF drugs cause lowering of blood pressure (BP) and it is associated with a poor prognosis. We aimed to investigate hypotension incidence and risk factors in patients with incident HF in the UK.

Design: Retrospective cohort study including nested case-control analyses.

Risk of bleeding events among patients with systemic sclerosis and the general population in the UK: a large population-based cohort study.

Introduction/objectives: To compare the risk of different bleeding outcomes between patients with systemic sclerosis (SSc) and the general population free of SSc.

Methods: Using UK electronic primary care data (2000-2012), 1314 patients with SSc and a matched SSc-free comparison cohort (n = 19,992) were followed until December 2013 to identify bleeding, confirmed following manual review of patient records including free text comments. Incidence rates were calculated and Cox regression used to estimate adjusted hazard ratios (HRs; SSc cohort vs.

Iodinated Contrast Agents and Risk of Hypothyroidism in Young Children in the United States.

Background: Although it is generally acknowledged that exposure to iodine contrast agents can interfere with thyroid function, little is known about the incidence of iodine-induced hypothyroidism in young children (younger than the age of 4 years).

Study Objectives: This was a retrospective cohort study to estimate the incidence rate of detected hypothyroidism in a US-based general population of pediatric patients exposed to an iodinated contrast agent.

Setting: The study was conducted in Kaiser Permanente Northern California, an integrated health care delivery system.

Hypothyroidism in Young Children Following Exposure to Iodinated Contrast Media: An Observational Study and a Review of the Literature.

While it is well documented that exposure to iodinated contrast media (ICM) can interfere with thyroid function in adults, much less is known about the incidence and risk factors associated with ICM induced hypothyroidism in young children. Using a computerized database we identified 843 children who were exposed to ICM between 1998 and 2015. The incidence rate of ICM induced hypothyroidism per 1000 person-years was 9.

Contemporary epidemiology of systemic sclerosis: A population-based cohort study in the United Kingdom.

Objective: To estimate the contemporary epidemiology of systemic sclerosis (SSc) in the UK and to explore the validity of using The Health Improvement Network (THIN) primary care database to study SSc.

Methods: 4,520,299 individuals (2000-2012) aged 1-99 years were followed to identify potential incident cases of SSc; potential prevalent cases were identified at start of follow-up. Patient profiles, including free-text comments, were manually reviewed to verify cases of SSc, and case validation was undertaken for a sample (n = 100) using questionnaires to primary care physicians.

Pulmonary arterial hypertension in the USA: an epidemiological study in a large insured pediatric population.

Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is rare in children and few data are available in a pediatric general population. This study aims to calculate the annual incidence and prevalence of PAH and to describe these children in a large US population of patients aged under 18 years. Using the US MarketScan claims database we identified 695 children with PAH in 2010-2013.

Mode of Death in Heart Failure With Preserved Ejection Fraction.

Little is known about specific modes of death in patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). Herein, the authors critically appraise the current state of data and offer potential future directions. They conducted a systematic review of 1,608 published HFpEF papers from January 1, 1985, to December 31, 2015, which yielded 8 randomized clinical trials and 24 epidemiological studies with mode-of-death data.

Electronic health records to facilitate clinical research.

Electronic health records (EHRs) provide opportunities to enhance patient care, embed performance measures in clinical practice, and facilitate clinical research. Concerns have been raised about the increasing recruitment challenges in trials, burdensome and obtrusive data collection, and uncertain generalizability of the results. Leveraging electronic health records to counterbalance these trends is an area of intense interest.

Heart failure hospitalization: An important prognostic factor for heart failure re-admission and mortality.

Background: Few studies have evaluated incidence rates and risk factors for heart failure hospitalization (HFH) and mortality starting at initial heart failure (HF) diagnosis.

Methods: Patients with a first ever recorded diagnosis of HF between January 2000 and December 2005 (N=3516) were identified from The Health Improvement Network primary care database and followed until April 2011 to identify HFHs (through linked hospitalization data) and deaths. HF patients were stratified by hospitalization status at HF diagnosis (start date), and hazard ratios (HRs) for HFH and death were estimated using Cox regression.

Incidence and risk factors for atrial fibrillation in patients with newly diagnosed heart failure.

Aims: We aimed to identify the incidence and risk factors for first ever atrial fibrillation among patients with newly diagnosed heart failure following initial heart failure diagnosis.

Methods: A heart failure inception cohort of patients aged 20-89 years without atrial fibrillation or cancer (N = 14 457) from 2000 to 2005 was identified from The Health Improvement Network primary care database in the United Kingdom and followed for a mean of 2.67 years.