Outpatient clinical notes are a rich source of information regarding drug safety. However, data in these notes are currently underutilized for pharmacovigilance due to methodological limitations in text mining. Large language models (LLMs) like Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) have shown progress in a range of natural language processing tasks but have not yet been evaluated on adverse event (AE) detection.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPharmacoepidemiol Drug Saf
January 2024
Purpose: Under the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act of 2007 (FDAAA), the FDA has the authority to require applicants to conduct postmarketing studies or clinical trials. These postmarketing requirements (PMRs) provide additional data on the safety of the drug product. The purpose of the study was to conduct a descriptive analysis of FDAAA PMRs and the resulting regulatory actions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThere is broad interest in producing electrospun films embedded with biological materials. It is well known that electrospinning requires careful control of the process conditions, especially the environmental conditions such as relative humidity (RH). Given that commercial electrospinning systems are expensive (> $10,000) and are typically too large to be used in standard biological safety cabinets (BSC), we designed and built a miniaturized electrospinning box (E-Box) that will fit inside a BSC, and the RH can be easily controlled using simple instrumentation (gas cylinder, regulator, needle valve, rotameter).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Aims: Outpatient clinical notes are a rich source of information regarding drug safety. However, data in these notes are currently underutilized for pharmacovigilance due to methodological limitations in text mining. Large language models (LLM) like BERT have shown progress in a range of natural language processing tasks but have not yet been evaluated on adverse event detection.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEmphysema is a common phenotype of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Although resection of emphysematous tissue can improve lung mechanics, it is invasive and fraught with adverse effects. Meanwhile, radiofrequency (RF) treatment is an extracorporeal method that leads to tissue destruction and remodeling, resulting in "volume reduction" and overall improvement in lung compliance of emphysematous lungs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are highly susceptible from respiratory exacerbations from viral respiratory tract infections. However, it is unclear whether they are at increased risk of COVID-19 pneumonia or COVID-19-related mortality. We aimed to determine whether COPD is a risk factor for adverse COVID-19 outcomes including hospitalization, severe COVID-19, or death.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose Of Review: Several observational studies have suggested that β-blockers, especially cardioselective ones, are well tolerated and associated with a lower risk of acute exacerbations and death in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). However, there are dissenting studies. This review provides an update on the use of β-blockers in COPD, focusing on results of recent prospective studies and randomized controlled trials.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFContext: Generic drugs account for 9 out of 10 prescriptions dispensed in the United States but for a lower proportion of commonly prescribed thyroid hormone replacement therapies.
Objective: Characterize temporal patterns of generic and brand-name thyroid hormone drug use, including patient and prescriber characteristics associated with brand-name use.
Design And Setting: Cross-sectional longitudinal analysis of national data from a large administrative claims database from January 2007 through December 2016.
The lack of standardization of tissue handling and processing hinders the development and validation of new biomarkers in research and clinical settings. We compared the histomorphology and the quality and quantity of biomolecules in paraffin-embedded mouse tissues, followed by fixation with neutral buffered formalin (NBF), 70% ethanol, and buffered ethanol (BE70) fixative. The quality of the histomorphology and immunohistochemistry in BE70 was relatively time-independent, whereas those in NBF rapidly decreased after 1 week of fixation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Malignancies reported in children using tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFalpha) blockers have raised concerns of a potential increased risk. This study was undertaken to investigate postmarketing reports of malignancy in children treated with TNF blockers.
Methods: The FDA's Adverse Event Reporting System was searched to identify malignancies associated with the use of infliximab, etanercept, and adalimumab in children in whom therapy was initiated between the ages of 0 and 18 years.
Background: Maintenance of homeostasis requires that an organism perceive selected physical and chemical signals within an informationally dense environment. Functionally, an organism uses a variety of signal transduction arrays to amplify and convert these perceived signals into appropriate gene transcriptional responses. These changes in gene expression serve to modify selective metabolic processes and thus optimize reproductive success.
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