Overcoming NS1-mediated immune antagonism involves both interferon-dependent and independent mechanisms.

To ensure survival, our immune system must overcome the action of pathogen-encoded immune antagonists, such as influenza A nonstructural protein-1 (NS1). NS1 subverts the host interferon (IFN) response at multiple levels and blocks the induction of IFN-β, a critical antiviral cytokine. This immune antagonism can be overcome in some cases.

Design of a medication reconciliation application: facilitating clinician-focused decision making with data from multiple sources.

Background: Medication reconciliation is an essential, but resource-intensive process without a "gold standard" to measure medication adherence. Medication reconciliation applications that focus on facilitating clinicians' decision-making are needed. Since no single available source of medication information is adequate, combining data sources may improve usefulness and outcomes.

Speaking the same language? International variations in the safety information accompanying top-selling prescription drugs.

Background: The official prescribing information document distributed with a prescription drug is a key source of safety information, but it may include excessive or insufficient details.

Objectives: To compare prescribing information approved by the US Food and Drug Administration with the UK, Canada and Australia to identify content differences in safety warnings.

Methods: For 20 top-selling prescription drugs, we used an automated natural language processing tool to calculate the number and severity of reported adverse drug reactions (ADRs).

In the media: Burns as a method of assault.

Aim: The aims of this study were to determine whether a change occurred in the pattern of assault burn injury cases hospitalised to the adult state burns unit, Western Australia, from 2004 to mid-year of 2012, and to compare patient and burn characteristics of adult assault burns with those admitted for unintentional burns.

Methods: Study data were obtained from the Royal Perth Hospital (RPH) Burns Minimum Dataset (BMDS). Aggregated data of unintentional burn admissions during the same period were provided by the BMDS data manager to enable comparisons with assault burn patients.

Do not resuscitate status, not age, affects outcomes after injury: an evaluation of 15,227 consecutive trauma patients.

Background: Despite a well-described association of age and injury with mortality and decreased functional status, inpatient mortality studies have traditionally not included analysis of do not resuscitate (DNR) status. We hypothesized that the increased likelihood of DNR status in older patients alters age-adjusted mortality rates in trauma.

Methods: The trauma registry was queried for adult patients admitted to our Level I trauma center (January 2005-December 2008) and divided into eight age groups by decade.

Evaluation of Pacific white shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) health during a superintensive aquaculture growout using NMR-based metabolomics.

Success of the shrimp aquaculture industry requires technological advances that increase production and environmental sustainability. Indoor, superintensive, aquaculture systems are being developed that permit year-round production of farmed shrimp at high densities. These systems are intended to overcome problems of disease susceptibility and of water quality issues from waste products, by operating as essentially closed systems that promote beneficial microbial communities (biofloc).

Multiple transcription factor binding sites predict AID targeting in non-Ig genes.

Aberrant targeting of the enzyme activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID) results in the accumulation of somatic mutations in ≈ 25% of expressed genes in germinal center B cells. Observations in Ung(-/-) Msh2(-/-) mice suggest that many other genes efficiently repair AID-induced lesions, so that up to 45% of genes may actually be targeted by AID. It is important to understand the mechanisms that recruit AID to certain genes, because this mistargeting represents an important risk for genome instability.

Shifting the paradigm in Oregon from teen pregnancy prevention to youth sexual health.

Oregon's work on teen pregnancy prevention during the previous 20 years has shifted from a risk-focused paradigm to a youth development model that places young people at the center of their sexual health and well-being. During 2005, the Oregon Governor's Office requested that an ad hoc committee of state agency and private partners develop recommendations for the next phase of teen pregnancy prevention. As a result of that collaborative effort, engagement of young people, and community input, the Oregon Youth Sexual Health Plan was released in 2009.

A modified Vancouver Scar Scale linked with TBSA (mVSS-TBSA): Inter-rater reliability of an innovative burn scar assessment method.

Background: Current scar assessment methods do not capture variation in scar outcome across the burn scar surface area. A new method (mVSS-TBSA) using a modified Vancouver Scar Scale (mVSS) linked with %TBSA was devised and inter-rater reliability was assessed.

Method: Three raters performed scar assessments on thirty patients with burn scars using the mVSS-TBSA.

16(th) IHIW : review of HLA typing by NGS.

Human leucocyte antigen (HLA) genes play an important role in the success of organ transplantation and are associated with autoimmune and infectious diseases. Current DNA-based genotyping methods, including Sanger sequence-based typing (SSBT), have identified a high degree of polymorphism. This level of polymorphism makes high-resolution HLA genotyping challenging, resulting in ambiguous typing results due to an inability to resolve phase and/or defining polymorphisms lying outside the region amplified.

Modeling enzootic raccoon rabies from land use patterns - Georgia (USA) 2006-2010.

We analyzed how land-use patterns and changes in urbanization influence reported rabid raccoons in Georgia from 2006 - 2010.  Using Geographical Information Systems and rabies surveillance data, multivariate analysis was conducted on 15 land-use variables that included natural topography, agricultural development, and urbanization to model positive raccoon rabies cases while controlling for potential raccoon submission bias associated with higher human population densities.  Low intensity residential development was positively associated with reported rabid raccoons while a negative association was found with evergreen forest.

Inspiratory loading and limb locomotor and respiratory muscle deoxygenation during cycling exercise.

The aim of this study was to determine the effect of inspiratory loading on limb locomotor (LM) and respiratory muscle (RM) deoxygenation ([deoxy (Hb+Mb)]) using NIRS during constant-power cycling exercise. Sixteen, male cyclists completed three, 6-min trials. The intensity of the first 3-min of each trial was equivalent to ~80% V(O(2max)) (EX(80%)); during the final 3-min, subjects received an intervention consisting of either moderate inspiratory loading (Load(mod)), heavy inspiratory loading (Load(heavy)), or maximal exercise (Load(EX)).

Adherence to drug-drug interaction alerts in high-risk patients: a trial of context-enhanced alerting.

Objective: Drug-drug interaction (DDI) alerting is an important form of clinical decision support, yet physicians often fail to attend to critical DDI warnings due to alert fatigue. We previously described a model for highlighting patients at high risk of a DDI by enhancing alerts with relevant laboratory data. We sought to evaluate the effect of this model on alert adherence in high-risk patients.

Promotion of smoking cessation with emotional and/or graphic antismoking advertising.

Background: Antismoking campaigns can be effective in promoting cessation, but less is known about the dose of advertising related to behavioral change among adult smokers, which types of messages are most effective, and effects on populations disproportionately affected by tobacco use.

Purpose: To assess the impact of emotional and/or graphic antismoking TV advertisements on quit attempts in the past 12 months among adult smokers in New York State.

Methods: Individual-level data come from the 2003 through 2010 New York Adult Tobacco Surveys.

Consistency in the safety labeling of bioequivalent medications.

Purpose: Bioequivalent medications are required by the Food and Drug Administration to have identical warnings on their labels. This requirement has both clinical and legal importance, yet has never been validated. We sought to determine the real-world consistency of electronic labeling for bioequivalent drugs from different manufacturers.

High-level ab initio predictions of the energetics of mCO2·(H2O)n (n = 1-3, m = 1-12) clusters.

Electronic structure calculations at the correlated molecular orbital theory and density functional theory levels have been used to generate a reliable set of clustering energies for up to three water molecules in carbon dioxide clusters up to n = 12. The structures and energetics are dominated by Lewis acid-base interactions with hydrogen-bonding interactions playing a lesser energetic role. The actual binding energies are somewhat larger than might be expected.

Literature based drug interaction prediction with clinical assessment using electronic medical records: novel myopathy associated drug interactions.

Drug-drug interactions (DDIs) are a common cause of adverse drug events. In this paper, we combined a literature discovery approach with analysis of a large electronic medical record database method to predict and evaluate novel DDIs. We predicted an initial set of 13197 potential DDIs based on substrates and inhibitors of cytochrome P450 (CYP) metabolism enzymes identified from published in vitro pharmacology experiments.

Association of the presence of bone bars on radiographs and hip fracture in postmenopausal Caucasian women.

Aim: To determine whether the presence of bone bars (BB) identified on anteroposterior hip radiographs are more prevalent in patients that have had a hip fracture as compared to patients without a fracture.

Materials And Methods: Ninety-two Caucasian women with a unilateral proximal femur fracture were retrospectively evaluated and randomly selected using radiology database records to comprise the investigational group. Ninety-eight age-matched Caucasian women without hip fracture were selected as a control group.

Perceived effectiveness of cessation advertisements: the importance of audience reactions and practical implications for media campaign planning.

Cessation television ads are often evaluated with measures of perceived effectiveness (PE) that gauge smokers' reactions to the ads. Although measures of PE have been validated for other genres of public service announcements, no studies to our knowledge have demonstrated the predictive validity of PE for cessation TV ads specifically. We analyzed data from a longitudinal Web survey of smokers in the United States to assess whether measures of PE for cessation TV ads are causally antecedent to cessation-related outcomes.

Rates of hospitalisations and mortality of older adults admitted with burn injuries in Western Australian from 1983 to 2008.

Aim: To estimate temporal trends in burn injury hospitalisations, mortality and hospital stay, for older adults with a burn-related hospitalisation.

Methods: De-identified data of all incident burn hospitalisations for adults 60 years and older in Western Australia from 1983-2008 were analysed. Poisson regression analyses were used to estimate temporal trends in hospital admissions and mortality.

Does the epidemiologic paradox hold in the presence of risk factors for low birth weight infants among Mexican-born women in Colorado?

Objectives: To test whether foreign-born status confers a protective effect against low birth weight (LBW) outcomes among Mexican-origin women in Colorado.

Methods: Retrospective cohort study utilizing Colorado birth records from 1989-2004 for multivariate logistic regression analysis. The study population was 66,422 U.

Capitalization and proximity to agricultural and natural lands: evidence from Delaware.

This paper offers an applied study assessing the price impacts of proximity to open space in a residential property market. Data are collected in an urban-influenced region of Delaware, USA, which has experienced rapid population growth--an 85 percent increase in number of households and 92 percent increase in population between Census 1990 and Census 2000--but also maintains substantial agricultural land use. In agreement with previous literature the results show the protection of agricultural and natural lands is capitalized into the value of neighboring properties.

Unique pattern of complications in elderly trauma patients at a Level I trauma center.

Background: Trauma centers are caring for increased proportions of elderly patients. Although age and Injury Severity Score are independently associated with mortality, trauma centers were originally designed to care for seriously injured patients without age-specific guidelines. We hypothesized that elderly patients would have different complication patterns than their younger counterparts.