Prophylactic Antibiotics in Adults With Acute Brain Injury Who Are Invasively Ventilated in the ICU: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Background: Lower respiratory tract infections are common in patients receiving invasive mechanical ventilation in an ICU after an acute brain injury and may have deleterious consequences.

Research Question: In adults with acute brain injury receiving invasive mechanical ventilation in an ICU, is the administration of prophylactic parenteral antibiotics, compared with placebo or usual care, associated with reduced mortality?

Study Design And Methods: We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis. We searched for randomized clinical trials (RCTs) in electronic databases, as well as unpublished trials.

A Patient-Level Meta-Analysis of Intensive Glucose Control in Critically Ill Adults.

Background: Whether intensive glucose control reduces mortality in critically ill patients remains uncertain. Patient-level meta-analyses can provide more precise estimates of treatment effects than are currently available.

Methods: We pooled individual patient data from randomized trials investigating intensive glucose control in critically ill adults.

Prolonged vs Intermittent Infusions of β-Lactam Antibiotics in Adults With Sepsis or Septic Shock: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Importance: There is uncertainty about whether prolonged infusions of β-lactam antibiotics improve clinically important outcomes in critically ill adults with sepsis or septic shock.

Objective: To determine whether prolonged β-lactam antibiotic infusions are associated with a reduced risk of death in critically ill adults with sepsis or septic shock compared with intermittent infusions.

Data Sources: The primary search was conducted with MEDLINE (via PubMed), CINAHL, Embase, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), and ClinicalTrials.

Prediction of dementia risk from multimodal repeated measures: The added value of brain MRI biomarkers.

Abstract: The utility of brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for predicting dementia is debated. We evaluated the added value of repeated brain MRI, including atrophy and cerebral small vessel disease markers, for dementia prediction. We conducted a landmark competing risk analysis in 1716 participants of the French population-based Three-City Study to predict the 5-year risk of dementia using repeated measures of 41 predictors till year 4 of follow-up.

Selective digestive tract decontamination in critically ill adults with acute brain injuries: a post hoc analysis of a randomized clinical trial.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to determine whether selective decontamination of the digestive tract (SDD) reduces in-hospital mortality in mechanically ventilated critically ill adults admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) with acute brain injuries or conditions.

Methods: We carried out a post hoc analysis from a crossover, cluster randomized clinical trial. ICUs were randomly assigned to adopt or not to adopt a SDD strategy for two alternating 12-month periods, separated by a 3-month inter-period gap.

Random survival forests with multivariate longitudinal endogenous covariates.

Predicting the individual risk of clinical events using the complete patient history is a major challenge in personalized medicine. Analytical methods have to account for a possibly large number of time-dependent predictors, which are often characterized by irregular and error-prone measurements, and are truncated early by the event. In this work, we extended the competing-risk random survival forests to handle such endogenous longitudinal predictors when predicting event probabilities.

Individual dynamic prediction of clinical endpoint from large dimensional longitudinal biomarker history: a landmark approach.

Background: The individual data collected throughout patient follow-up constitute crucial information for assessing the risk of a clinical event, and eventually for adapting a therapeutic strategy. Joint models and landmark models have been proposed to compute individual dynamic predictions from repeated measures to one or two markers. However, they hardly extend to the case where the patient history includes much more repeated markers.

Human Campylobacteriosis in Luxembourg, 2010-2013: A Case-Control Study Combined with Multilocus Sequence Typing for Source Attribution and Risk Factor Analysis.

Campylobacteriosis has increased markedly in Luxembourg during recent years. We sought to determine which Campylobacter genotypes infect humans, where they may originate from, and how they may infect humans. Multilocus sequence typing was performed on 1153 Campylobacter jejuni and 136 C.

Investigating the host specificity of Campylobacter jejuni and Campylobacter coli by sequencing gyrase subunit A.

Background: Surveillance and field investigations of Campylobacter infections require molecular tools with genetic markers appropriate for tracing purposes, i.e. based on the principle that some Campylobacter lineages acquire a host signature under adaptive selection pressure.